As investigative journalist Allan Nairn said on Democracy Now! in January: "Well, you know, if you go and burn down your neighbor's house, don't complain when, as they run from the flames, they come onto your lawn."
By David L. Wilson and Jane Guskin, MRZine
March 13, 2016
The March 9 debate in Miami between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was the first chance the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination had to discuss immigration and its connections to trade and U.S. policy in Latin America. Unfortunately, neither candidate took advantage of the opportunity.
The mainstream "immigration debate" generally avoids mentioning the forces that have driven millions of Latin Americans to move here without legal authorization over the past forty years. The media and the politicians treat the migration either as a natural disaster ("flooding over the border") or as a second-rate science fiction movie ("the aliens are invading") -- with either scenario seen as deserving an aggressive response.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/wg130316.html
Showing posts with label Nicaragua. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicaragua. Show all posts
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Friday, October 23, 2015
NYC, 10/30/15: "Close-ups on Revolution: the Nicaraguan Films of Marc Karlin"
VOYAGES (1985), 42 min.
SCENES FOR A REVOLUTION (1991), 110 min.
With SUSAN MEISELAS and HERMIONE HARRIS
MARK KARLIN (1943-1999), one of the greatest British filmmakers of his generation, created an outstanding body of philosophically rich, formally bold work that explored themes of history, memory, labour, and political agency in a time of neoliberal despair.
Foremost among his achievements are the five films he made on the Nicaraguan revolution: spanning the Sandinista decade, focussing on rural and urban grassroots movements, attentive to the sadness and disappointments of the revolutionary process, they are a remarkable chronicle of a remarkable era.
MEMORY AND ILLUMINATION: THE FILMS OF MARC KARLIN, the first US retrospective of his work, begins with two works from this period.
VOYAGES (1985) is composed of stills by renowned Magnum photographer SUSAN MEISELAS taken in 1978 and 1979 during the overthrow of the fifty-year dictatorship of the Somoza family. Written in the form of a letter from Meiselas to Karlin, it is a ruminative and often profound exploration of the ethics of witnessing, the responsibilities of war photography and the politics of the still image,
SCENES FOR A REVOLUTION (1991) is a film about aftermaths and reckonings. Revisiting material for his earlier 4-part series (1985), Karlin returns to Nicaragua to examine the history of the Sandinista government, consider its achievements, and assess the prospects for democracy following its defeat in the general election of 1990.
Friday, October 30th 6:30pm
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Post screening discussion with:
Susan Meiselas, Magnum photographer since 1980 and 1992 MacArthur Fellow.
Hermione Harris, anthropologist; collaborator on the Nicaragua series.
Jonathan Buchsbaum, author of Cinema Sandinista: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1990.
Susie Linfield, author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence.
Organized by Sukhdev Sandhu. QUERIES: ss162@nyu.edu
Thursday, May 7, 2015
NYC, 5/15/15: Spring Fiesta for Tipitapa, Nicaragua
Dos Pueblos
New York-Tipitapa Sister City Project
Celebrate spring and a new community library built by our binational teen committee in Nicaragua! Enjoy an evening of salsa and stories of cultural exchange and social justice programs that are making a difference.
Friday, May 15th, 6:30pm-9:30pm
West Park Church, 165 W 86th St (Amsterdam Ave)
For more information, go to:
Live Salsa with Grupo Internacional
Meet our Youth Committee
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
WNU #1235: Mexican Police Kill Guerrero Students, Again
Issue #1235, September 28, 2014
1. Mexico: Police Kill Guerrero Students, Again
2. Guatemala: Police Occupy Town After Violence
3. Haiti: Women Protest 1835 Abortion Law
4. Nicaragua: Contra-Drug Series Was CIA “Nightmare”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Police Kill Guerrero Students, Again
The Attorney General’s Office of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero announced on Sept. 28 that 22 agents from the Iguala de la Independencia municipal preventive police had been detained and removed to Acapulco in connection with a violent outbreak the night of Sept. 26-27 that left six dead and 17 injured. At least two of those killed were students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the town of Ayotzinapa, and as of Sept. 27 some 25 of the students were still missing. Two students from the same school were killed in an assault by state and federal police during a protest on Dec. 12, 2011; Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero eventually had to apologize publicly for the killings after the federal government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued a recommendation for an apology and for compensation to the victims’ families [see Update #1153].
According to the authorities, the violence in Iguala began late on Sept. 26 when a group of students from the teachers’ college commandeered three buses to take them back to Ayotzinapa, about 125 kilometers away, after a visit to the city. Police agents responded by shooting at the buses, killing two students. Later that night, unidentified gunmen attacked a bus on the federal Iguala-Chilpancingo highway as it was taking a Chilpancingo soccer team, the Avispones (“Hornets”), home after a match with an Iguala team. A teenage player, David Josué García Evangelista, was killed, along with a passenger, Blanca Montiel Sánchez; the bus driver was wounded and died afterwards from his injuries. The military also found a man’s body at another location on the same highway; the victim still hadn’t been identified as of Sept. 28. It wasn’t clear whether he was a student, but the daily La Jornada suggested that the night’s attacks were “against anyone who looked like a student.”
As the violence was beginning on Sept. 27, Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez told a reporter that “apparently someone hired [the Ayotzinapa students] to come and make trouble.” The mayor’s wife, Municipal Family Development System president María de los Angeles Pineda Villa, was scheduled to deliver a report in a public plaza that night, although there was also a dance with a tropical music group, Luz Roja de San Marcos, at the plaza. Mayor Abarca Velázquez, a business owner and a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is reportedly planning to have his wife replace him in city hall if he wins a seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies next year. The students said they simply came to Iguala to do fundraising in the streets, and they denied that they seized the buses by force. “There was some discussion with the bus drivers; they agreed to do us a favor,” Pedro David García López, a representative of the Ayotzinapa Student Executive Committee, told reporters on Sept. 27. “There wasn’t a kidnapping or a threat against a driver…. The buses had already let out their passengers.”
On Sept. 27 the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), an organization of dissident local members of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), condemned the police attack and announced that the group’s campaign against the federal government’s “education reform” program [see Update #1174] would now include a demand for punishment of the people responsible for the Iguala killings. (CNN México 9/27/14, some from Notimex; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/28/14, 9/28/14; Informador (Mexico) 9/28/14)
*2. Guatemala: Police Occupy Town After Violence
On Sept. 22 Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina declared a 30-day state of emergency in San Juan Sacatepéquez municipality in response to the deaths of at least eight indigenous Kaqchikel in a confrontation the night of Sept. 19-20 in the municipality’s Pajoques community [see Update #1234]. Some 600 police agents were sent to the municipality; according to one report they were backed up by 1,000 soldiers. Under the state of emergency the police are free to break up any demonstration or public meeting held without government authorization. On Sept. 23 the police arrested five community members, charging them with murder, attempted murder, arson and illegal meetings and protests; there are warrants for several dozen other community members.
There is little agreement on what happened the night of Sept. 19-20, even on the number of deaths: press reports range from eight to 11. The confrontation was between supporters and opponents of two construction projects, a huge cement factory in the municipality and a section of a beltway around Guatemala City, and the two sides gave radically different accounts. Construction supporters—generally residents who have been hired by the cement factory’s owners or have sold land for one or both of the construction projects—claim that the resistance activists are thieves and rapists who regularly harass and rob other community members.
Opponents of the construction charge that the incident started when 10 armed men from the factory entered Pajoques and fired on opponents, killing one and wounding two others. Community members say they called the national police soon after the shooting began but the police never arrived. All five of those arrested on Sept. 23 appear to belong to the resistance. Two claimed they had solid alibis. Celestino Turuy Pajoj, the director of a local school, said he was at a private university taking a law course, while José Dolores Pajoj Pirir said he was at a hospital with one of his sons at the time of the killings he is charged with. Two of his sons were shot at the beginning of the confrontation; one died and the other was hospitalized with injuries.
The Guatemalan firm Productos Mineros Limited, a subsidiary of Cementos Progreso, is the principal owner of the cement factory, holding 80% of the shares; the remaining 20% are held by the Swiss multinational cement company Holcim Ltd. Cementos Progreso is controlled by Guatemala’s rightwing Novella family, which has contracts for millions of dollars worth of development projects arranged by President Pérez Molina and his Patriot Party (PP), according to a Sept. 22 report by the Guatemalan Independent Media Center. Cementos Progreso made large contributions to Pérez Molina’s campaign in the 2011 presidential election. (Latin American Herald Tribune 9/23/14 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 9/24/14, 9/27/14 from EFE; TeleSUR 9/25/14; NACLA 9/26/14)
*3. Haiti: Women Protest 1835 Abortion Law
Some 30 Haitian women held a protest in front of the Ministry for the Feminine Condition and Women’s Rights (MCFDF) in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 26 to demand the decriminalization of abortion. Under Article 262 of Haiti’s Criminal Code, in effect since 1835, the sentence for a woman having an abortion and for anyone who helps her is life in prison. The law is apparently never enforced, but because of it all abortions in Haiti are clandestine and unregulated. The country has the highest rate of maternal deaths in the Americas, with 530 deaths for each 100,000 births; 100 of these deaths follow abortions. In a 2012 survey of 352 women who had abortions since 2007, 40% reported having complications. “Criminalization isn’t a solution,” the protesters, mostly young women, chanted. “We want to be educated sexually to be able to decide.” The demonstration was sponsored by a number of women’s rights organizations, including the Initiative for an Equitable Development in Haiti (Ideh), Kay Fanm (“Women’s House”) and Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA).
The Sept. 26 protest was in observance of the annual Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion, which is officially observed two days later on Sept. 28, but the issue had gained additional attention in Haiti because of a Sept. 20 article in the French newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur. According to the article, in May 2013 a group of doctors, feminists and religious leaders adopted a resolution for decriminalization after a colloquium on abortion organized by Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP). “Haiti must remove the vagueness existing currently in its legislation on abortion by adopting a law that abrogates Article 262 of the Criminal Code of1835,” the resolution read. However, it has been kept secret and hasn’t been presented to the Parliament for legislative action. (Le Nouvel Observateur 9/20/14; AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/25/14, 9/27/14)
*4. Nicaragua: Contra-Drug Series Was CIA “Nightmare”
On Sept. 18 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a number of classified articles from its in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, including an article about “Dark Alliance,” a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News that linked the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s. Other US media, notably the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, harshly criticized the series’ author, investigative reporter Gary Webb, noting, and often exaggerating, flaws in his reporting. Webb lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again; he was found dead on Dec. 10, 2004 in an apparent suicide [see Update #777].
The CIA journal article, by a Directorate of Intelligence staffer named Nicholas Dujmovic, described the initial public reaction to the series as a “nightmare” and “a genuine public relations crisis.” Although the contras’ links to cocaine trafficking had been reported previously, Webb’s series had more effect, in part because it connected the contras to the explosion of crack use in African-American communities. It was also one of the first major stories to gain traction through circulation over the internet. Dujmovic attributed the popularity of “Dark Alliance” to “societal shortcomings.” “We live in somewhat coarse and emotional times-–when large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community,” he complained.
The CIA’s response largely relied on “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” Dujmovic wrote. The agency managed to discourage “one major news affiliate” from covering the story, and in another case it helped out a reporter by making “a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.” But to a large extent the mainstream media did the job on Webb without prompting from the CIA. The Los Angeles Times, for example, assembled a group of 17 reporters in what one member called the “get Gary Webb team.” The group “put [Webb’s series] under a microscope,” another of the reporters, Jesse Katz, said in a 2013 radio interview. “And we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.” The result of the media attack was a “success,” according to Dujmovic, although only “in relative terms.” (The Intercept 9/25/14)
The story has never completely disappeared from public consciousness, however. A 1997 report by the CIA’s then-inspector general, Frederick Hitz, confirmed the contras’ link to drug trafficking, and a new story about contra drug dealing appeared in October 2013 in both the rightwing US-based Fox television network and the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso [see Update #1198]. A feature film about Gary Webb, “Kill the Messenger,” is scheduled for release on Oct. 10.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, US/immigration
Global Drug Report: Don't Just Decriminalize, Demilitarize (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5063-global-drug-report-dont-just-decriminalize-demilitarize
REDD: A controversial mechanism (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/77477
Biodiversity Offsetting Advances in Latin America Amid Controversy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5056-biodiversity-offsetting-advances-in-latin-america-amid-controversy
Until the Rulers Obey: Learning from Latin America’s Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5060-until-the-rulers-obey-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
How one Latin American peace group has persevered over 40 years
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/40-years-serpaj-continues-peace-work-throughout-latin-america/
Trucks Set on Fire in Mapuche Conflict Zone, Chile
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trucks-Set-on-Fire-in-Mapuche-Conflict-Zone-Chile-20140928-0002.html
What is at stake in Brazil
http://alainet.org/active/77401
An indigenous nation in the industrialized heart of South America (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12904
Police Violence and Forced Evictions in São Paulo: An Interview with Benedito “Dito” Barbosa (Brazil)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/police-violence-and-forced-evictions-in-sao-paulo-an-interview-with-benedito-dito-barbosa
Washington Snubs Bolivia on Drug Policy Reform, Again
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5061-washington-snubs-bolivia-on-drug-policy-reform-again
Peru: rural mayor killed in jungle unrest
http://ww4report.com/node/13561
Peru: Newmont behind water authority shake-up?
http://ww4report.com/node/13562
Peru: massacre victims exhumed in Ayacucho
http://ww4report.com/node/13569
Peru: record coke bust points to Mexican cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/13566
Colombia's indigenous communities at risk: report
http://ww4report.com/node/13572
Colombia's Ecopetrol to process fracking licenses
http://ww4report.com/node/13568
Venezuela’s Maduro Responds to Scathing US Editorials and Blames Capitalism for ‘Environment Collapse’
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10928
When A Cement Factory’s Progress Drive Turns Deadly (Guatemala)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/9/26/when-cement-factorys-progress-drive-turns-deadly
El Salvador: Total Ban on Abortion is Killing Women and Girls and Condemning Others to Decades Behind Bars
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5063-global-drug-report-dont-just-decriminalize-demilitarize
Mexico Police Kill 2 Students During Protest, 25 Missing
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexico-Police-Kill-2-Students-During-Protest-25-Missing-20140928-0013.html
Sonora Spill adds to the Social and Environmental Consequences of Free-Market Mining in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5066-sonora-spill-adds-to-the-social-and-environmental-consequences-of-free-market-mining-in-mexico
Memorial Planned for Famed Border Writer (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/memorial-planned-for-famed-border-writer/
Climate Ironies Expose the Vulnerable Borderlands (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/climate-ironies-expose-the-vulnerable-borderlands/
Bring on the Casinos-Tax Free! (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/bring-on-the-casinos-tax-free/
ISIS to attack US through Mexico —not!
http://ww4report.com/node/13579
Mexico: protests for imprisoned vigilante leader
http://ww4report.com/node/13578
The Growing Divide Between Democrats and Latino Voters (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/9/29/growing-divide-between-democrats-and-latino-voters
Expanding Insecurity (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/9/24/expanding-insecurity
DHS Argues It Has Evidence That Locking Up Immigrant Families Deters Migration. One Problem: It’s So Wrong. (US/immigration)
https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/dhs-argues-it-has-evidence-locking-immigrant-families-deters-migration-one
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: Police Kill Guerrero Students, Again
2. Guatemala: Police Occupy Town After Violence
3. Haiti: Women Protest 1835 Abortion Law
4. Nicaragua: Contra-Drug Series Was CIA “Nightmare”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Police Kill Guerrero Students, Again
The Attorney General’s Office of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero announced on Sept. 28 that 22 agents from the Iguala de la Independencia municipal preventive police had been detained and removed to Acapulco in connection with a violent outbreak the night of Sept. 26-27 that left six dead and 17 injured. At least two of those killed were students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the town of Ayotzinapa, and as of Sept. 27 some 25 of the students were still missing. Two students from the same school were killed in an assault by state and federal police during a protest on Dec. 12, 2011; Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero eventually had to apologize publicly for the killings after the federal government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued a recommendation for an apology and for compensation to the victims’ families [see Update #1153].
According to the authorities, the violence in Iguala began late on Sept. 26 when a group of students from the teachers’ college commandeered three buses to take them back to Ayotzinapa, about 125 kilometers away, after a visit to the city. Police agents responded by shooting at the buses, killing two students. Later that night, unidentified gunmen attacked a bus on the federal Iguala-Chilpancingo highway as it was taking a Chilpancingo soccer team, the Avispones (“Hornets”), home after a match with an Iguala team. A teenage player, David Josué García Evangelista, was killed, along with a passenger, Blanca Montiel Sánchez; the bus driver was wounded and died afterwards from his injuries. The military also found a man’s body at another location on the same highway; the victim still hadn’t been identified as of Sept. 28. It wasn’t clear whether he was a student, but the daily La Jornada suggested that the night’s attacks were “against anyone who looked like a student.”
As the violence was beginning on Sept. 27, Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez told a reporter that “apparently someone hired [the Ayotzinapa students] to come and make trouble.” The mayor’s wife, Municipal Family Development System president María de los Angeles Pineda Villa, was scheduled to deliver a report in a public plaza that night, although there was also a dance with a tropical music group, Luz Roja de San Marcos, at the plaza. Mayor Abarca Velázquez, a business owner and a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is reportedly planning to have his wife replace him in city hall if he wins a seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies next year. The students said they simply came to Iguala to do fundraising in the streets, and they denied that they seized the buses by force. “There was some discussion with the bus drivers; they agreed to do us a favor,” Pedro David García López, a representative of the Ayotzinapa Student Executive Committee, told reporters on Sept. 27. “There wasn’t a kidnapping or a threat against a driver…. The buses had already let out their passengers.”
On Sept. 27 the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), an organization of dissident local members of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), condemned the police attack and announced that the group’s campaign against the federal government’s “education reform” program [see Update #1174] would now include a demand for punishment of the people responsible for the Iguala killings. (CNN México 9/27/14, some from Notimex; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/28/14, 9/28/14; Informador (Mexico) 9/28/14)
*2. Guatemala: Police Occupy Town After Violence
On Sept. 22 Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina declared a 30-day state of emergency in San Juan Sacatepéquez municipality in response to the deaths of at least eight indigenous Kaqchikel in a confrontation the night of Sept. 19-20 in the municipality’s Pajoques community [see Update #1234]. Some 600 police agents were sent to the municipality; according to one report they were backed up by 1,000 soldiers. Under the state of emergency the police are free to break up any demonstration or public meeting held without government authorization. On Sept. 23 the police arrested five community members, charging them with murder, attempted murder, arson and illegal meetings and protests; there are warrants for several dozen other community members.
There is little agreement on what happened the night of Sept. 19-20, even on the number of deaths: press reports range from eight to 11. The confrontation was between supporters and opponents of two construction projects, a huge cement factory in the municipality and a section of a beltway around Guatemala City, and the two sides gave radically different accounts. Construction supporters—generally residents who have been hired by the cement factory’s owners or have sold land for one or both of the construction projects—claim that the resistance activists are thieves and rapists who regularly harass and rob other community members.
Opponents of the construction charge that the incident started when 10 armed men from the factory entered Pajoques and fired on opponents, killing one and wounding two others. Community members say they called the national police soon after the shooting began but the police never arrived. All five of those arrested on Sept. 23 appear to belong to the resistance. Two claimed they had solid alibis. Celestino Turuy Pajoj, the director of a local school, said he was at a private university taking a law course, while José Dolores Pajoj Pirir said he was at a hospital with one of his sons at the time of the killings he is charged with. Two of his sons were shot at the beginning of the confrontation; one died and the other was hospitalized with injuries.
The Guatemalan firm Productos Mineros Limited, a subsidiary of Cementos Progreso, is the principal owner of the cement factory, holding 80% of the shares; the remaining 20% are held by the Swiss multinational cement company Holcim Ltd. Cementos Progreso is controlled by Guatemala’s rightwing Novella family, which has contracts for millions of dollars worth of development projects arranged by President Pérez Molina and his Patriot Party (PP), according to a Sept. 22 report by the Guatemalan Independent Media Center. Cementos Progreso made large contributions to Pérez Molina’s campaign in the 2011 presidential election. (Latin American Herald Tribune 9/23/14 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 9/24/14, 9/27/14 from EFE; TeleSUR 9/25/14; NACLA 9/26/14)
*3. Haiti: Women Protest 1835 Abortion Law
Some 30 Haitian women held a protest in front of the Ministry for the Feminine Condition and Women’s Rights (MCFDF) in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 26 to demand the decriminalization of abortion. Under Article 262 of Haiti’s Criminal Code, in effect since 1835, the sentence for a woman having an abortion and for anyone who helps her is life in prison. The law is apparently never enforced, but because of it all abortions in Haiti are clandestine and unregulated. The country has the highest rate of maternal deaths in the Americas, with 530 deaths for each 100,000 births; 100 of these deaths follow abortions. In a 2012 survey of 352 women who had abortions since 2007, 40% reported having complications. “Criminalization isn’t a solution,” the protesters, mostly young women, chanted. “We want to be educated sexually to be able to decide.” The demonstration was sponsored by a number of women’s rights organizations, including the Initiative for an Equitable Development in Haiti (Ideh), Kay Fanm (“Women’s House”) and Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA).
The Sept. 26 protest was in observance of the annual Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion, which is officially observed two days later on Sept. 28, but the issue had gained additional attention in Haiti because of a Sept. 20 article in the French newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur. According to the article, in May 2013 a group of doctors, feminists and religious leaders adopted a resolution for decriminalization after a colloquium on abortion organized by Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP). “Haiti must remove the vagueness existing currently in its legislation on abortion by adopting a law that abrogates Article 262 of the Criminal Code of1835,” the resolution read. However, it has been kept secret and hasn’t been presented to the Parliament for legislative action. (Le Nouvel Observateur 9/20/14; AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/25/14, 9/27/14)
*4. Nicaragua: Contra-Drug Series Was CIA “Nightmare”
On Sept. 18 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a number of classified articles from its in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, including an article about “Dark Alliance,” a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News that linked the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s. Other US media, notably the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, harshly criticized the series’ author, investigative reporter Gary Webb, noting, and often exaggerating, flaws in his reporting. Webb lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again; he was found dead on Dec. 10, 2004 in an apparent suicide [see Update #777].
The CIA journal article, by a Directorate of Intelligence staffer named Nicholas Dujmovic, described the initial public reaction to the series as a “nightmare” and “a genuine public relations crisis.” Although the contras’ links to cocaine trafficking had been reported previously, Webb’s series had more effect, in part because it connected the contras to the explosion of crack use in African-American communities. It was also one of the first major stories to gain traction through circulation over the internet. Dujmovic attributed the popularity of “Dark Alliance” to “societal shortcomings.” “We live in somewhat coarse and emotional times-–when large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community,” he complained.
The CIA’s response largely relied on “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” Dujmovic wrote. The agency managed to discourage “one major news affiliate” from covering the story, and in another case it helped out a reporter by making “a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.” But to a large extent the mainstream media did the job on Webb without prompting from the CIA. The Los Angeles Times, for example, assembled a group of 17 reporters in what one member called the “get Gary Webb team.” The group “put [Webb’s series] under a microscope,” another of the reporters, Jesse Katz, said in a 2013 radio interview. “And we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.” The result of the media attack was a “success,” according to Dujmovic, although only “in relative terms.” (The Intercept 9/25/14)
The story has never completely disappeared from public consciousness, however. A 1997 report by the CIA’s then-inspector general, Frederick Hitz, confirmed the contras’ link to drug trafficking, and a new story about contra drug dealing appeared in October 2013 in both the rightwing US-based Fox television network and the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso [see Update #1198]. A feature film about Gary Webb, “Kill the Messenger,” is scheduled for release on Oct. 10.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, US/immigration
Global Drug Report: Don't Just Decriminalize, Demilitarize (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5063-global-drug-report-dont-just-decriminalize-demilitarize
REDD: A controversial mechanism (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/77477
Biodiversity Offsetting Advances in Latin America Amid Controversy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5056-biodiversity-offsetting-advances-in-latin-america-amid-controversy
Until the Rulers Obey: Learning from Latin America’s Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5060-until-the-rulers-obey-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
How one Latin American peace group has persevered over 40 years
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/40-years-serpaj-continues-peace-work-throughout-latin-america/
Trucks Set on Fire in Mapuche Conflict Zone, Chile
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trucks-Set-on-Fire-in-Mapuche-Conflict-Zone-Chile-20140928-0002.html
What is at stake in Brazil
http://alainet.org/active/77401
An indigenous nation in the industrialized heart of South America (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12904
Police Violence and Forced Evictions in São Paulo: An Interview with Benedito “Dito” Barbosa (Brazil)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/police-violence-and-forced-evictions-in-sao-paulo-an-interview-with-benedito-dito-barbosa
Washington Snubs Bolivia on Drug Policy Reform, Again
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5061-washington-snubs-bolivia-on-drug-policy-reform-again
Peru: rural mayor killed in jungle unrest
http://ww4report.com/node/13561
Peru: Newmont behind water authority shake-up?
http://ww4report.com/node/13562
Peru: massacre victims exhumed in Ayacucho
http://ww4report.com/node/13569
Peru: record coke bust points to Mexican cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/13566
Colombia's indigenous communities at risk: report
http://ww4report.com/node/13572
Colombia's Ecopetrol to process fracking licenses
http://ww4report.com/node/13568
Venezuela’s Maduro Responds to Scathing US Editorials and Blames Capitalism for ‘Environment Collapse’
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10928
When A Cement Factory’s Progress Drive Turns Deadly (Guatemala)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/9/26/when-cement-factorys-progress-drive-turns-deadly
El Salvador: Total Ban on Abortion is Killing Women and Girls and Condemning Others to Decades Behind Bars
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5063-global-drug-report-dont-just-decriminalize-demilitarize
Mexico Police Kill 2 Students During Protest, 25 Missing
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexico-Police-Kill-2-Students-During-Protest-25-Missing-20140928-0013.html
Sonora Spill adds to the Social and Environmental Consequences of Free-Market Mining in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5066-sonora-spill-adds-to-the-social-and-environmental-consequences-of-free-market-mining-in-mexico
Memorial Planned for Famed Border Writer (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/memorial-planned-for-famed-border-writer/
Climate Ironies Expose the Vulnerable Borderlands (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/climate-ironies-expose-the-vulnerable-borderlands/
Bring on the Casinos-Tax Free! (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/bring-on-the-casinos-tax-free/
ISIS to attack US through Mexico —not!
http://ww4report.com/node/13579
Mexico: protests for imprisoned vigilante leader
http://ww4report.com/node/13578
The Growing Divide Between Democrats and Latino Voters (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/9/29/growing-divide-between-democrats-and-latino-voters
Expanding Insecurity (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/9/24/expanding-insecurity
DHS Argues It Has Evidence That Locking Up Immigrant Families Deters Migration. One Problem: It’s So Wrong. (US/immigration)
https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/dhs-argues-it-has-evidence-locking-immigrant-families-deters-migration-one
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, July 29, 2014
WNU #1228: Latin Americans Protest Attack on Gaza
Issue #1228, July 27, 2014
1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
An Israeli military offensive on the Palestinian territory of Gaza starting on July 8 has brought widespread condemnation from governments and activists in Latin America. The response to the current military action, which is codenamed “Operation Protective Edge,” follows a pattern set during a similar December 2008-January 2009 Israeli offensive in Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” when leftist groups and people of Arab descent mounted protests and leftist and center-left governments issued statements sharply criticizing the Israeli government [see Update #973].
In Argentina, dozens of people demonstrated on July 25 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires to demand that the left-leaning government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner break off relations with Israel to repudiate “the brutal and criminal attack against the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Argentine Committee of Solidarity With the Palestinian People and various left parties. While the government hasn’t broken relations with Israel, at a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council Argentine representative Maria Cristina Perceval accused Israel of “indiscriminate abuse of militarism” and “disproportionate use of force.” (Terra Mexico 7/25/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Some 5,000 Chileans marched to the Israeli embassy in Santiago on July 19 to protest the military operation. Some demonstrators glued pictures of children who have died in the attacks to the walls of the building; the marchers then proceeded to the US embassy to protest US support for the Israeli operation. The day before, on July 18, representatives of the Mapuche indigenous group joined some 200 protesters in Temuco, the capital of the southern region of Araucanía, in a march calling for “an end to the massacre of the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Arab Union for Palestine in Temuco and included Romina Tuma, the regional housing secretary, who charged that the Israelis are committing genocide; President Michelle Bachelet supports the Palestinian people, Tuma added. Bachelet’s center-left government has in fact suspended free trade agreement negotiations with Israel to protest the Israeli operation, and the Foreign Ministry has announced plans for aid for Palestinian victims in Gaza, according to the Santiago Times. Chile has a population of about 300,0000 people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry. (AFP 7/21/14 via Times of Israel; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/18/14; Mapu Express 7/18/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Uruguay also condemned Israel’s military attacks. A government statement said the operation in Gaza “caused dozens of civilian deaths and injuries, including women and children, in a disproportionate response to the launch of rockets against the Israeli territory on the part of armed Palestinian groups.” The Palestinian organization Hamas came in for criticism as well, because of its “repeated [rocket] launchings that put the civilian population in central and southern Israel at risk.” (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Late on July 24 Brazil’s center-left government announced its condemnation of the “disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted.” Foreign Ministry officials said that they had recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel for consultations, and that Brazil had voted in favor of a United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) decision to send a team to investigate accusations of war crimes in the region. Israeli officials appeared to be infuriated by the snub from a country which has bought and leased billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and fighter planes from Israel in the last 15 years. “Such steps do not contribute to promote calm and stability in the region,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor announced on July 25. “Rather, they provide tailwind to terrorism, and naturally affect Brazil’s capacity to wield influence.” He called Brazil “a diplomatic dwarf” and sneered at the Brazilian soccer team for losing a World Cup match to Germany 7-1 on July 8. (News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP; Wall Street Journal online 7/24/14; Haaretz (Israel) 7/25/14; Washington Post 7/25/14)
Bolivian president Evo Morales has petitioned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to consider opening a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” Morales’ center-left government restricted diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 because of the earlier operation against Gaza. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Hundreds of Peruvians, many of them of Palestinian descent, protested at the Israeli embassy in Lima on July 25, calling for their own government to recall its ambassador to Israel. “Countries that don’t withdraw their ambassadors are becoming somewhat complicit in this massacre,” one of the protesters told the Canal N television channel. A week earlier, the government had expressed its great concern about the violence, condemning both the Israeli attack and the launching of rockets against Israel by Hamas. (Terra 7/25/14 from EFE)
Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced on July 17 that the center-left government of President Rafael Correa was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations “because of violence unleashed and deaths produced in the Gaza Strip.” “We condemn the Israeli military incursion in Palestinian territory; we demand an end to operations and indiscriminate attacks on a civilian population,” Patiño said. (El Universo (Quito) 7/17/14 from AFP) In related news, a July 12-16 meeting in Quito of the Women’s Collective of the South American section of the international small-scale farmers’ organization Vía Campesina denounced the Israeli operation as a “genocidal invasion” and demanded “respect for the principle of sovereignty and the right of Palestinian campesinas and campesinos to live, produce and remain in their land and territory.” The collective accused Israel of “colonial practices.” (Vía Campesina 7/22/14)
In Venezuela hundreds of protesters, including legislative deputies, demonstrated in Caracas on July 14 against the Israeli operation. The leftist government of then-president Hugo Chávez Frías broke off ties with Israel in 2009 to protest Operation Cast Lead. The government of current president Nicolás Maduro released a statement on July 19 charging that the latest attacks “initiated a higher phase of [Israel’s] policy of genocide and extermination with the ground invasion of Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women, girls and boys.” The government “also rejects the cynical campaigns trying to condemn both parties equally, when it is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.” (HispanTV (Iran) 7/14/14; Chicago Tribune 7/19/14 from Reuters)
In Nicaragua hundreds of people marched to the UN office in Managua on July 14 to demand an end to the Israeli offensive, chanting: “No to genocide in Gaza and all of Palestine,” “Solidarity between the peoples” and “Long live free Palestine.” The marchers included the Palestinian ambassador to Nicaragua, Mohamed L. Saadat, who called for a “Palestine free of violence.” Along with Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay, Nicaragua hadn’t made an official statement on the conflict as of July 21. (Terra 7/14/14 from EFE; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
About 50 students and other activists took to the streets in El Salvador on July 14 to protest the Israeli offensive. “Palestine is a free state, stop Israel’s terrorism” and “I’m no friend of Israel” were among the slogans the protesters chanted outside the Israeli embassy. “We want to show our indignation over the suffering of the Palestinian people, and so we demand that Israel end this genocide in the Gaza Strip,” Amalia Pineda, a representative of the Palestine Solidarity Network, told journalists. The center-left government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has condemned what it called “Israel’s increased armed aggression against the Gaza Strip,” citing the “loss of human lives, hundreds of injuries and the flight of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, besides serious material damage.” The UN’s legitimate self-defense clause “does not justify the use of disproportionate military force against another state, much less against its civilian population,” the government said. (Noticias 7/14/14; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
In Mexico, indigenous Mayans who have converted to Islam held their first protest ever in the southeastern state of Chiapas. About 60 of the area’s 600 or 700 Tzotzil Muslims marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas on July 24 to demand that “the genocide end.” “We are few but we can’t be silent before the massacre against the people of Palestine,” Hibrahim Checheb, a representative of the Al-Kauz mosque, told a reporter. The group of Tzotziles, mostly from the nearby municipality of San Juan Chamula, converted about 18 years earlier. (La Jornada 7/24/14) Activists in Mexico City held a protest on July 11 outside the Foreign Relations Secretariat. About 300 people participated in the action, whose sponsors included the Solidarity With Palestine Coordinating Committee (Corsopal). The organizers expelled five members of a group called “Black Eagles” from the protest; they were carrying signs with anti-Semitic slogans. (Milenio (Mexico) 7/11/14)
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry charged Israel with “us[ing] its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with a disproportionate use of force which causes civilian casualties and enormous material damage.” The country’s Communist government broke off diplomatic ties with Israel in 1973 and has provided Palestinian groups with financial and diplomatic support over the years. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
*2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
US president Barack Obama hosted a meeting in Washington, DC, on July 25 with three Central American presidents—Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras--to discuss the recent increase in unauthorized immigration to the US by unaccompanied minors [see Update #1227]. About 57,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from the three Central American presidents’ countries, were detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through June 2014. President Obama called for joint work to discourage further child migration; the US would do its part by making it clear that the minors would be repatriated unless they could convince US officials they were in danger if they returned, Obama said. The left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada headlined its coverage with the sentence: “The US has great compassion for child migrants; they’ll be deported: Obama.”
The Obama administration had been floating a proposal for setting up an office in Honduras, and possibly in El Salvador and Guatemala, to process youths and families seeking refugee status. But Obama played the idea down after the summit. “There may be some narrow circumstances in which there is humanitarian or refugee status that a family might be eligible for,” he said. “But I think it’s important to recognize that that would not necessarily accommodate a large number of additional migrants.” (La Jornada 7/26/14 from correspondent; Associated Press 7/26/14 via CBS (Washington, DC))
The Central American presidents all emphasized the importance of crime and poverty as forces motivating migration, but rightwing presidents Pérez and Hernández seemed mostly interested in getting more US military aid. The US-funded “drug war” programs in Colombia and Mexico, Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, “were successful for the US and those two countries in the struggle against narco trafficking, but they gave us a tremendous problem,” Hernández said the day before the summit, referring to the relocation of some drug smuggling activities into Central America. “So we need to have our own plan.” (LJ 7/25/14 from AFP)
While media coverage stressed pressure on Obama from anti-immigrant conservatives, human rights groups and religious organizations were pressing him from the left. More than 40 organizations signed on to an open letter started by the DC-based Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) calling for the US to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections.” “[M]ore border security will not help,” according to the open letter, which was released on July 24; the US must “face the root causes of violence at the community level.” Adam Isacson, WOLA’s senior associate for regional security policy, dismissed the calls for more military assistance to Central America. “What we’d like to see is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told the Inter Press Service (IPS): “getting police to respect people,” “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities…combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”
Also on July 24, two organizations, the New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and the DC-based Detention Watch Network, released a statement deploring conditions at the Artesia Family Detention Facility in New Mexico. After interviewing immigrant families at the detention center, 22 organizations concluded that “[t]he Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families--mothers, babies, and children--back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.” (IPS 7/25/14 via Upside Down World)
*3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
The US advocacy group SOA Watch reported on July 22 that the police in Columbus, Georgia, are trying to impose unacceptable restrictions on the annual vigil the group has held there every November since 1990 to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) [see Update #1200]. According to SOA Watch, Columbus police chief Ricky Boren wants to limit the vigil to 200 people on sidewalks outside the US Army’s Fort Benning, where WHINSEC is based. In previous years thousands of people have demonstrated at a gate leading to the base. Boren is also seeking to deny a permit for the group to post its stage and sound system at the usual spot.
“This year, more than any other, we are called to demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Latin America,” Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest who founded SOA Watch, said in response to the restrictions. “When our military training continues to target communities, forcing the unaccompanied migration of thousands of refugee children, we must speak out.” Noting that it won in federal courts in 2001 and 2002 against government efforts to restrict the vigils, SOA Watch has started a petition “calling on the Columbus police department to reverse its decision and to uphold the constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.” The petition can be accessed at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16129. (SOA Watch press release 7/22/14; National Catholic Reporter 7/22/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The BRICS Bank: part of a new financial architecture (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/75589
Land Rights in Latin America: Where are the Voices of Indigenous Women?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4955-land-rights-in-latin-america-where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-women
Radical Cities – Latin America's revolutionary housing solutions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4949-radical-cities--latin-americas-revolutionary-housing-solutions
How Have Latin America’s Political Leaders Responded to Israel’s Siege on Gaza?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-have-latin-americas-political-leaders-responded-to-israels-siege-on-gaza
Challenging Myths About Chapare Coca Paste Production (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/22/challenging-myths-about-chapare-coca-paste-production
Bolivia’s Military and Police Protests: The “Children of Evo” Speak Out
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/7/25/bolivia%E2%80%99s-military-and-police-protests-%E2%80%9Cchildren-evo%E2%80%9D-speak-out
Amazon Oil Spill Has Killed Tons of Fish, Sickened Native People (Peru)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/amazon-oil-spill-killed-tons-fish-sickened-native-people-24886/
Peru Passes a Packet of Neoliberal Reforms, Erodes Environmental Protections and Labor Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/4956-peru-passes-a-packet-of-neoliberal-reforms-erodes-environmental-protections-and-labor-rights
Peru and Colombia: Community self-defense against megaminería
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12676
Is Water Still a Human Right in Ecuador?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4953-is-water-still-a-human-right-in-ecuador
Global Climate Change in Rural Colombia Is About More Than Just the Climate
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/23/global-climate-change-rural-colombia-about-more-just-climate
Chavista Debate More than Pragmatists vs Radicals (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10798
Child Migrants Are Refugees the U.S. Helped Create (Central America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/21/child-migrants-are-refugees-us-helped-create
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants
U.S., Regional Leaders Convene over Migration Crisis (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4957-us-regional-leaders-convene-over-migration-crisis
Violence, Main Motor of Child Migration in El Salvador
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12671
Hondurans don’t need yet another neoliberal boondoggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4948-hondurans-dont-need-yet-another-neoliberal-boondoggle
Guatemala: Opposition to Mining, the New Threat to National Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4952-guatemala-opposition-to-mining-the-new-threat-to-national-security
The Morena Party Obtains Legal Status, Prepares for 2015 Elections; What Will Morena Mean for Mexico’s Political Future?
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1738
Mexico Arrests Self-defense Force Leader Mireles and Others
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1727
Johnson Controls Workers in Reynosa Demand Their Rights (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1739
Mexican Fracking Foes Lose a Big Round
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-fracking-foes-lose-a-big-round/
Forgotten Refugees: Mexico’s Displacement Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12643
Migrant Shelter Faces Police Abuses on the Border (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/25/migrant-shelter-faces-police-abuses-border
Secretary General in Haiti for Cholera “Photo-op” as Transparency Questions Continue to Dog the UN
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/secretary-general-in-haiti-for-cholera-photo-op-as-transparency-questions-continue-to-dog-the-un
“Assessing Progress in Haiti Act” Passed by Congress
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/assessing-progress-in-haiti-act-passed-by-congress
Blowback on the Border (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12614
Massive Rights Violations Charged at New Mexico Detention Facility (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/massive-rights-violations-charged-at-new-mexico-detention-facility/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
An Israeli military offensive on the Palestinian territory of Gaza starting on July 8 has brought widespread condemnation from governments and activists in Latin America. The response to the current military action, which is codenamed “Operation Protective Edge,” follows a pattern set during a similar December 2008-January 2009 Israeli offensive in Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” when leftist groups and people of Arab descent mounted protests and leftist and center-left governments issued statements sharply criticizing the Israeli government [see Update #973].
In Argentina, dozens of people demonstrated on July 25 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires to demand that the left-leaning government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner break off relations with Israel to repudiate “the brutal and criminal attack against the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Argentine Committee of Solidarity With the Palestinian People and various left parties. While the government hasn’t broken relations with Israel, at a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council Argentine representative Maria Cristina Perceval accused Israel of “indiscriminate abuse of militarism” and “disproportionate use of force.” (Terra Mexico 7/25/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Some 5,000 Chileans marched to the Israeli embassy in Santiago on July 19 to protest the military operation. Some demonstrators glued pictures of children who have died in the attacks to the walls of the building; the marchers then proceeded to the US embassy to protest US support for the Israeli operation. The day before, on July 18, representatives of the Mapuche indigenous group joined some 200 protesters in Temuco, the capital of the southern region of Araucanía, in a march calling for “an end to the massacre of the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Arab Union for Palestine in Temuco and included Romina Tuma, the regional housing secretary, who charged that the Israelis are committing genocide; President Michelle Bachelet supports the Palestinian people, Tuma added. Bachelet’s center-left government has in fact suspended free trade agreement negotiations with Israel to protest the Israeli operation, and the Foreign Ministry has announced plans for aid for Palestinian victims in Gaza, according to the Santiago Times. Chile has a population of about 300,0000 people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry. (AFP 7/21/14 via Times of Israel; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/18/14; Mapu Express 7/18/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Uruguay also condemned Israel’s military attacks. A government statement said the operation in Gaza “caused dozens of civilian deaths and injuries, including women and children, in a disproportionate response to the launch of rockets against the Israeli territory on the part of armed Palestinian groups.” The Palestinian organization Hamas came in for criticism as well, because of its “repeated [rocket] launchings that put the civilian population in central and southern Israel at risk.” (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Late on July 24 Brazil’s center-left government announced its condemnation of the “disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted.” Foreign Ministry officials said that they had recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel for consultations, and that Brazil had voted in favor of a United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) decision to send a team to investigate accusations of war crimes in the region. Israeli officials appeared to be infuriated by the snub from a country which has bought and leased billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and fighter planes from Israel in the last 15 years. “Such steps do not contribute to promote calm and stability in the region,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor announced on July 25. “Rather, they provide tailwind to terrorism, and naturally affect Brazil’s capacity to wield influence.” He called Brazil “a diplomatic dwarf” and sneered at the Brazilian soccer team for losing a World Cup match to Germany 7-1 on July 8. (News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP; Wall Street Journal online 7/24/14; Haaretz (Israel) 7/25/14; Washington Post 7/25/14)
Bolivian president Evo Morales has petitioned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to consider opening a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” Morales’ center-left government restricted diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 because of the earlier operation against Gaza. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Hundreds of Peruvians, many of them of Palestinian descent, protested at the Israeli embassy in Lima on July 25, calling for their own government to recall its ambassador to Israel. “Countries that don’t withdraw their ambassadors are becoming somewhat complicit in this massacre,” one of the protesters told the Canal N television channel. A week earlier, the government had expressed its great concern about the violence, condemning both the Israeli attack and the launching of rockets against Israel by Hamas. (Terra 7/25/14 from EFE)
Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced on July 17 that the center-left government of President Rafael Correa was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations “because of violence unleashed and deaths produced in the Gaza Strip.” “We condemn the Israeli military incursion in Palestinian territory; we demand an end to operations and indiscriminate attacks on a civilian population,” Patiño said. (El Universo (Quito) 7/17/14 from AFP) In related news, a July 12-16 meeting in Quito of the Women’s Collective of the South American section of the international small-scale farmers’ organization Vía Campesina denounced the Israeli operation as a “genocidal invasion” and demanded “respect for the principle of sovereignty and the right of Palestinian campesinas and campesinos to live, produce and remain in their land and territory.” The collective accused Israel of “colonial practices.” (Vía Campesina 7/22/14)
In Venezuela hundreds of protesters, including legislative deputies, demonstrated in Caracas on July 14 against the Israeli operation. The leftist government of then-president Hugo Chávez Frías broke off ties with Israel in 2009 to protest Operation Cast Lead. The government of current president Nicolás Maduro released a statement on July 19 charging that the latest attacks “initiated a higher phase of [Israel’s] policy of genocide and extermination with the ground invasion of Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women, girls and boys.” The government “also rejects the cynical campaigns trying to condemn both parties equally, when it is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.” (HispanTV (Iran) 7/14/14; Chicago Tribune 7/19/14 from Reuters)
In Nicaragua hundreds of people marched to the UN office in Managua on July 14 to demand an end to the Israeli offensive, chanting: “No to genocide in Gaza and all of Palestine,” “Solidarity between the peoples” and “Long live free Palestine.” The marchers included the Palestinian ambassador to Nicaragua, Mohamed L. Saadat, who called for a “Palestine free of violence.” Along with Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay, Nicaragua hadn’t made an official statement on the conflict as of July 21. (Terra 7/14/14 from EFE; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
About 50 students and other activists took to the streets in El Salvador on July 14 to protest the Israeli offensive. “Palestine is a free state, stop Israel’s terrorism” and “I’m no friend of Israel” were among the slogans the protesters chanted outside the Israeli embassy. “We want to show our indignation over the suffering of the Palestinian people, and so we demand that Israel end this genocide in the Gaza Strip,” Amalia Pineda, a representative of the Palestine Solidarity Network, told journalists. The center-left government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has condemned what it called “Israel’s increased armed aggression against the Gaza Strip,” citing the “loss of human lives, hundreds of injuries and the flight of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, besides serious material damage.” The UN’s legitimate self-defense clause “does not justify the use of disproportionate military force against another state, much less against its civilian population,” the government said. (Noticias 7/14/14; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
In Mexico, indigenous Mayans who have converted to Islam held their first protest ever in the southeastern state of Chiapas. About 60 of the area’s 600 or 700 Tzotzil Muslims marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas on July 24 to demand that “the genocide end.” “We are few but we can’t be silent before the massacre against the people of Palestine,” Hibrahim Checheb, a representative of the Al-Kauz mosque, told a reporter. The group of Tzotziles, mostly from the nearby municipality of San Juan Chamula, converted about 18 years earlier. (La Jornada 7/24/14) Activists in Mexico City held a protest on July 11 outside the Foreign Relations Secretariat. About 300 people participated in the action, whose sponsors included the Solidarity With Palestine Coordinating Committee (Corsopal). The organizers expelled five members of a group called “Black Eagles” from the protest; they were carrying signs with anti-Semitic slogans. (Milenio (Mexico) 7/11/14)
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry charged Israel with “us[ing] its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with a disproportionate use of force which causes civilian casualties and enormous material damage.” The country’s Communist government broke off diplomatic ties with Israel in 1973 and has provided Palestinian groups with financial and diplomatic support over the years. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
*2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
US president Barack Obama hosted a meeting in Washington, DC, on July 25 with three Central American presidents—Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras--to discuss the recent increase in unauthorized immigration to the US by unaccompanied minors [see Update #1227]. About 57,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from the three Central American presidents’ countries, were detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through June 2014. President Obama called for joint work to discourage further child migration; the US would do its part by making it clear that the minors would be repatriated unless they could convince US officials they were in danger if they returned, Obama said. The left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada headlined its coverage with the sentence: “The US has great compassion for child migrants; they’ll be deported: Obama.”
The Obama administration had been floating a proposal for setting up an office in Honduras, and possibly in El Salvador and Guatemala, to process youths and families seeking refugee status. But Obama played the idea down after the summit. “There may be some narrow circumstances in which there is humanitarian or refugee status that a family might be eligible for,” he said. “But I think it’s important to recognize that that would not necessarily accommodate a large number of additional migrants.” (La Jornada 7/26/14 from correspondent; Associated Press 7/26/14 via CBS (Washington, DC))
The Central American presidents all emphasized the importance of crime and poverty as forces motivating migration, but rightwing presidents Pérez and Hernández seemed mostly interested in getting more US military aid. The US-funded “drug war” programs in Colombia and Mexico, Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, “were successful for the US and those two countries in the struggle against narco trafficking, but they gave us a tremendous problem,” Hernández said the day before the summit, referring to the relocation of some drug smuggling activities into Central America. “So we need to have our own plan.” (LJ 7/25/14 from AFP)
While media coverage stressed pressure on Obama from anti-immigrant conservatives, human rights groups and religious organizations were pressing him from the left. More than 40 organizations signed on to an open letter started by the DC-based Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) calling for the US to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections.” “[M]ore border security will not help,” according to the open letter, which was released on July 24; the US must “face the root causes of violence at the community level.” Adam Isacson, WOLA’s senior associate for regional security policy, dismissed the calls for more military assistance to Central America. “What we’d like to see is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told the Inter Press Service (IPS): “getting police to respect people,” “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities…combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”
Also on July 24, two organizations, the New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and the DC-based Detention Watch Network, released a statement deploring conditions at the Artesia Family Detention Facility in New Mexico. After interviewing immigrant families at the detention center, 22 organizations concluded that “[t]he Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families--mothers, babies, and children--back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.” (IPS 7/25/14 via Upside Down World)
*3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
The US advocacy group SOA Watch reported on July 22 that the police in Columbus, Georgia, are trying to impose unacceptable restrictions on the annual vigil the group has held there every November since 1990 to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) [see Update #1200]. According to SOA Watch, Columbus police chief Ricky Boren wants to limit the vigil to 200 people on sidewalks outside the US Army’s Fort Benning, where WHINSEC is based. In previous years thousands of people have demonstrated at a gate leading to the base. Boren is also seeking to deny a permit for the group to post its stage and sound system at the usual spot.
“This year, more than any other, we are called to demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Latin America,” Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest who founded SOA Watch, said in response to the restrictions. “When our military training continues to target communities, forcing the unaccompanied migration of thousands of refugee children, we must speak out.” Noting that it won in federal courts in 2001 and 2002 against government efforts to restrict the vigils, SOA Watch has started a petition “calling on the Columbus police department to reverse its decision and to uphold the constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.” The petition can be accessed at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16129. (SOA Watch press release 7/22/14; National Catholic Reporter 7/22/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The BRICS Bank: part of a new financial architecture (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/75589
Land Rights in Latin America: Where are the Voices of Indigenous Women?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4955-land-rights-in-latin-america-where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-women
Radical Cities – Latin America's revolutionary housing solutions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4949-radical-cities--latin-americas-revolutionary-housing-solutions
How Have Latin America’s Political Leaders Responded to Israel’s Siege on Gaza?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-have-latin-americas-political-leaders-responded-to-israels-siege-on-gaza
Challenging Myths About Chapare Coca Paste Production (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/22/challenging-myths-about-chapare-coca-paste-production
Bolivia’s Military and Police Protests: The “Children of Evo” Speak Out
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/7/25/bolivia%E2%80%99s-military-and-police-protests-%E2%80%9Cchildren-evo%E2%80%9D-speak-out
Amazon Oil Spill Has Killed Tons of Fish, Sickened Native People (Peru)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/amazon-oil-spill-killed-tons-fish-sickened-native-people-24886/
Peru Passes a Packet of Neoliberal Reforms, Erodes Environmental Protections and Labor Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/4956-peru-passes-a-packet-of-neoliberal-reforms-erodes-environmental-protections-and-labor-rights
Peru and Colombia: Community self-defense against megaminería
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12676
Is Water Still a Human Right in Ecuador?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4953-is-water-still-a-human-right-in-ecuador
Global Climate Change in Rural Colombia Is About More Than Just the Climate
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/23/global-climate-change-rural-colombia-about-more-just-climate
Chavista Debate More than Pragmatists vs Radicals (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10798
Child Migrants Are Refugees the U.S. Helped Create (Central America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/21/child-migrants-are-refugees-us-helped-create
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants
U.S., Regional Leaders Convene over Migration Crisis (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4957-us-regional-leaders-convene-over-migration-crisis
Violence, Main Motor of Child Migration in El Salvador
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12671
Hondurans don’t need yet another neoliberal boondoggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4948-hondurans-dont-need-yet-another-neoliberal-boondoggle
Guatemala: Opposition to Mining, the New Threat to National Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4952-guatemala-opposition-to-mining-the-new-threat-to-national-security
The Morena Party Obtains Legal Status, Prepares for 2015 Elections; What Will Morena Mean for Mexico’s Political Future?
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1738
Mexico Arrests Self-defense Force Leader Mireles and Others
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1727
Johnson Controls Workers in Reynosa Demand Their Rights (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1739
Mexican Fracking Foes Lose a Big Round
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-fracking-foes-lose-a-big-round/
Forgotten Refugees: Mexico’s Displacement Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12643
Migrant Shelter Faces Police Abuses on the Border (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/25/migrant-shelter-faces-police-abuses-border
Secretary General in Haiti for Cholera “Photo-op” as Transparency Questions Continue to Dog the UN
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/secretary-general-in-haiti-for-cholera-photo-op-as-transparency-questions-continue-to-dog-the-un
“Assessing Progress in Haiti Act” Passed by Congress
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/assessing-progress-in-haiti-act-passed-by-congress
Blowback on the Border (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12614
Massive Rights Violations Charged at New Mexico Detention Facility (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/massive-rights-violations-charged-at-new-mexico-detention-facility/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
WNU #1207: Chilean Farmer Wins Monsanto Seed Case
Issue #1207, February 2, 2014
1. Chile: Farmer Wins Monsanto Seed Case
2. Haiti: Teachers Strike as Labor Unrest Grows
3. Nicaragua: Assembly Approves Constitution Changes
4. Guatemala: Tahoe Opens Troubled Silver Mine
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Farmer Wins Monsanto Seed Case
Chilean farmer José Pizarro Montoya received 37 million pesos (about US$66,582) in December from Agrícola Nacional S.A.C. (ANASAC), a Chilean distributor of agricultural products, to settle a suit he brought over the use of genetically modified (GM) corn seed from the Missouri-based Monsanto Company. Pizarro charged that ANASAC violated its contract with him by giving instructions for planting the Monsanto corn that resulted in business losses and eventually ruined him. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce found in Pizarro’s favor, and the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the decision in September. Pizarro is thought to be the first farmer in Chile—possibly the first in Latin America--to win a suit over the use of Monsanto’s GM seeds.
According to Pizarro, a vegetable farmer in Melipilla province in the Greater Santiago Region, ANASAC approached him in 2008 about growing GM corn. He signed a contract and leased 33 hectares for the planting. Everything was free the first year, Pizarro says, but later ANASAC began charging; the company also required him to use their own expensive machinery for planting. Later they gave him planting instructions which left him unable to sell his crop with a profit. Pizarro also charged that the government’s Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG) sided with the company against him. Under the terms of ANASAC’s contracts, farmers are barred from suing the company through regular courts, so Pizarro had to follow the expensive procedure of filing with the Chamber of Commerce. Despite winning the case, Pizarro says he ended up with a significant losses and still owes 90 million pesos (about US$161,955) to the Spanish-owned bank Banco Santander. In an interview in January Pizarro advised consumers: “Don’t eat things with transgenics; look for organics.” (Periodismo Sanador 1/22/14, English translation at Sustainable Pulse 1/23/14; Radio Cooperativa (Chile) 1/30/14)
Asked to comment by Chile’s Radio Cooperativa, José Ignacio Salazar, general manager of Monsanto’s Chilean subsidiary, answered in a brief note: “We wish to clarify that Monsanto was not a party in the suit concerning a farmer in the Melipilla and ANASAC, and so this decision has no relation with our operations in Chile.” ANASAC is Monsanto’s distributor in Chile and Peru; in January 2010 it announced the sale of its seed plant to Monsanto for $19 million. (Veoverde 1/31/14) Monsanto has been the subject of repeated protests in Latin America and the Caribbean [see Updates #1036, 1195, 1204].
*2. Haiti: Teachers Strike as Labor Unrest Grows
Haitian public school teachers started an open-ended strike on Jan. 22 around demands for higher salaries, payment of back pay, access to public credit programs and a regularization of job categories. After Jan. 22-23 talks with the national education minister, Vanneur Pierre, and others, a coalition of teachers’ unions—including the National Confederation of Educators of Haiti (CNEH) and the National Federation of Education and Culture Workers (FENATEC)—agreed to suspend the strike and resume classes on Jan. 27 in exchange for raises ranging from 29% to 57%, depending on the job category, to go into effect in April. Negotiations will continue on other issues.
One union, the National Union of Haitian Teachers (UNNOH), rejected the agreement, which UNNOH coordinator Josué Mérilien denounced as a “plot.” The union is calling for a base pay of 50,000 gourdes (about US$ 1,210) a month. Some teachers stayed off the job in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 27 and 28, and students from the capital’s Toussaint Louverture and Daniel Fignolé high schools took to the streets. In Carrefour, on the southwest outskirts of Port-au-Prince, students from the Henri Christophe high school began a march on Jan. 27 to the National Education and Professional Training Ministry (MENFP) in the center of Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of students and teachers joined the march; one Toussaint Louverture student, Jean Wisler Joseph, was arrested on a vandalism charge. Demonstrations continued on Jan. 28, with unidentified people hurling rocks at school buildings; some car windshields were smashed. There were also demonstrations in Petit-Goâve (West department) and Gonaïves (Artibonite department), where police responded with tear gas to rock-throwing students on Jan. 29. (Haïti Libre 1/25/14; AlterPresse 1/27/14, 1/28/14, 1/29/14)
Acting Port-au-Prince government commissioner Kherson Darius Charles, the chief prosecutor for the capital, brought charges against UNNOH coordindator Mérilien on Jan. 29 for “disturbances of public security, rock throwing and association with wrongdoers.” A hearing was set for Jan. 30 but ended abruptly because of a dispute between Charles and the union leader’s legal team. Mérilien left the courtroom and headed to the nearby Superior Teachers’ College (ENS), part of the State University of Haiti (UEH). Teachers and students joined Mérilien as he walked, turning the event into a solidarity demonstration. (AlterPresse 1/30/14)
In related news, tensions over the minimum wage for the country’s 30,000 garment assembly workers continue. On Jan. 20 managers from the One World Apparel S.A. garment assembly plant in the north of Port-au-Prince failed to attend a scheduled meeting at the local office of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) to discuss the firing of six workers on Jan. 8 [see Update #1204]. The fired workers are all on the executive committee of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), a member union in the Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT), the labor alliance that led militant protests by apparel workers on Dec. 10 and 11 to demand a daily minimum wage of 500 gourdes (about US$12.10). Management claims the six unionists were responsible for acts of vandalism at the plant on Dec. 11.
MAST officials rescheduled the meeting for Jan. 29, apparently without taking any action against the One World Apparel managers for their failure to appear. Jude Pierre, one of the fired workers, said MAST officials seemed to be in complicity with the owners, while the Patriotic Democratic Popular Movement (MPDP), a coalition of 30 groups, called on the ministry to stop being “an instrument of the bosses.” (MPDP statement 1/20/14; AlterPresse 1/27/14)
The capital’s garment assembly companies have now fired at least 35 workers for their participation in the protests, KOSIT spokespeople said at a Jan. 28 press conference. The plant owners say they have a video showing vandalism by the protesters, but the unionists dismissed this as a “set-up” to justify repression of union activities. Meanwhile, there have been no negotiations on the minimum wage for piece-rate workers—the majority of employees in the assembly sector—and the government has yet to act on the recommendation of the tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS) that the minimum wage be set at 225 gourdes (about US$5.47) a day. KOSIT is demanding that the CSS renegotiate the recommendation. KOSIT spokespeople also announced that the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH) has been expelled from the alliance because of what the unionists called the “treason” of CATH spokesperson Fignolé St. Cyr, who is one of the three labor representatives on the CSS. He reportedly backed the council’s 225 gourde recommendation. (KOSIT press release 1/28/14)
*3. Nicaragua: Assembly Approves Constitution Changes
On Jan. 28 Nicaragua’s unicameral National Assembly voted 64-25 with no abstentions to approve a reform package changing 46 of the 202 articles in the country’s 1987 Constitution; only three of the Assembly’s 92 legislative deputies were absent. The 63 deputies from the governing center-left Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) all voted for the changes. They were joined by Wilfredo Navarro of the rightwing Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC); the other opposition deputies all voted against the reform, and many walked out afterwards in protest. The amendments were initially approved on Dec. 10 but required a second vote to become official.
The constitutional reform removes restrictions limiting presidents to a total of two terms and preventing a president from holding office for two consecutive terms. The deputies also eliminated the requirement that the winner of a presidential election have 35% or more of the popular vote; now the presidency will go to whichever candidate has the highest number of votes, and there will be no possibility of a second round. Another major change concerns the role of the military: the army will now have responsibility for regulating the radio and telecommunication spectrum, and officers will be able to hold government posts without having to retire from the military. Opponents noted that the reform package strengthens the position of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who was in office from 1985 to 1990 and from 2007 to 2012; he is now serving a third term which is also his second consecutive term. With the reform in place, there will be no legal limitations to his seeking further terms. (Nicaragua News Bulletin 12/10/13; La Prensa (Nicaragua) 1/28/14 from AP; BBC News 1/29/14)
Some 54% of Nicaraguans of voting age approve the reform “somewhat” or “very much,” according to a survey of 1,200 citizens carried out by the CID-Gallup polling company Jan. 10-16; 39% were opposed, according to the poll, and 7% didn’t know or didn’t answer. President Ortega’s approval rating was 48%, up from 42% in September, while 52% expressed a preference for the FSLN; 40% of those surveyed said they didn’t favor any of the political parties. Despite the support for Ortega and the FSLN, only a little more than a third of the respondents believed that the president would leave the country better off than he found it, while 40% thought he wouldn’t bring about a major advance. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 2/2/14)
*4. Guatemala: Tahoe Opens Troubled Silver Mine
In mid-January the Canadian-US mining company Tahoe Resources Inc. announced that its El Escobal silver mine, located in San Rafael las Flores municipality in the southeastern Guatemalan department of Santa Rosa, is now in commercial production. “Our Guatemalan team has done a terrific job in delivering this world-scale silver mine within four years of the company’s initial public offering,” a Tahoe vice president, Ira Gostin, told Mining Weekly Online. Tahoe Resources is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Reno, Nevada; the Goldcorp Inc. mining company, also based in Vancouver, owns 40% of the mine. Tahoe, whose stock has risen 12% in the past year, is now considering several other exploration prospects in Guatemala and in the rest of Latin America, according to Gostin. (Mining Weekly Online 1/20/14)
The controversial El Escobal mine has faced strong opposition from the local Xinka indigenous community over the past four years [see Update #1186]. Two security guards and two community members have been killed in the dispute, and in July 2013 a court order delayed completion of the mine for several months. On Jan. 22, shortly after Tahoe announced the mine was in production, Alberto Rotondo, the mine’s former security chief, was declared in contempt of court for failing to attend a hearing in connection with violence at the mine in April 2013. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but on Jan. 23 he called in sick and was allowed to remain in the hospital. The Canadian nonprofit MiningWatch noted the difference in the government’s treatment of Rotondo and its treatment of five community members arrested around the same April incidents. While Rotondo has been under house arrest, the community members were imprisoned; two were released on bail after two months, and three spent six months in jail. Eventually they were all released due to a lack of evidence.
MiningWatch is urging North Americans to sign on to a letter started by the Network in Solidarity With the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) calling on Tahoe to abandon the El Escobal mine. The letter can be accessed at http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6497/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15609. (Rabble.ca 1/27/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
Has the DNI Come around to Recognizing that Latin America Poses Few Threats to the U.S.?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/has-the-dni-come-around-to-recognizing-that-latin-america-poses-few-threats-to-the-us
Argentine Activists Win First Round Against Monsanto Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4669-argentine-activists-win-first-round-against-monsanto-plant
Western Coverage Victimizes Argentina's Media Monopoly
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/28/western-coverage-victimizes-argentinas-media-monopoly
Destitute Chilean Farmer Defeats Monsanto in Landmark Legal Victory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4676-destitute-chilean-farmer-defeats-monsanto-in-landmark-legal-victory
The Criminalization of Poverty in Brazil, a Global Power
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11352
Washington and São Paulo: Spying and a Fading Friendship
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/30/washington-and-s%C3%A3o-paulo-spying-and-fading-friendship
Facing the New Conquistador: Indigenous Rights and Repression in Rafael Correa’s Ecuador
http://intercontinentalcry.org/facing-new-conquistador-indigenous-rights-repression-rafael-correas-ecuador-21831/
Lessons From a Peace Community and the Political Economy of Conflict (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/28/lessons-peace-community-and-political-economy-conflict
Coal Spill Puts Spotlight on Colombia’s Labor and Environmental Struggles
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4670-coal-spill-puts-spotlight-on-colombias-labor-and-environmental-struggles
Venezuelan LGBT Movement Submits Proposal for Same Sex Marriage
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10319
Leftist Costa Rica outsider leads election, run-off expected
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4679--leftist-costa-rica-outsider-leads-election-run-off-expected
El Salvador: FMLN wins first round of presidential elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4680-el-salvador-fmln-wins-first-round-of-presidential-elections
El Salvador Election Offers a Choice between a Neoliberal Past and a FMLN Future
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4677-el-salvador-election-offers-a-choice-between-a-neoliberal-past-and-a-fmln-future
NACLA Radio—The International Vote: Salvadoran FMLN Candidate Sánchez Cerén Visits D.C.
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/30/nacla-radio%E2%80%94-international-vote-salvadoran-fmln-candidate-s%C3%A1nchez-cer%C3%A9n-visits-dc
Iran-Contra Official Uses Washington Post to Smear Salvadoran Candidate
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/2/1/iran-contra-official-uses-washington-post-smear-salvadoran-candidate
World Bank Forced To Admit Failings On Controversial Human Rights Scandal (Honduras)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/world-bank-forced-admit-failings-controversial-human-rights-scandal/
Congress’ Last Stand: Privatizations among New Laws in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4668-congress-last-stand-privatizations-among-new-laws-in-honduras
Power, Violence and Mining in Guatemala: Non-Violent Resistance to Canada’s Northern Shadow
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4672-power-violence-and-mining-in-guatemala-non-violent-resistance-to-canadas-northern-shadow-
Mexico’s late-breaking sunshine rules open new era of toxics reporting
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11387
Mexico’s Armed Self-Defense Forces Surge
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-armed-self-defense-forces-surge/
In the Fog: The Struggle for Power, Territory, and Justice in the Mexican State of Michoacán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4666-in-the-fog-the-struggle-for-power-territory-and-justice-in-the-mexican-state-of-michoacan
A Break in a Dutch Tourist’s Murder (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/a-break-in-a-dutch-tourists-murder/
US, rights groups condemn Cuba detentions
http://ww4report.com/node/12966
What the New DNI Threat Assessment Says about Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/what-the-new-dni-threat-assessment-says-about-haiti
The U.S.-Central American Border (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/31/us-central-american-border
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Chile: Farmer Wins Monsanto Seed Case
2. Haiti: Teachers Strike as Labor Unrest Grows
3. Nicaragua: Assembly Approves Constitution Changes
4. Guatemala: Tahoe Opens Troubled Silver Mine
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Farmer Wins Monsanto Seed Case
Chilean farmer José Pizarro Montoya received 37 million pesos (about US$66,582) in December from Agrícola Nacional S.A.C. (ANASAC), a Chilean distributor of agricultural products, to settle a suit he brought over the use of genetically modified (GM) corn seed from the Missouri-based Monsanto Company. Pizarro charged that ANASAC violated its contract with him by giving instructions for planting the Monsanto corn that resulted in business losses and eventually ruined him. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce found in Pizarro’s favor, and the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the decision in September. Pizarro is thought to be the first farmer in Chile—possibly the first in Latin America--to win a suit over the use of Monsanto’s GM seeds.
According to Pizarro, a vegetable farmer in Melipilla province in the Greater Santiago Region, ANASAC approached him in 2008 about growing GM corn. He signed a contract and leased 33 hectares for the planting. Everything was free the first year, Pizarro says, but later ANASAC began charging; the company also required him to use their own expensive machinery for planting. Later they gave him planting instructions which left him unable to sell his crop with a profit. Pizarro also charged that the government’s Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG) sided with the company against him. Under the terms of ANASAC’s contracts, farmers are barred from suing the company through regular courts, so Pizarro had to follow the expensive procedure of filing with the Chamber of Commerce. Despite winning the case, Pizarro says he ended up with a significant losses and still owes 90 million pesos (about US$161,955) to the Spanish-owned bank Banco Santander. In an interview in January Pizarro advised consumers: “Don’t eat things with transgenics; look for organics.” (Periodismo Sanador 1/22/14, English translation at Sustainable Pulse 1/23/14; Radio Cooperativa (Chile) 1/30/14)
Asked to comment by Chile’s Radio Cooperativa, José Ignacio Salazar, general manager of Monsanto’s Chilean subsidiary, answered in a brief note: “We wish to clarify that Monsanto was not a party in the suit concerning a farmer in the Melipilla and ANASAC, and so this decision has no relation with our operations in Chile.” ANASAC is Monsanto’s distributor in Chile and Peru; in January 2010 it announced the sale of its seed plant to Monsanto for $19 million. (Veoverde 1/31/14) Monsanto has been the subject of repeated protests in Latin America and the Caribbean [see Updates #1036, 1195, 1204].
*2. Haiti: Teachers Strike as Labor Unrest Grows
Haitian public school teachers started an open-ended strike on Jan. 22 around demands for higher salaries, payment of back pay, access to public credit programs and a regularization of job categories. After Jan. 22-23 talks with the national education minister, Vanneur Pierre, and others, a coalition of teachers’ unions—including the National Confederation of Educators of Haiti (CNEH) and the National Federation of Education and Culture Workers (FENATEC)—agreed to suspend the strike and resume classes on Jan. 27 in exchange for raises ranging from 29% to 57%, depending on the job category, to go into effect in April. Negotiations will continue on other issues.
One union, the National Union of Haitian Teachers (UNNOH), rejected the agreement, which UNNOH coordinator Josué Mérilien denounced as a “plot.” The union is calling for a base pay of 50,000 gourdes (about US$ 1,210) a month. Some teachers stayed off the job in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 27 and 28, and students from the capital’s Toussaint Louverture and Daniel Fignolé high schools took to the streets. In Carrefour, on the southwest outskirts of Port-au-Prince, students from the Henri Christophe high school began a march on Jan. 27 to the National Education and Professional Training Ministry (MENFP) in the center of Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of students and teachers joined the march; one Toussaint Louverture student, Jean Wisler Joseph, was arrested on a vandalism charge. Demonstrations continued on Jan. 28, with unidentified people hurling rocks at school buildings; some car windshields were smashed. There were also demonstrations in Petit-Goâve (West department) and Gonaïves (Artibonite department), where police responded with tear gas to rock-throwing students on Jan. 29. (Haïti Libre 1/25/14; AlterPresse 1/27/14, 1/28/14, 1/29/14)
Acting Port-au-Prince government commissioner Kherson Darius Charles, the chief prosecutor for the capital, brought charges against UNNOH coordindator Mérilien on Jan. 29 for “disturbances of public security, rock throwing and association with wrongdoers.” A hearing was set for Jan. 30 but ended abruptly because of a dispute between Charles and the union leader’s legal team. Mérilien left the courtroom and headed to the nearby Superior Teachers’ College (ENS), part of the State University of Haiti (UEH). Teachers and students joined Mérilien as he walked, turning the event into a solidarity demonstration. (AlterPresse 1/30/14)
In related news, tensions over the minimum wage for the country’s 30,000 garment assembly workers continue. On Jan. 20 managers from the One World Apparel S.A. garment assembly plant in the north of Port-au-Prince failed to attend a scheduled meeting at the local office of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) to discuss the firing of six workers on Jan. 8 [see Update #1204]. The fired workers are all on the executive committee of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), a member union in the Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT), the labor alliance that led militant protests by apparel workers on Dec. 10 and 11 to demand a daily minimum wage of 500 gourdes (about US$12.10). Management claims the six unionists were responsible for acts of vandalism at the plant on Dec. 11.
MAST officials rescheduled the meeting for Jan. 29, apparently without taking any action against the One World Apparel managers for their failure to appear. Jude Pierre, one of the fired workers, said MAST officials seemed to be in complicity with the owners, while the Patriotic Democratic Popular Movement (MPDP), a coalition of 30 groups, called on the ministry to stop being “an instrument of the bosses.” (MPDP statement 1/20/14; AlterPresse 1/27/14)
The capital’s garment assembly companies have now fired at least 35 workers for their participation in the protests, KOSIT spokespeople said at a Jan. 28 press conference. The plant owners say they have a video showing vandalism by the protesters, but the unionists dismissed this as a “set-up” to justify repression of union activities. Meanwhile, there have been no negotiations on the minimum wage for piece-rate workers—the majority of employees in the assembly sector—and the government has yet to act on the recommendation of the tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS) that the minimum wage be set at 225 gourdes (about US$5.47) a day. KOSIT is demanding that the CSS renegotiate the recommendation. KOSIT spokespeople also announced that the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH) has been expelled from the alliance because of what the unionists called the “treason” of CATH spokesperson Fignolé St. Cyr, who is one of the three labor representatives on the CSS. He reportedly backed the council’s 225 gourde recommendation. (KOSIT press release 1/28/14)
*3. Nicaragua: Assembly Approves Constitution Changes
On Jan. 28 Nicaragua’s unicameral National Assembly voted 64-25 with no abstentions to approve a reform package changing 46 of the 202 articles in the country’s 1987 Constitution; only three of the Assembly’s 92 legislative deputies were absent. The 63 deputies from the governing center-left Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) all voted for the changes. They were joined by Wilfredo Navarro of the rightwing Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC); the other opposition deputies all voted against the reform, and many walked out afterwards in protest. The amendments were initially approved on Dec. 10 but required a second vote to become official.
The constitutional reform removes restrictions limiting presidents to a total of two terms and preventing a president from holding office for two consecutive terms. The deputies also eliminated the requirement that the winner of a presidential election have 35% or more of the popular vote; now the presidency will go to whichever candidate has the highest number of votes, and there will be no possibility of a second round. Another major change concerns the role of the military: the army will now have responsibility for regulating the radio and telecommunication spectrum, and officers will be able to hold government posts without having to retire from the military. Opponents noted that the reform package strengthens the position of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who was in office from 1985 to 1990 and from 2007 to 2012; he is now serving a third term which is also his second consecutive term. With the reform in place, there will be no legal limitations to his seeking further terms. (Nicaragua News Bulletin 12/10/13; La Prensa (Nicaragua) 1/28/14 from AP; BBC News 1/29/14)
Some 54% of Nicaraguans of voting age approve the reform “somewhat” or “very much,” according to a survey of 1,200 citizens carried out by the CID-Gallup polling company Jan. 10-16; 39% were opposed, according to the poll, and 7% didn’t know or didn’t answer. President Ortega’s approval rating was 48%, up from 42% in September, while 52% expressed a preference for the FSLN; 40% of those surveyed said they didn’t favor any of the political parties. Despite the support for Ortega and the FSLN, only a little more than a third of the respondents believed that the president would leave the country better off than he found it, while 40% thought he wouldn’t bring about a major advance. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 2/2/14)
*4. Guatemala: Tahoe Opens Troubled Silver Mine
In mid-January the Canadian-US mining company Tahoe Resources Inc. announced that its El Escobal silver mine, located in San Rafael las Flores municipality in the southeastern Guatemalan department of Santa Rosa, is now in commercial production. “Our Guatemalan team has done a terrific job in delivering this world-scale silver mine within four years of the company’s initial public offering,” a Tahoe vice president, Ira Gostin, told Mining Weekly Online. Tahoe Resources is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Reno, Nevada; the Goldcorp Inc. mining company, also based in Vancouver, owns 40% of the mine. Tahoe, whose stock has risen 12% in the past year, is now considering several other exploration prospects in Guatemala and in the rest of Latin America, according to Gostin. (Mining Weekly Online 1/20/14)
The controversial El Escobal mine has faced strong opposition from the local Xinka indigenous community over the past four years [see Update #1186]. Two security guards and two community members have been killed in the dispute, and in July 2013 a court order delayed completion of the mine for several months. On Jan. 22, shortly after Tahoe announced the mine was in production, Alberto Rotondo, the mine’s former security chief, was declared in contempt of court for failing to attend a hearing in connection with violence at the mine in April 2013. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but on Jan. 23 he called in sick and was allowed to remain in the hospital. The Canadian nonprofit MiningWatch noted the difference in the government’s treatment of Rotondo and its treatment of five community members arrested around the same April incidents. While Rotondo has been under house arrest, the community members were imprisoned; two were released on bail after two months, and three spent six months in jail. Eventually they were all released due to a lack of evidence.
MiningWatch is urging North Americans to sign on to a letter started by the Network in Solidarity With the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) calling on Tahoe to abandon the El Escobal mine. The letter can be accessed at http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6497/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15609. (Rabble.ca 1/27/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
Has the DNI Come around to Recognizing that Latin America Poses Few Threats to the U.S.?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/has-the-dni-come-around-to-recognizing-that-latin-america-poses-few-threats-to-the-us
Argentine Activists Win First Round Against Monsanto Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4669-argentine-activists-win-first-round-against-monsanto-plant
Western Coverage Victimizes Argentina's Media Monopoly
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/28/western-coverage-victimizes-argentinas-media-monopoly
Destitute Chilean Farmer Defeats Monsanto in Landmark Legal Victory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4676-destitute-chilean-farmer-defeats-monsanto-in-landmark-legal-victory
The Criminalization of Poverty in Brazil, a Global Power
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11352
Washington and São Paulo: Spying and a Fading Friendship
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/30/washington-and-s%C3%A3o-paulo-spying-and-fading-friendship
Facing the New Conquistador: Indigenous Rights and Repression in Rafael Correa’s Ecuador
http://intercontinentalcry.org/facing-new-conquistador-indigenous-rights-repression-rafael-correas-ecuador-21831/
Lessons From a Peace Community and the Political Economy of Conflict (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/28/lessons-peace-community-and-political-economy-conflict
Coal Spill Puts Spotlight on Colombia’s Labor and Environmental Struggles
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4670-coal-spill-puts-spotlight-on-colombias-labor-and-environmental-struggles
Venezuelan LGBT Movement Submits Proposal for Same Sex Marriage
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10319
Leftist Costa Rica outsider leads election, run-off expected
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4679--leftist-costa-rica-outsider-leads-election-run-off-expected
El Salvador: FMLN wins first round of presidential elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4680-el-salvador-fmln-wins-first-round-of-presidential-elections
El Salvador Election Offers a Choice between a Neoliberal Past and a FMLN Future
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4677-el-salvador-election-offers-a-choice-between-a-neoliberal-past-and-a-fmln-future
NACLA Radio—The International Vote: Salvadoran FMLN Candidate Sánchez Cerén Visits D.C.
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/30/nacla-radio%E2%80%94-international-vote-salvadoran-fmln-candidate-s%C3%A1nchez-cer%C3%A9n-visits-dc
Iran-Contra Official Uses Washington Post to Smear Salvadoran Candidate
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/2/1/iran-contra-official-uses-washington-post-smear-salvadoran-candidate
World Bank Forced To Admit Failings On Controversial Human Rights Scandal (Honduras)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/world-bank-forced-admit-failings-controversial-human-rights-scandal/
Congress’ Last Stand: Privatizations among New Laws in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4668-congress-last-stand-privatizations-among-new-laws-in-honduras
Power, Violence and Mining in Guatemala: Non-Violent Resistance to Canada’s Northern Shadow
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4672-power-violence-and-mining-in-guatemala-non-violent-resistance-to-canadas-northern-shadow-
Mexico’s late-breaking sunshine rules open new era of toxics reporting
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11387
Mexico’s Armed Self-Defense Forces Surge
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-armed-self-defense-forces-surge/
In the Fog: The Struggle for Power, Territory, and Justice in the Mexican State of Michoacán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4666-in-the-fog-the-struggle-for-power-territory-and-justice-in-the-mexican-state-of-michoacan
A Break in a Dutch Tourist’s Murder (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/a-break-in-a-dutch-tourists-murder/
US, rights groups condemn Cuba detentions
http://ww4report.com/node/12966
What the New DNI Threat Assessment Says about Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/what-the-new-dni-threat-assessment-says-about-haiti
The U.S.-Central American Border (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/31/us-central-american-border
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, November 4, 2013
WNU #1198: Indigenous Mexican Schoolteacher Released
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1198, November 3, 2013
1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a schoolteacher from the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, was freed from imprisonment on Oct. 31 after receiving a pardon that day from President Enrique Peña Nieto. Patishtán had been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in Chiapas’ El Bosque municipality in June of that year [see Update #1192]. He has consistently maintained his innocence. Human rights activists in Mexico and around the world demonstrated and petitioned for his release, charging that the teacher was being persecuted as an indigenous Tzotzil activist and a supporter of the leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Patishtán’s pardon was the first granted under a change to the penal code allowing presidential pardons “when there are consistent indications of grave human rights violations.” President Peña Nieto, from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), announced his plan for the pardon on Oct. 29, one day before the new regulations were to take effect. A presidential pardon was the only option for freeing Patishtán after a federal court in Chiapas turned down his appeal on Sept. 12. Although he accepted the pardon, Patishtán had refused to ask for it, saying the government should ask him to be forgiven for its treatment of him.
Patishtán received the pardon while in the National Institute of Neurology in Mexico City; he had been transferred there from prison to undergo radiation treatment for a brain tumor discovered last year. After his release, two of his children and one grandchild accompanied Patishtán to a press conference at the offices of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Services and Consultancy for Peace (SERAPAZ). “From the first day I arrived at the prison, I felt free,” he told supporters and journalists. “Some people ask me: what sustains you so that you never stop laughing, and I tell them: it’s because I have a clear conscience.” (Washington Post 10/31/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/1/13)
*2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, announced on Oct. 31 that it was temporarily halting work on its unfinished Pascua Lama gold and silver mine high in the Andes on the Chilean-Argentine border. The only operations at the mine will be those required for compliance with environmental protection laws, according to the company, which said resumption of work would depend on costs and the outlook for gold prices. The projected cost of the massive mine, which was originally set to open in the second half of 2014, has risen from $3 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion now. Barrick is short of cash after a dramatic drop in international gold prices in the spring; gold is currently selling for 20% less than it was a year ago. Barrick is cutting 1,850 jobs and is said to be considering the possibility of selling an interest in Pascua Lama, on which it has spent $5.4 billion to date.
The Pascua Lama project was already stalled because of environmental lawsuits in Chile, where the courts suspended construction in April because of problems the work had caused to water supplies in the area of the mine [see Update #1188]. On Oct. 11 the company faced a new setback when the appeals court in Chile’s northern Antofagasta region agreed to examine another legal action charging that the mine is causing environmental damage and compromising the quality of life for local residents. (Reuters 10/11/13; Bloomberg 10/31/13)
Mining companies, which are major consumers of energy, are also facing problems with environmental challenges to hydroelectric projects in Chile. As of late October the appeals court in Coyhaique province, in the southern region of Aysén, had issued a temporary order blocking work at a $733 million hydroelectric dam on the Cuervo river. The government granted an environmental permit for the project in September, but the government’s own environmental prosecutor appealed, saying the permit wasn’t legal. Opponents charge that the dam will harm the environment and will pose a risk because of its location on a fault line. The Supreme Court had temporarily halted work on the dam in May 2012 on the grounds that the owners, Australian-based Origin Energy and the Anglo-Swiss Glencore Xstrata PLC, failed to file a required soil study with the National Geology and Mining Service [see World War 4 Report 5/14/12]. (Reuters 10/25/13)
*3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly voted 188-2 on Oct. 29 to condemn the 53-year-old US economic embargo of Cuba. This was the 22nd year in a row that the General Assembly has passed a resolution rejecting the US policy. Israel and the US were the only countries to oppose the resolution, which was presented by Cuba; last year Palau backed the US, but this year it abstained, along with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki defended the US position, saying: "We don't feel that this annual debate in the United Nations does anything to add to or advance a constructive discussion about these issues.” Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed by the General Assembly have no binding force.
Speaking at the General Assembly, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez asked what had happened to the “change” that US president Barack Obama had promised during his 2008 electoral campaign. According to the Cuban government, the Obama administration has tightened some sanctions, especially the ones relating to banking, although it has relaxed limitations on travel to the island; more than 350,000 Cuban Americans and 98,000 other US citizens visited last year. The two governments are continuing direct negotiations on immigration, postal service and strategies for responding to natural disasters, but the US government seems uninterested in other measures to normalize relations. (CBS News 10/29/13; Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 10/29/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/30/13 from correspondent)
On Nov. 1 Mexican finance secretary Luis Videgaray announced that Cuba and Mexico had reached an agreement on a $487 million debt the Cuban government contracted more than 15 years ago. Mexico will forgive 70% of the debt and Cuba will commit to repay the rest over the next 10 years to settle the issue, which has caused some friction between the governments. Videgaray said the two countries would sign a formal agreement during Cuban foreign minister’s Rodríguez’s current visit to Mexico. (LJ 11/2/13)
*4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
The torture death of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena near Guadalajara in the western Mexican state of Jalisco in February 1985 was linked to drug running by the US-backed “contra” rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua, according to two former DEA agents and a former pilot for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camarena was kidnapped by criminals working for Rafael Caro Quintero, a founder of the so-called Guadalajara Cartel, and was executed at one of Caro Quintero’s ranches. According to the US, the cartel targeted Camarena because he had uncovered Caro Quintero’s marijuana growing and processing operation. Under pressure from the US, the Mexican government eventually captured Caro Quintero and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for Camarena’s murder.
The new allegations appeared on an Oct. 10 broadcast by the rightwing US-based Fox television network and in an Oct. 12 article published by the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso. Both reports were based on interviews with Phil Jordan, an ex-director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez, who said he directed the investigation of Camarena’s death; and Tosh Plumlee, who worked as a pilot for SETCO, a CIA-linked airline that flew military supplies to the contras. It isn’t clear why Fox chose to air the allegations now, but attention on the Camarena murder increased after a Mexican judge released Caro Quintero from prison on a technicality on Aug. 9 of this year.
According to the Fox and Proceso reports, CIA operatives had infiltrated Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), many of whose agents provided protection for Caro Quintero’s criminal activities in the 1980s, including the Camarena kidnapping and murder. CIA infiltrators were present when the DEA agent was killed, the reports allege. “I was told by Mexican authorities…that CIA operatives were in there,” Jordan said to Fox News. “Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.” Ex-DEA agent Berrellez gave Proceso the name of at least one CIA operative he claimed was involved. “Two witnesses identified Félix Ismael Rodríguez,” he said.
The Cuban-born Rodríguez was a long-time US agent who was active in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in the Vietnam war and in the October 1967 execution of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara in Bolivia. In the middle 1980s Rodríguez was in El Salvador working with another Cuban-born agent, Luis Posada Carriles, supplying contra operations [see Update #1185]. According to the Proceso report, Rodríguez introduced the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros to the Guadalajara cartel. Matta allegedly used his Colombian connections to supply cocaine to the cartel, with the complicity of the CIA, which received part of the money and used it to supply arms and other military equipment to the contras. The reason for Camarena’s murder, according to Proceso, was that Camarena had “discovered that his own government was collaborating with Mexican narco trafficking in its illicit business.”
The CIA denies the accusations. “[I]t’s ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a US federal agent or the escape of his killer,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News on Oct. 10.
A number of sources reported in the 1980s and early 1990s that the contras were funded in part through drug sales with the help or complicity of the CIA. In 1998 CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz told Congress that the CIA “worked with a variety of ...assets [and] pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.” The “CIA had an operational interest” in the contras and “did nothing to stop” the drug trafficking, Hitz said. Mainstream US media generally avoided the subject. In 1996 the Mercury News of San Jose, California, ran a series linking the contras to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, but the paper later repudiated the articles. The reporter, Gary Webb, lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again. He died in December 2004, an apparent suicide [see Update #777]. (Fox News 10/10/13; Proceso 10/12/13; El País (Madrid) 10/15/13)
Correction: This item originally read that Caro Quintero had been sentenced to 60 years in prison; the correct number is 40.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Rejects the Extractive Model in the Streets
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10983
Latin America: Report from the II Continental Summit on Indigenous Communication
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4532-latin-america-report-from-the-ii-continental-summit-on-indigenous-communication
Brazilian Judge Halts Belo Monte Dam Construction, Temporarily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4540-brazilian-judge-halts-belo-monte-dam-construction-temporarily
Bolivia: The Politics of Extractivism (Bolivia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4536-bolivia-the-politics-of-extractivism
The Road to Everywhere: The Geopolitics of the TIPNIS Conflict (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/10/30/clacs-student-blog%E2%80%94-road-everywhere-geopolitics-tipnis-conflict
Bolivia: indigenous power at issue in hunger strike
http://ww4report.com/node/12735
The Costs of the War System and the Economic Predicament of Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/1/costs-war-system-and-economic-predicament-colombia
Venezuela’s Maduro Denounces Twitter Attack as Thousands of Pro-Government Accounts Suspended
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
Giving our movements new life — the case of El Salvador
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/giving-movements-new-life-case-el-salvador/
Honduras: Military Police as a Major Electoral Issue
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-military-police-as-a-major-electoral-issue
History on Hold for Victims of Guatemalan Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4533-history-on-hold-for-victims-of-guatemalan-genocidev
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
New convictions in Guatemala disappearance
http://ww4report.com/node/9219#comment-451786
Repressive Memories: Terror, Insurgency, and the Drug War in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4534-repressive-memories-terror-insurgency-and-the-drug-war-in-mexico
Taking the Measure of Mexican President Peña Nieto
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1641
Gov’t and Electrical Workers Reach Agreement on Pensions for 1,400 Workers (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1646
Indigenous Migrants Organize (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/indigenous-migrants-organize/
Tijuana 'super-tunnel' discovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541#comment-451782
Mexico: narcos abduct migrants —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12723
Cuba’s Reforms Favor Foreign Investment, Create Low-Wage Sponge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/31/cuba%E2%80%99s-reforms-favor-foreign-investment-create-low-wage-sponge
In Haiti, Cholera Claims New Victims Daily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4535-in-haiti-cholera-claims-new-victims-daily
Land, Migrants and Poets: The Day of the Dead 2013 (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/land-migrants-and-poets-the-day-of-the-dead-2013/
Calls For Immigration Reform Ramp Up, But What Fuels Migration to U.S.?
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10920
U.S. Snooping Makes It a Neighbourhood Pariah (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4539-us-snooping-makes-it-a-neighbourhood-pariah
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1198, November 3, 2013
1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a schoolteacher from the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, was freed from imprisonment on Oct. 31 after receiving a pardon that day from President Enrique Peña Nieto. Patishtán had been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in Chiapas’ El Bosque municipality in June of that year [see Update #1192]. He has consistently maintained his innocence. Human rights activists in Mexico and around the world demonstrated and petitioned for his release, charging that the teacher was being persecuted as an indigenous Tzotzil activist and a supporter of the leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Patishtán’s pardon was the first granted under a change to the penal code allowing presidential pardons “when there are consistent indications of grave human rights violations.” President Peña Nieto, from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), announced his plan for the pardon on Oct. 29, one day before the new regulations were to take effect. A presidential pardon was the only option for freeing Patishtán after a federal court in Chiapas turned down his appeal on Sept. 12. Although he accepted the pardon, Patishtán had refused to ask for it, saying the government should ask him to be forgiven for its treatment of him.
Patishtán received the pardon while in the National Institute of Neurology in Mexico City; he had been transferred there from prison to undergo radiation treatment for a brain tumor discovered last year. After his release, two of his children and one grandchild accompanied Patishtán to a press conference at the offices of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Services and Consultancy for Peace (SERAPAZ). “From the first day I arrived at the prison, I felt free,” he told supporters and journalists. “Some people ask me: what sustains you so that you never stop laughing, and I tell them: it’s because I have a clear conscience.” (Washington Post 10/31/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/1/13)
*2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, announced on Oct. 31 that it was temporarily halting work on its unfinished Pascua Lama gold and silver mine high in the Andes on the Chilean-Argentine border. The only operations at the mine will be those required for compliance with environmental protection laws, according to the company, which said resumption of work would depend on costs and the outlook for gold prices. The projected cost of the massive mine, which was originally set to open in the second half of 2014, has risen from $3 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion now. Barrick is short of cash after a dramatic drop in international gold prices in the spring; gold is currently selling for 20% less than it was a year ago. Barrick is cutting 1,850 jobs and is said to be considering the possibility of selling an interest in Pascua Lama, on which it has spent $5.4 billion to date.
The Pascua Lama project was already stalled because of environmental lawsuits in Chile, where the courts suspended construction in April because of problems the work had caused to water supplies in the area of the mine [see Update #1188]. On Oct. 11 the company faced a new setback when the appeals court in Chile’s northern Antofagasta region agreed to examine another legal action charging that the mine is causing environmental damage and compromising the quality of life for local residents. (Reuters 10/11/13; Bloomberg 10/31/13)
Mining companies, which are major consumers of energy, are also facing problems with environmental challenges to hydroelectric projects in Chile. As of late October the appeals court in Coyhaique province, in the southern region of Aysén, had issued a temporary order blocking work at a $733 million hydroelectric dam on the Cuervo river. The government granted an environmental permit for the project in September, but the government’s own environmental prosecutor appealed, saying the permit wasn’t legal. Opponents charge that the dam will harm the environment and will pose a risk because of its location on a fault line. The Supreme Court had temporarily halted work on the dam in May 2012 on the grounds that the owners, Australian-based Origin Energy and the Anglo-Swiss Glencore Xstrata PLC, failed to file a required soil study with the National Geology and Mining Service [see World War 4 Report 5/14/12]. (Reuters 10/25/13)
*3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly voted 188-2 on Oct. 29 to condemn the 53-year-old US economic embargo of Cuba. This was the 22nd year in a row that the General Assembly has passed a resolution rejecting the US policy. Israel and the US were the only countries to oppose the resolution, which was presented by Cuba; last year Palau backed the US, but this year it abstained, along with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki defended the US position, saying: "We don't feel that this annual debate in the United Nations does anything to add to or advance a constructive discussion about these issues.” Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed by the General Assembly have no binding force.
Speaking at the General Assembly, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez asked what had happened to the “change” that US president Barack Obama had promised during his 2008 electoral campaign. According to the Cuban government, the Obama administration has tightened some sanctions, especially the ones relating to banking, although it has relaxed limitations on travel to the island; more than 350,000 Cuban Americans and 98,000 other US citizens visited last year. The two governments are continuing direct negotiations on immigration, postal service and strategies for responding to natural disasters, but the US government seems uninterested in other measures to normalize relations. (CBS News 10/29/13; Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 10/29/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/30/13 from correspondent)
On Nov. 1 Mexican finance secretary Luis Videgaray announced that Cuba and Mexico had reached an agreement on a $487 million debt the Cuban government contracted more than 15 years ago. Mexico will forgive 70% of the debt and Cuba will commit to repay the rest over the next 10 years to settle the issue, which has caused some friction between the governments. Videgaray said the two countries would sign a formal agreement during Cuban foreign minister’s Rodríguez’s current visit to Mexico. (LJ 11/2/13)
*4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
The torture death of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena near Guadalajara in the western Mexican state of Jalisco in February 1985 was linked to drug running by the US-backed “contra” rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua, according to two former DEA agents and a former pilot for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camarena was kidnapped by criminals working for Rafael Caro Quintero, a founder of the so-called Guadalajara Cartel, and was executed at one of Caro Quintero’s ranches. According to the US, the cartel targeted Camarena because he had uncovered Caro Quintero’s marijuana growing and processing operation. Under pressure from the US, the Mexican government eventually captured Caro Quintero and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for Camarena’s murder.
The new allegations appeared on an Oct. 10 broadcast by the rightwing US-based Fox television network and in an Oct. 12 article published by the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso. Both reports were based on interviews with Phil Jordan, an ex-director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez, who said he directed the investigation of Camarena’s death; and Tosh Plumlee, who worked as a pilot for SETCO, a CIA-linked airline that flew military supplies to the contras. It isn’t clear why Fox chose to air the allegations now, but attention on the Camarena murder increased after a Mexican judge released Caro Quintero from prison on a technicality on Aug. 9 of this year.
According to the Fox and Proceso reports, CIA operatives had infiltrated Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), many of whose agents provided protection for Caro Quintero’s criminal activities in the 1980s, including the Camarena kidnapping and murder. CIA infiltrators were present when the DEA agent was killed, the reports allege. “I was told by Mexican authorities…that CIA operatives were in there,” Jordan said to Fox News. “Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.” Ex-DEA agent Berrellez gave Proceso the name of at least one CIA operative he claimed was involved. “Two witnesses identified Félix Ismael Rodríguez,” he said.
The Cuban-born Rodríguez was a long-time US agent who was active in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in the Vietnam war and in the October 1967 execution of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara in Bolivia. In the middle 1980s Rodríguez was in El Salvador working with another Cuban-born agent, Luis Posada Carriles, supplying contra operations [see Update #1185]. According to the Proceso report, Rodríguez introduced the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros to the Guadalajara cartel. Matta allegedly used his Colombian connections to supply cocaine to the cartel, with the complicity of the CIA, which received part of the money and used it to supply arms and other military equipment to the contras. The reason for Camarena’s murder, according to Proceso, was that Camarena had “discovered that his own government was collaborating with Mexican narco trafficking in its illicit business.”
The CIA denies the accusations. “[I]t’s ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a US federal agent or the escape of his killer,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News on Oct. 10.
A number of sources reported in the 1980s and early 1990s that the contras were funded in part through drug sales with the help or complicity of the CIA. In 1998 CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz told Congress that the CIA “worked with a variety of ...assets [and] pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.” The “CIA had an operational interest” in the contras and “did nothing to stop” the drug trafficking, Hitz said. Mainstream US media generally avoided the subject. In 1996 the Mercury News of San Jose, California, ran a series linking the contras to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, but the paper later repudiated the articles. The reporter, Gary Webb, lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again. He died in December 2004, an apparent suicide [see Update #777]. (Fox News 10/10/13; Proceso 10/12/13; El País (Madrid) 10/15/13)
Correction: This item originally read that Caro Quintero had been sentenced to 60 years in prison; the correct number is 40.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Rejects the Extractive Model in the Streets
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10983
Latin America: Report from the II Continental Summit on Indigenous Communication
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4532-latin-america-report-from-the-ii-continental-summit-on-indigenous-communication
Brazilian Judge Halts Belo Monte Dam Construction, Temporarily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4540-brazilian-judge-halts-belo-monte-dam-construction-temporarily
Bolivia: The Politics of Extractivism (Bolivia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4536-bolivia-the-politics-of-extractivism
The Road to Everywhere: The Geopolitics of the TIPNIS Conflict (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/10/30/clacs-student-blog%E2%80%94-road-everywhere-geopolitics-tipnis-conflict
Bolivia: indigenous power at issue in hunger strike
http://ww4report.com/node/12735
The Costs of the War System and the Economic Predicament of Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/1/costs-war-system-and-economic-predicament-colombia
Venezuela’s Maduro Denounces Twitter Attack as Thousands of Pro-Government Accounts Suspended
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
Giving our movements new life — the case of El Salvador
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/giving-movements-new-life-case-el-salvador/
Honduras: Military Police as a Major Electoral Issue
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-military-police-as-a-major-electoral-issue
History on Hold for Victims of Guatemalan Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4533-history-on-hold-for-victims-of-guatemalan-genocidev
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
New convictions in Guatemala disappearance
http://ww4report.com/node/9219#comment-451786
Repressive Memories: Terror, Insurgency, and the Drug War in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4534-repressive-memories-terror-insurgency-and-the-drug-war-in-mexico
Taking the Measure of Mexican President Peña Nieto
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1641
Gov’t and Electrical Workers Reach Agreement on Pensions for 1,400 Workers (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1646
Indigenous Migrants Organize (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/indigenous-migrants-organize/
Tijuana 'super-tunnel' discovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541#comment-451782
Mexico: narcos abduct migrants —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12723
Cuba’s Reforms Favor Foreign Investment, Create Low-Wage Sponge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/31/cuba%E2%80%99s-reforms-favor-foreign-investment-create-low-wage-sponge
In Haiti, Cholera Claims New Victims Daily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4535-in-haiti-cholera-claims-new-victims-daily
Land, Migrants and Poets: The Day of the Dead 2013 (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/land-migrants-and-poets-the-day-of-the-dead-2013/
Calls For Immigration Reform Ramp Up, But What Fuels Migration to U.S.?
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10920
U.S. Snooping Makes It a Neighbourhood Pariah (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4539-us-snooping-makes-it-a-neighbourhood-pariah
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
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