Issue #1227, July 20, 2014
1. Honduras: US Deports Migrants as Violence Continues
2. El Salvador: Workers Win $1.5 Million in Maquila Closing
3. Brazil: BRICS Nations Plan New Development Bank
4. Haiti: UN Head Makes "Pilgrimage" for Cholera Victims
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Honduras: US Deports Migrants as Violence Continues
A plane chartered by the US government carried 38 Honduran deportees from an immigration detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, to the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on July 14. This was the first US deportation flight entirely dedicated to mothers and children: eight mothers, 13 girls and nine boys were scheduled for the trip, although two couldn’t travel because of illness. Reporters, Honduran officials and Ana García de Hernández, the wife of President Juan Orlando Hernández, were on hand for the flight’s arrival. President Hernández's government promised the deportees job leads, a $500 stipend, psychological counseling and schooling, but a returning mother, Angélica Gálvez, told the Los Angeles Times that in the end she and her six-year-old daughter Abigail didn’t get enough money to pay for the three-hour trip to their home in La Ceiba. “They haven’t helped me before,” she said. “Why should I believe them now?”
The publicity around the flight was apparently part of a US effort to reduce a recent increase in unauthorized immigration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, mostly by unaccompanied minors and women with their children; some 57,000 unaccompanied child migrants have been detained at the Mexico-US border since October, 35,000 of them Central Americans [see Update #1225]. An unnamed official from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described the deportation flight as “just the initial wave.” “Our border is not open to illegal migration, and we will send recent illegal migrants back,” the official said. (LAT 7/14/14)
Other US government efforts to discourage immigration include commissioning songs that stress the dangers of attempts to enter the US without authorization. This started in 2004 when the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a DHS agency, sent a five-song CD to radio stations throughout Mexico. Currently 21 Guatemalan, Salvadoran and Honduran radio stations are playing a CBP-commissioned cumbia song, “La Bestia,” named for the notoriously dangerous train Central American migrants often ride to get through southern Mexico; migrants call it “The Beast” [see Update #1220]. The song, which the radio stations play without any reference to its US origin, is reportedly very popular. (The Daily Beast 7/12/14)
Honduran critics of US policies charge that these efforts don’t address the causes underlying the wave of departures from the country. Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate; with a population of about 438,00, San Pedro Sula, the home of many of the people heading north, had 778 homicides in 2013 and 594 so far this year, the municipal morgue reports. According to Hugo Ramón Maldonado, vice president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (Codeh), some 80% of the people emigrating from Honduras are fleeing criminality or violence. He blamed the government’s failure to pursue criminals and dismissed the government reception of the deportees on July 14 as “a political show with our returned migrants.” “What is happening in this country is a great tragedy,” he added. (LAT 7/14/14)
In an interview published July 14 by the Mexican daily Excélsior, rightwing president Hernández blamed the violence on US drug policy. “The root cause is that the US and Colombia carried out big operations in the fight against drugs,” he said. “Then Mexico did it.” This “drug war” policy pushed drug traffickers into the northern Central American countries, El Salvador,Guatemala and Honduras, he indicated, “creating a serious problem for us that sparked this migration.” However, Hernández is apparently seeking US funding so that he can start similar operations in his own country. (Reuters 7/14/14 via Huffington Post)
In fact, drug traffickers appear to operate quite openly in parts of Honduras. On July 17 a group of heavily armed men seized some 20 members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), a leading organization of the Garífuna ethnic group, in Vallecito in the northern department of Colón. Some OFRANEH members managed to escape and mobilize supporters, with the result that the gang eventually released the captives, who included OFRANEH coordinator Miriam Miranda. The Garífuna’s right to the Vallecito territory was recognized by the government’s National Agrarian Institute (INA) in 1997, and the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the group’s claim against cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum’s attempt to seize part of the land the next year. More recently, drug traffickers invaded Vallecito and built a landing strip there. The Garífuna regained control in 2013, but the gang appeared to be trying to restore the landing strip this July. The OFRANEH members were investigating when they were seized. They noted that their kidnappers didn’t bother to hide their faces; as of July 18 there had been no arrests. (Adital (Brazil) 7/18/14; Rebelión 7/19/14 from Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más (LINyM))
Meanwhile, Honduran police agents continue to be accused of major crimes [see Update #1203]. On July 14 three agents of the National Directorate of Special Investigation Services (DNSEI) were indicted in connection with the murder of two women, Yury Fabiola Hernández and Gessy Marleny García, at a restaurant in a Tegucigalpa suburb on July 9; they were also accused of wounding a third women, who is now a protected witness. Agent Marvin Joel Gallegos Suárez was charged with the murders, while agents Fredy Gerardo Mendoza Arriaza and Gregorio Alexander Anariba Meraz were charged with complicity in the murders and with violation of their duties. (Latin American Herald Tribune 7/13/14 from EFE; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 7/15/14)
*2. El Salvador: Workers Win $1.5 Million in Maquila Closing
On July 12 the 1,066 laid-off employees of El Salvador’s Manufacturas del Río (MDR) apparel factory began receiving benefits, back wages and severance pay that they were owed after the plant closed suddenly on Jan. 7. MDR--a joint venture of the Mexican company Kaltex and the Miami-based Argus Group which stitched garments for such major brands as Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, Lacoste, Levi Strauss and Adidas—shut down without notice after the Textile Industry Workers Union (STIT), an affiliate of the Salvadoran Union Front (FSS), spent two months attempting to negotiate a contract. No apparel plant in El Salvador has a labor contract.
Salvadoran unionists said that although they took the necessary steps with the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office and the courts to win compensation, international solidarity was crucial to the victory. The STIT filed complaints with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) in the US and put pressure on the Argus Group with support from two US-based groups, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ. In Mexico student activists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), and the Center for Labor Research & Consulting (CILAS) aided a campaign to pressure Kaltex. The German-based Christian Initiative Romero (CIR) backed the Salvadoran union’s efforts in Germany to inform Adidas shareholders about the MDR closing; Adidas had sourced garments from the plant for 10 years. (International Union League for Brand Responsibility 7/15/14)
*3. Brazil: BRICS Nations Plan New Development Bank
The BRICS group of five nations--Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa--held its sixth annual summit this year from July 14 to July 16 in Fortaleza in the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará and in Brasilia, the Brazilian capital. The main business for the five nations’ leaders was formalizing their agreement on a plan to create a development bank to serve as an alternative to lending institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are largely dominated by the US and its allies. Although the project will need approval from the countries’ legislatures, the BRICS leaders indicated that the group’s lending institution would be called the New Development Bank, would be based in Shanghai and would be headed for the first five years by a representative of India. The bank is to start off in 2016 with $50 billion in capital, $10 billion from each BRICS member. The BRICS nations will maintain control of the bank, but membership will be open to other countries; in contrast to the IMF and the World Bank, the New Development Bank will not impose budgetary conditions on loan recipients.
The BRICS nations--which together now account for about 20% of the world’s total gross domestic products, according to Russian president Vladimir Putin—all have major economies but lack the economic power of the traditional advanced industrial sector based in Europe, Japan and North America. However, there are important differences in their economies, their political systems and their objectives; the New Development Bank plan was held up for years as China, by far the largest of the five economies, sought to dominate the bank. (The Guardian (UK) 7/15/14 from Reuters; Wall Street Journal 7/16/14)
Grassroots organizations charge that the BRICS governments frequently don’t represent the needs and wishes of their populations. The Brazilian Network for the Integration of Peoples (Rebrip) joined with a number of other groups to hold a sort of counter-summit in Fortaleza on July 15. “[S]trong social inequalities and development models based on the super-exploitation of natural resources motivate social organizations and movements in the bloc’s countries to set up joint actions that aim to guarantee rights, equality, and social and environmental justice,” the event’s announcement said. “We believe that the BRICS’ impacts—positive or negative—in the international system and in our societies depend on the ability of the peoples to mobilize themselves, to debate and to dispute the directions taken by their countries and the international coalitions that they are part of.” (Adital (Brazil) 7/16/14)
On the way to the summit, Russian president Putin visited Cuba and then Argentina, where he and Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed several accords on July 12, including one on nuclear power. A Russian delegation was planning to visit the Vaca Muerta region’s shale deposits, which Argentina is planning to exploit through hydrofracking in a joint venture with the US-based Chevron Corporation [see Update #1221]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/13/14 from correspondent)
*4. Haiti: UN Head Makes "Pilgrimage" for Cholera Victims
United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon made a two-day visit to Haiti on July 14 and July 15 to promote a $2.2 billion program that he launched in December 2012 to eliminate cholera from the country over the next 10 years. He traveled with Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe to the village of Las Palmas, near Hinche in the Central Plateau, to announce a “Total Sanitation Campaign,” the second phase of the cholera elimination program, which remains underfunded. Ban called the visit a “necessary pilgrimage”; at a church service in Las Palmas he acknowledged “that the epidemic has caused much anger and fear” and that it “continues to affect an unacceptable number of people.”
Many Haitians remained critical of Ban, who has refused to accept UN responsibility for the cholera outbreak, despite overwhelming evidence that it was caused by poor sanitation in October 2010 at a base used by troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) [see Update #1195]. Haitian human rights lawyer Mario Joseph said it was “an insult to all Haitians for the secretary general to come to Haiti for a photo opportunity when he refuses to take responsibility for the thousands of Haitians killed and the hundreds of thousands sickened by the UN cholera epidemic.” The Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP) said the visit would be a good occasion for Ban to say “when MINUSTAH will leave the country,” to “recognize officially the UN’s responsibility in the introduction of cholera in Haiti” and “to define a compensation plan for the victims.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 7/14/14; The Guardian (UK) 7/16/14, some from unidentified wire services)
Ban’s visit came a month after a June 13 incident in New York in which a professional process server attempted to hand the secretary general a formal complaint in connection with a lawsuit filed in March at a Brooklyn federal court. Stan Alpert, one of the attorneys for the 1,500 plaintiffs in the suit, which seeks to make the UN accept responsibility for the epidemic, said Ban was given the complaint; the UN denies that he received it. (Miami Herald 6/17/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Argentina: Mapuche Community Takes Direct Action Against Oil and Gas Exploitation on Its Territory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4940-argentina-mapuche-community-takes-direct-action-against-oil-and-gas-exploitation-on-its-territory
Why did Uruguay Request its Own Integration into the Trade in Services Agreement?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4943-why-did-uruguay-request-its-integration-into-the-trade-in-services-agreement
The Promises and Limitations of Revolutionary Change in Bolivia: A Book Review of Evo’s Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4939-the-promises-and-limitations-of-revolutionary-change-in-bolivia-a-book-review-of-evos-bolivia
Bolivia: 'dirty war' fears as Evo seeks third term
http://ww4report.com/node/13390
Ethnic cleansing on Peru's jungle border
http://ww4report.com/node/13395
A Massacre of Convenience: Democracy, Progress, and the Disappearance of a People In the Ecuadorian Amazon
http://intercontinentalcry.org/massacre-convenience-24820/
The Problem with the Venezuela Sanctions Debate
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-problem-with-the-venezuela-sanctions-debate
Maduro Extends Planned “Shakeup” of Venezuelan State and Economy
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10796
Nicaragua Vive! 35 Years Since the Triumph of the Sandinista Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/4942-nicaragua-vive-35-years-since-the-triumph-of-the-sandinista-revolution
Nicaragua: inter-oceanic canal route approved
http://ww4report.com/node/13391
Salvadoran Feminists Push Debate on El Salvador’s Stringent Abortion Ban
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4944-salvadoran-feminists-push-debate-on-el-salvadors-stringent-abortion-ban
The Depths of Hell in Honduras: Honduran Collapse, Mining and Organized Crime
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4945-the-depths-of-hell-in-honduras-honduran-collapse-mining-and-organized-crime
The Drones of Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-drones-of-mexico/
How the Mexican Drug Trade Thrives on Free Trade
www.thenation.com/article/180587/how-mexican-drug-trade-thrives-free-trade
Mexico’s Health Care Professionals Rise Up
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-health-care-professionals-rise-up/
NAFTA Advocates Continue to Make Misleading Claims (Mexico)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/nafta-advocates-continue-to-make-misleading-claims
How the Mexican Drug Trade Thrives on Free Trade
http://www.thenation.com/article/180587/how-mexican-drug-trade-thrives-free-trade
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
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
WNU #1225: Brazilian Judge Blocks Gold Mine
Issue #1225, June 29, 2014
1. Brazil: Canadian Gold Mine Loses License
2. Chile: Bachelet Promises New Mapuche Policy
3. Central America: What's Causing Child Migration?
4. Cuba: Foreign Investment Law Takes Effect
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration, US/policy
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Brazil: Canadian Gold Mine Loses License
Brazilian federal judge Claudio Henrique de Pina has revoked Toronto-based Belo Sun Mining Corp.’s environmental license for the construction of the $750 million Volta Grande open-pit gold mine near the Xingu river in the northern state of Pará, the federal Public Ministry office in the state announced the evening of June 25. Upholding a suspension ordered last November, the judge ruled that Belo Sun had failed to address the “negative and irreversible” impact the mine would have on three indigenous groups in the area, the Paquiçamba, the Arara da Volta Grande and the Ituna/Itatá. The communities are already under threat from the construction of the nearby Belo Monte dam [see Update #1189], which will cut water flows by 80% to 90% when it goes into operation, according to the government’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI).
A Belo Sun news release said the decision only means that the company needs to complete a five-month impact study; it has already commissioned the study, which will start as soon as researchers have permission to access indigenous lands, according to the news release. The mine was expected to open in 2016 and to produce 313,100 ounces of gold each year over a 10-year lifetime; if built, it will be the largest gold mine in Brazil. Belo Sun’s shares were down nearly 10% on the Toronto Stock Exchange by noon on June 26. (Ministério Público Federal no Pará press release 6/25/14; Reuters 6/26/14; Mining.com 6/26/14). [This is the latest in a series of reversals for gold mining projects in Latin America, most notably Barrick Gold’s mammoth Pascua Lama mine on the Argentine-Chilean border in the Andes; see Update #1223.]
Meanwhile, a new study by researchers at the Federal University of Pará finds that construction at the controversial Belo Monte dam, expected to be the third largest in the world, has led to the sexual exploitation of local indigenous people. The groups impacted were the Parakanã, the Arara da Cachoeira Seca, the Arara da Volta Grande do Xingu and the Juruna do Paquiçamba, the researchers said. There is also evidence of sexual trafficking of minors. According to the daily Folha de São Paulo, the reported cases of sexual abuse of minors in Altamira--the city most affected by the Belo Monte project and the 25,000 workers building it--rose from 43 in 2010 to 75 in 2011, the year construction began. (Terra Brasil 6/8/14)
*2. Chile: Bachelet Promises New Mapuche Policy
Chilean president Michelle Bachelet announced a new government policy for the country’s indigenous communities on June 24, We Tripantu, the last day of the June 21-24 New Year celebrations observed by the Mapuche, the largest of the indigenous groups. The new policy includes the creation of an Indigenous Affairs Ministry; a Council of Indigenous Peoples to develop proposals and oversee negotiations; designated seats in Congress for indigenous groups; a commission to establish an official version of indigenous history acceptable to all sides; and a continuation of an existing program through which the government buys territory in the south-central Araucanía region and transfers it to Mapuche communities that claim it, with the goal of ending land disputes and occupations that have troubled the region in recent years [see Update #1216].
“Almost 25 years and five presidencies have passed since we recovered our democracy and despite our effort we are still in debt to [Chile’s] indigenous people,” Bachelet said, referring to the period since the end of the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. “Now is the time to have the courage to take new steps forward, not with an eye on the short term but aiming to achieve the progress that has long eluded our brothers and sisters from the indigenous communities.”
Some Mapuche activists were not convinced by Bachelet’s program. Aucán Huilcamán, who represents the Council of All Lands, an organization including Mapuche from both Chile and Argentina, dismissed the Council of Indigenous Peoples as “a kindergarten” and said the government’s policy continued “colonialism and the domestication of the indigenous peoples.” (Santiago Times 6/24/14; Reuters 6/24/14; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 6/24/14) In a statement released on June 15, a week before Bachelet’s announcement, the militant Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM) described the president’s approach as “[o]n one hand echoing the pressures of the capitalist business class in the Mapuche zone, and on the other deepening the militarization and the repression against our communities.” The CAM said it was “taking up with greater conviction its anti-capitalist struggle based on self-defense and territorial control until the Mapuche national liberation.” (La Haine (Spain) 6/15/14)
On June 19 Chile’s ambassador to the international organizations based in Geneva, Marta Maurás, gave the United Nations Human Rights Council the Bachelet government’s commitment to end the application of Chile’s “antiterrorist” law to Mapuche activists. Cuba, Germany and the US had asked Chile to discontinue the use of the law, which gives the police and courts extraordinary powers in cases the government designates as terror-related. This was one of 185 recommendations the Human Rights Council has made to Chile; the country has accepted 180 of them. The law dates back to the military dictatorship, but all the governments since the restoration of democracy, including Bachelet’s 2006-2010 administration, have used it against Mapuche activists struggling to reclaim indigenous lands. (El Nacional (Venezuela) 6/19/14 from EFE)
*3. Central America: What's Causing Child Migration?
In a statement released in the last week of June, the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), a leading organization of the Garífuna ethnic group, charged that the US-backed Honduran government was largely responsible for the dramatic increase in minors trying to migrate from Central America over the past few years [see Update #1224]. The organization said the government “blames the numbers only on narco trafficking; however, they forget that this catastrophe is also caused by collusion among politicians, business leaders, state security forces and criminal organizations linked to the trafficking of narcotics. The government has seen the situation worsen for years without doing anything to change the scenario, much less to avoid it.”
Honduras is the country providing the largest number—more than 13,000--of the nearly 35,000 underage Central Americans detained at the US border in the last six months; the others come mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador. OFRANEH pointed to statistics from the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Casa Alianza Honduras, which reported that 287 people were murdered in Honduras in May alone, 104 of them under the age of 23. From 2010 to 2013, more than 27,000 people were killed in Honduras, according to OFRANEH; about 450 of the victims were younger than 14. (Adital (Brazil) 6/23/14)
In related news, on June 23 unidentified assailants gunned down Luis Alonso Fúnez Duarte, the producer of a music program on the Súper 10 radio station in Catacamas, in the eastern department of Olancho. He was reportedly the second producer of a music program to be murdered in Olancho in June, and the 42nd Honduran media worker killed in the five years since the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009). (Adital 6/25/14)
Much of the US coverage of the child migrants has played down the violence against minors in the countries they come from and instead has emphasized reports that the migrants were drawn to the US by the expectation of lenient treatment. According to US journalist David Bacon, this version of events largely started with a report from the US Border Patrol which was “leaked” to Brandon Darby, a former informant and infiltrator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who is close to the rightwing Tea Party; reports based on this leak were circulated on the far-right website breitbart.com. (CounterPunch 6/26/14)
In contrast, a report released by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on Mar. 12 cited fear of violence as the main cause for the increased migration. A careful survey of child migrants in 2013 found “that no less than 58% of the 404 children interviewed were forcibly displaced” because of violence, and that they warrant protection as refugees under United Nations conventions. In an interview with the National Journal, UNHCR senior protection officer Leslie Vélez, one of the report’s authors, said 48% of the children “shared experiences of how they had been personally affected by the augmented violence” from “organized armed criminal actors, including drug cartels and gangs, or by state actors.” Only nine of the 404 children “mentioned any kind of possibility of the US treating children well.” She noted that the Central American migrants are not just fleeing to the US. Many go to Mexico, and migration to Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama has increased by 712% since 2008. (NJ 6/16/14)
A reporter from the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada got similar results from interviews at an immigration detention center in Tapachula in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. “Going back means losing your life because of the gangs,” a Honduran man traveling with his baby told the reporter. An older man with two granddaughters, ages seven and 10, said: “I left Honduras because they already killed three of my four sons. I can’t stay to wait for them to take away my granddaughters. There the gangs kill for anything, take our houses, our pay. Everything.” Asked if he wanted to go home, a six-year-old Honduran boy began to cry and told the reporter: “They kill people there, and you can’t play.” (LJ 6/29/14)
*4. Cuba: Foreign Investment Law Takes Effect
Cuba’s new Foreign Investment Law went into effect on June 28, as was planned when the National Assembly of Popular Power passed the measure in March [see Update #1214]. The government is hoping to generate some $2.5 billion in investment each year under the law, which cuts tax rates for foreign investors from 30% to 15% and guarantees that most foreign-owned companies will be exempt from expropriation. Investment is expected to be focused on light industry, packaging, chemicals, iron and steel, building materials, logistics and pharmaceuticals; much of it will go to the Mariel port, 40 km west of Havana, which is being developed as a major “free trade zone.” The government is currently studying 23 proposals for projects from Brazil, China, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia. The new law doesn’t allow for private Cuban citizens to invest, and Cubans will work for the foreign companies through state-owned employment companies, not directly. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/29/14 from DPA, AFP, Prensa Latina; Global Post 6/29/14 from Xinhua)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration, US/policy
A Turning Point for Drug Policy (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/27/turning-point-drug-policy-1
How the Drug Trade Criminalizes Women Disproportionately
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/30/how-drug-trade-criminalizes-women-disproportionately
Raúl Zibechi: Latin America Today, Seen From Below
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4907-raul-zibechi-latin-america-today-seen-from-below
People’s Tribunal Seeks to Counter Canadian Pro-Mining Spin (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4910-peoples-tribunal-seeks-to-counter-canadian-pro-mining-spin
Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4911-israeli-defense-company-elbit-systems-from-apartheid-wall-in-palestine-to-the-us-border
Pérez Esquivel to Griesa: it is just not to pay an illegitimate and immoral debt (Argentina)
http://alainet.org/active/74936
Chile's Bachelet Promises to Return Land to Indigenous People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4909-chiles-bachelet-promises-to-return-land-to-indigenous-people
Argentina Seeks to Ward Off “Paradoxical” Default
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4906-argentina-seeks-to-ward-off-paradoxical-default
For 2nd Anniversary of “Curuguaty Massacre,” New Report Sheds Light on the Criminalization of Peasants and Right to Land in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4904-for-2nd-anniversary-of-curuguaty-massacre-new-report-sheds-light-on-the-criminalization-of-peasants-and-right-to-land-in-paraguay
Peru now has a ‘licence to kill’ environmental protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4913-peru-now-has-a-licence-to-kill-environmental-protesters
Jurassic Park amid Peruvian poverty
http://ww4report.com/node/13322#comment-452190
Colombia: security workers blockade coal mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13333
Venezuelan President Maduro Responds to Former Ministers’ Criticisms
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10761
The U.S. Re-militarization of Central America and Mexico
https://nacla.org/article/us-re-militarization-central-america-and-mexico
Nicaragua’s Mayagna People and Their Rainforest Could Vanish
http://intercontinentalcry.org/nicaraguas-mayagna-people-rainforest-vanish-24439/
Puerto Castilla, Honduras: Corporate and Military Interests Above Garífuna Community Survival
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4905-puerto-castilla-honduras-corporate-and-military-interests-above-garifuna-community-survival
Mayan People’s Council Organizes National Strike in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4914-mayan-peoples-council-organizes-national-strike-in-guatemala
Mexico: From “the land belongs to those who work it” to “the land belongs to those who drill it.”
http://alainet.org/active/74851
Subcomandante Marcos announces: “We have decided that as of today, Marcos no longer exists” (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12406
Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians (Mexico)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/huicholes-last-peyote-guardians/
Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4912-mexico-rape-victim-faces-prison-time-for-self-defence
Thousands of Physicians March in Mexico: "We Are Doctors, Not Gods or Criminals"
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=225#1718
Wage Theft in Mexico: the Cost of an Unpaid Lunch Break
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=225#1720
Child Migrants and Media Half-Truths (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12389
Confronting the Central American Refugee Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12441
Immigrants or Refugees? (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/immigrants-or-refugees/
Tea Party and Border Patrol Spin the Story of Children in Detention
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/26/tea-party-and-border-patrol-spin-the-story-of-children-in-detention/
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. Brazil: Canadian Gold Mine Loses License
2. Chile: Bachelet Promises New Mapuche Policy
3. Central America: What's Causing Child Migration?
4. Cuba: Foreign Investment Law Takes Effect
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration, US/policy
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Brazil: Canadian Gold Mine Loses License
Brazilian federal judge Claudio Henrique de Pina has revoked Toronto-based Belo Sun Mining Corp.’s environmental license for the construction of the $750 million Volta Grande open-pit gold mine near the Xingu river in the northern state of Pará, the federal Public Ministry office in the state announced the evening of June 25. Upholding a suspension ordered last November, the judge ruled that Belo Sun had failed to address the “negative and irreversible” impact the mine would have on three indigenous groups in the area, the Paquiçamba, the Arara da Volta Grande and the Ituna/Itatá. The communities are already under threat from the construction of the nearby Belo Monte dam [see Update #1189], which will cut water flows by 80% to 90% when it goes into operation, according to the government’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI).
A Belo Sun news release said the decision only means that the company needs to complete a five-month impact study; it has already commissioned the study, which will start as soon as researchers have permission to access indigenous lands, according to the news release. The mine was expected to open in 2016 and to produce 313,100 ounces of gold each year over a 10-year lifetime; if built, it will be the largest gold mine in Brazil. Belo Sun’s shares were down nearly 10% on the Toronto Stock Exchange by noon on June 26. (Ministério Público Federal no Pará press release 6/25/14; Reuters 6/26/14; Mining.com 6/26/14). [This is the latest in a series of reversals for gold mining projects in Latin America, most notably Barrick Gold’s mammoth Pascua Lama mine on the Argentine-Chilean border in the Andes; see Update #1223.]
Meanwhile, a new study by researchers at the Federal University of Pará finds that construction at the controversial Belo Monte dam, expected to be the third largest in the world, has led to the sexual exploitation of local indigenous people. The groups impacted were the Parakanã, the Arara da Cachoeira Seca, the Arara da Volta Grande do Xingu and the Juruna do Paquiçamba, the researchers said. There is also evidence of sexual trafficking of minors. According to the daily Folha de São Paulo, the reported cases of sexual abuse of minors in Altamira--the city most affected by the Belo Monte project and the 25,000 workers building it--rose from 43 in 2010 to 75 in 2011, the year construction began. (Terra Brasil 6/8/14)
*2. Chile: Bachelet Promises New Mapuche Policy
Chilean president Michelle Bachelet announced a new government policy for the country’s indigenous communities on June 24, We Tripantu, the last day of the June 21-24 New Year celebrations observed by the Mapuche, the largest of the indigenous groups. The new policy includes the creation of an Indigenous Affairs Ministry; a Council of Indigenous Peoples to develop proposals and oversee negotiations; designated seats in Congress for indigenous groups; a commission to establish an official version of indigenous history acceptable to all sides; and a continuation of an existing program through which the government buys territory in the south-central Araucanía region and transfers it to Mapuche communities that claim it, with the goal of ending land disputes and occupations that have troubled the region in recent years [see Update #1216].
“Almost 25 years and five presidencies have passed since we recovered our democracy and despite our effort we are still in debt to [Chile’s] indigenous people,” Bachelet said, referring to the period since the end of the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. “Now is the time to have the courage to take new steps forward, not with an eye on the short term but aiming to achieve the progress that has long eluded our brothers and sisters from the indigenous communities.”
Some Mapuche activists were not convinced by Bachelet’s program. Aucán Huilcamán, who represents the Council of All Lands, an organization including Mapuche from both Chile and Argentina, dismissed the Council of Indigenous Peoples as “a kindergarten” and said the government’s policy continued “colonialism and the domestication of the indigenous peoples.” (Santiago Times 6/24/14; Reuters 6/24/14; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 6/24/14) In a statement released on June 15, a week before Bachelet’s announcement, the militant Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM) described the president’s approach as “[o]n one hand echoing the pressures of the capitalist business class in the Mapuche zone, and on the other deepening the militarization and the repression against our communities.” The CAM said it was “taking up with greater conviction its anti-capitalist struggle based on self-defense and territorial control until the Mapuche national liberation.” (La Haine (Spain) 6/15/14)
On June 19 Chile’s ambassador to the international organizations based in Geneva, Marta Maurás, gave the United Nations Human Rights Council the Bachelet government’s commitment to end the application of Chile’s “antiterrorist” law to Mapuche activists. Cuba, Germany and the US had asked Chile to discontinue the use of the law, which gives the police and courts extraordinary powers in cases the government designates as terror-related. This was one of 185 recommendations the Human Rights Council has made to Chile; the country has accepted 180 of them. The law dates back to the military dictatorship, but all the governments since the restoration of democracy, including Bachelet’s 2006-2010 administration, have used it against Mapuche activists struggling to reclaim indigenous lands. (El Nacional (Venezuela) 6/19/14 from EFE)
*3. Central America: What's Causing Child Migration?
In a statement released in the last week of June, the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), a leading organization of the Garífuna ethnic group, charged that the US-backed Honduran government was largely responsible for the dramatic increase in minors trying to migrate from Central America over the past few years [see Update #1224]. The organization said the government “blames the numbers only on narco trafficking; however, they forget that this catastrophe is also caused by collusion among politicians, business leaders, state security forces and criminal organizations linked to the trafficking of narcotics. The government has seen the situation worsen for years without doing anything to change the scenario, much less to avoid it.”
Honduras is the country providing the largest number—more than 13,000--of the nearly 35,000 underage Central Americans detained at the US border in the last six months; the others come mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador. OFRANEH pointed to statistics from the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Casa Alianza Honduras, which reported that 287 people were murdered in Honduras in May alone, 104 of them under the age of 23. From 2010 to 2013, more than 27,000 people were killed in Honduras, according to OFRANEH; about 450 of the victims were younger than 14. (Adital (Brazil) 6/23/14)
In related news, on June 23 unidentified assailants gunned down Luis Alonso Fúnez Duarte, the producer of a music program on the Súper 10 radio station in Catacamas, in the eastern department of Olancho. He was reportedly the second producer of a music program to be murdered in Olancho in June, and the 42nd Honduran media worker killed in the five years since the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009). (Adital 6/25/14)
Much of the US coverage of the child migrants has played down the violence against minors in the countries they come from and instead has emphasized reports that the migrants were drawn to the US by the expectation of lenient treatment. According to US journalist David Bacon, this version of events largely started with a report from the US Border Patrol which was “leaked” to Brandon Darby, a former informant and infiltrator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who is close to the rightwing Tea Party; reports based on this leak were circulated on the far-right website breitbart.com. (CounterPunch 6/26/14)
In contrast, a report released by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on Mar. 12 cited fear of violence as the main cause for the increased migration. A careful survey of child migrants in 2013 found “that no less than 58% of the 404 children interviewed were forcibly displaced” because of violence, and that they warrant protection as refugees under United Nations conventions. In an interview with the National Journal, UNHCR senior protection officer Leslie Vélez, one of the report’s authors, said 48% of the children “shared experiences of how they had been personally affected by the augmented violence” from “organized armed criminal actors, including drug cartels and gangs, or by state actors.” Only nine of the 404 children “mentioned any kind of possibility of the US treating children well.” She noted that the Central American migrants are not just fleeing to the US. Many go to Mexico, and migration to Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama has increased by 712% since 2008. (NJ 6/16/14)
A reporter from the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada got similar results from interviews at an immigration detention center in Tapachula in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. “Going back means losing your life because of the gangs,” a Honduran man traveling with his baby told the reporter. An older man with two granddaughters, ages seven and 10, said: “I left Honduras because they already killed three of my four sons. I can’t stay to wait for them to take away my granddaughters. There the gangs kill for anything, take our houses, our pay. Everything.” Asked if he wanted to go home, a six-year-old Honduran boy began to cry and told the reporter: “They kill people there, and you can’t play.” (LJ 6/29/14)
*4. Cuba: Foreign Investment Law Takes Effect
Cuba’s new Foreign Investment Law went into effect on June 28, as was planned when the National Assembly of Popular Power passed the measure in March [see Update #1214]. The government is hoping to generate some $2.5 billion in investment each year under the law, which cuts tax rates for foreign investors from 30% to 15% and guarantees that most foreign-owned companies will be exempt from expropriation. Investment is expected to be focused on light industry, packaging, chemicals, iron and steel, building materials, logistics and pharmaceuticals; much of it will go to the Mariel port, 40 km west of Havana, which is being developed as a major “free trade zone.” The government is currently studying 23 proposals for projects from Brazil, China, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia. The new law doesn’t allow for private Cuban citizens to invest, and Cubans will work for the foreign companies through state-owned employment companies, not directly. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/29/14 from DPA, AFP, Prensa Latina; Global Post 6/29/14 from Xinhua)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration, US/policy
A Turning Point for Drug Policy (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/27/turning-point-drug-policy-1
How the Drug Trade Criminalizes Women Disproportionately
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/30/how-drug-trade-criminalizes-women-disproportionately
Raúl Zibechi: Latin America Today, Seen From Below
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4907-raul-zibechi-latin-america-today-seen-from-below
People’s Tribunal Seeks to Counter Canadian Pro-Mining Spin (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4910-peoples-tribunal-seeks-to-counter-canadian-pro-mining-spin
Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4911-israeli-defense-company-elbit-systems-from-apartheid-wall-in-palestine-to-the-us-border
Pérez Esquivel to Griesa: it is just not to pay an illegitimate and immoral debt (Argentina)
http://alainet.org/active/74936
Chile's Bachelet Promises to Return Land to Indigenous People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4909-chiles-bachelet-promises-to-return-land-to-indigenous-people
Argentina Seeks to Ward Off “Paradoxical” Default
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4906-argentina-seeks-to-ward-off-paradoxical-default
For 2nd Anniversary of “Curuguaty Massacre,” New Report Sheds Light on the Criminalization of Peasants and Right to Land in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4904-for-2nd-anniversary-of-curuguaty-massacre-new-report-sheds-light-on-the-criminalization-of-peasants-and-right-to-land-in-paraguay
Peru now has a ‘licence to kill’ environmental protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4913-peru-now-has-a-licence-to-kill-environmental-protesters
Jurassic Park amid Peruvian poverty
http://ww4report.com/node/13322#comment-452190
Colombia: security workers blockade coal mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13333
Venezuelan President Maduro Responds to Former Ministers’ Criticisms
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10761
The U.S. Re-militarization of Central America and Mexico
https://nacla.org/article/us-re-militarization-central-america-and-mexico
Nicaragua’s Mayagna People and Their Rainforest Could Vanish
http://intercontinentalcry.org/nicaraguas-mayagna-people-rainforest-vanish-24439/
Puerto Castilla, Honduras: Corporate and Military Interests Above Garífuna Community Survival
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4905-puerto-castilla-honduras-corporate-and-military-interests-above-garifuna-community-survival
Mayan People’s Council Organizes National Strike in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4914-mayan-peoples-council-organizes-national-strike-in-guatemala
Mexico: From “the land belongs to those who work it” to “the land belongs to those who drill it.”
http://alainet.org/active/74851
Subcomandante Marcos announces: “We have decided that as of today, Marcos no longer exists” (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12406
Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians (Mexico)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/huicholes-last-peyote-guardians/
Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4912-mexico-rape-victim-faces-prison-time-for-self-defence
Thousands of Physicians March in Mexico: "We Are Doctors, Not Gods or Criminals"
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=225#1718
Wage Theft in Mexico: the Cost of an Unpaid Lunch Break
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=225#1720
Child Migrants and Media Half-Truths (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12389
Confronting the Central American Refugee Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12441
Immigrants or Refugees? (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/immigrants-or-refugees/
Tea Party and Border Patrol Spin the Story of Children in Detention
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/26/tea-party-and-border-patrol-spin-the-story-of-children-in-detention/
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, June 24, 2014
WNU #1224: US Acts on “Danger” From Central American Children
Issue #1224, June 22, 2014
1. Central America: US Acts on Child Migrant “Danger”
2. Mexico: Wages Stay Down in Stalled Economy
3. Haiti: Martelly Harasses Opponents, Gets Award
4. Puerto Rico: Austerity Law May Spark Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration, US/policy
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. Central America: US Acts on Child Migrant “Danger”
US vice president Joe Biden made a one-day visit to Guatemala on June 20 for a meeting with regional authorities on the recent increase in Central Americans, especially underage minors, apprehended while attempting to enter the US without authorization at the Mexican border. Calling the influx of children “an enormous danger for security” as well as a “humanitarian issue,” Biden said the US planned to continue repatriating the young immigrants but would provide Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras with US$9.6 million to reintegrate the deportees into society. The US is also offering financial aid that US officials say will help stop the flow of immigrants: US$40 million to Guatemala to launch a five-year program to reduce youth recruitment into gangs; US$25 million for a five-year program to add 77 youth centers to the 30 already operating in El Salvador; US$18.5 million through the six-year-old US-sponsored Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) to support Honduran institutions in the fight against crime; and another US$161.5 million for CARSI throughout the region.
Participants in the meeting—the last stop on a tour that had taken Biden to Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic—included Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén, Honduran government coordinator Jorge Ramón Hernández and Mexican governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio.
The number of unaccompanied Central American minors detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through May 2014 increased by 66% over the number in the same period a year earlier, according to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The total of 34,611 detained Central American children included 9,850 Salvadorans, 11,479 Guatemalans and 13,282 Hondurans. US officials blame the sudden increase on Central American governments’ failure to control the drug-related violence that drives many youths to flee their countries; the US also cites reports of rumors that US immigrant authorities would be lenient with unaccompanied minors caught at the border.
Central American officials respond by pointing to the US government’s failure to control the demand for drugs in the US, the main stimulus for drug trafficking in the Caribbean Basin region, and also to frustration over the US government’s apparent inability to change its laws to accommodate some 11 million immigrants now living in the country without documents. The Central Americans “have focused their diplomatic efforts on pushing for better conditions for the detained children,” according to the New York Times. Guatemalan president Pérez Molina has asked the US to grant Guatemalans temporary protected status (TPS) in the US, while Honduran foreign minister Mireya Agüero de Corrales has called for Honduran minors to be granted special status to stay in the US with family members. Honduras’ rightwing president, Juan Orlando Hernández, pointedly skipped the meeting with Biden so he could attend the World Cup soccer championship in Brazil. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/18/14; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/20/14 from EFE; NYT 6/21/14)
Progressive organizations are also critical of US policies. In a June 18 statement SOA Watch, a US-based group that tracks abuses by Latin American military officers trained at the US Army’s School of the Americas (SOA, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC), noted that the increases in unauthorized migration from Honduras followed the “SOA-graduate led coup” in that country on June 28, 2009, almost exactly five years before Biden’s 2014 visit. “The current humanitarian crisis on the border is a direct result of the drastic US-led militarization of the drug war [in Central America and Mexico], unequal economic relationships (e.g. Free Trade Agreements that have ravaged campesino communities), and US support for the cartel-infiltrated post-coup government of Honduras,” SOA Watch charged. The group encourages US residents to sign a petition to the US Congress “to end the counterproductive funding of the Drug War and the corrupt Honduran regime” (accessible at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15901).
(SOA Watch 6/18/14 via Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County)
On June 21 the Mexican Senate’s Human Rights Commission called on the US government to respect the rights of the minors detained at the border and asked Mexican diplomats to make visits to detention centers to ensure that the youths are being treated properly. But Mexican human rights groups continued to focus on the mistreatment of Central American migrants passing through Mexico [see Update #1220]. Central Americans traveling in the northern state of Coahuila cite the local police along with criminal gangs as the main dangers they face. Pedro Pantoja, a Catholic priest and an adviser at a Coahuila shelter for migrants, says the travelers sometimes fear the police more than the gangs: “They don’t know who to run from.” A Mexican reporter describes the municipalities of Coatzacoalcos, Tierra Blanca and Las Choapas in the south of Veracruz as “the Bermuda Triangle for Central American migrants” because of the regular attacks by armed gangs. In the most recent case, three Central Americans were shot by robbers as they tried to ride a freight train in the area on the weekend of June 13; one died from his wounds. (LJ 6/18/14, 6/22/14)
*2. Mexico: Wages Stay Down in Stalled Economy
Even as Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto continues to push for economic “reforms” [see Update #1214], government agencies report that the economy still has one of the worst records in the hemisphere. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew just 1.1% in 2013, the poorest result in four years, and the government has reduced its forecast for growth in 2014 to 2.7%. The Banco de México, the country’s central bank, cut its key interest rate this June to stimulate economic activity, warning that the growth outlook was “weaker than expectations even a couple of weeks ago.” Only one-half of the population works in the formal economy, and even these workers are probably earning less than their parents did. Mexico’s legal minimum wage has fallen at least 66% in purchasing power over the last three decades, according to Alicia Bárcena, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish).
In an interview published by the left-leaning daily La Jornada, Bárcena said the largest drop in the minimum wage occurred in the 1980s; the wage stabilized in the 1990s, but it failed to grow and then fell slightly with the 2008 world economic crisis. Mexico is one of the few Latin American countries where the minimum wage didn’t recover during the past 10 years, in sharp contrast to Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Uruguay. Citing the example of Brazil, where the minimum wage doubled from 2002 to 2011, Bárcena said a clear and consistent minimum wage policy is what has been most effective in fighting poverty and inequality over the past decade. CEPAL is supporting a call from Miguel Angel Mancera, the center-left head of government for Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City), for a national discussion of the minimum wage. (LJ 6/9/14; Financial Times (UK) 6/18/14)
Mexico’s economy has been closely tied to the US economy, especially in the 20 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. The agreement has created both winners, such as Mexico’s automotive assembly sector, and losers, notably agriculture, according to Alicia Girón, an economic researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “In our case, with opening up and removing the duties on corn, genetically modified (GM) corn has arrived in Mexico and displaced production at the local level,” Girón told the Pervuvian online magazine Mariátegui. “So if we observe the fields that were abandoned or simply stopped producing corn, now they are centers for narco trafficking.” The loss of work in the countryside was also a major force driving migration to the US, she said. “It’s a lesson that all the free trade treaties that have been signed with the US, such as those with Colombia, Chile, Peru, should take into account.” (Mariátegui 6/6/14)
*3. Haiti: Martelly Harasses Opponents, Gets Award
Haitian investigative judge Sonel Jean François ordered political activist Rony Timothée provisionally released on June 4 while an inquiry continued into charges that he had set fire to a vehicle and incited others to crime during a May 14 demonstration against the government of President Michel Martelly. Timothée--a spokesperson for the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (FOPARC), which backs the Family Lavalas (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004)-- was arrested by armed civilians on May 17 with a misdated warrant and was held in prison in Arcahaie, a town some 30 km north of Port-au-Prince, starting on May 19. Judge François is also investigating two other defendants in the case, Assad Volcy and Buron Odigé.
“Everyone knows that Timothée’s arrest was of a political nature,” his attorney, André Michel, told the online news agency AlterPresse on June 4. “He had the good luck to appear before an independent judge,” Michel added, contrasting Timothée’s treatment to the situation of two other clients, Enold and Josué Florestal, who have been imprisoned since August 2013 [see Update #1188]. Another opposition figure has also faced government harassment. Moïse Jean-Charles, a senator for North department [see Update #1204], was attacked by national police agents on May 8 as he was returning to Port-au-Prince from a funeral for another activist, Fritz Gérald Civil, at Miragoâne in Nippes department. On May 30 the senator was barred from visiting Timothée at the Arcahaie prison, and several witnesses say he was attacked by guards at the prison. (AlterPresse 5/30/24, 6/5/14, 6/9/14)
On June 19 President Martelly attended a black-tie fundraiser in midtown New York to receive an award for work in education from the Happy Hearts Fund, a foundation that builds schools in areas hit by natural disasters. Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) was honored at the same event for his work as the top United Nations (UN) envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort. The event, which reportedly raised $2.5 million, featured business leaders, fashion models and entertainment figures. At one point Martelly, formerly a singer of Haitian konpa music under the stage name “Sweet Micky,” joined with Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean to perform Bob Marley's “No Woman No Cry.” The Happy Hearts Fund’s founder, the model Petra Nemcova, is romantically involved with Martelly’s prime minister, Laurent Lamothe.
Some 40-50 New York-area Haitians and their supporters protested outside on 42nd Street for about three hours, chanting “Where is the money?” from behind barricades as celebrities like fashion designer Donna Karan entered the event. Billions of dollars were raised for relief efforts after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti in January 2010, but Haitians say very little seemed to reach them. Bill Clinton headed the now-defunct Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), an international group charged with monitoring the funds. (Wall Street Journal online 6/20/14; report from Update editor)
*4. Puerto Rico: Austerity Law May Spark Strike
As of June 19 several Puerto Rican public employee unions appeared set to call a general strike to protest Law 76, a special austerity measure that Gov. Alejandro García Padilla signed on June 17. A coalition of 35 unions said it had selected a date for a general strike but would keep it secret so as to take the government by surprise; the union didn’t describe the form the strike would take. Two major unions—the Union of Workers of the Electrical Industry and Circulation (UTIER), which represents workers at the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA, AEE in Spanish), and the Authentic Independent Union (UIA), which represents workers at the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA, AAA in Spanish)--held strike votes on June 17 and then staged a protest at San Juan’s Plaza Las Américas shopping mall. Some unions also started holding smaller job actions in the first week of June. In October 2009 the unions responded to earlier austerity measures with a powerful one-day general strike [see Update #1008], but it was unclear whether they would be able to mount a similar action now.
Law 76, the Special Law of Fiscal and Operational Sustainability of the Government, is a response to a fiscal crisis from February, when US rating agencies decided to reduce Puerto Rican bonds to junk status [see Update #1208]. The measure allows the government to renegotiate public employees’ contracts, liquidate unused sick days and freeze salaries; there are also options for privatizing PREPA and closing 100 public schools. Investors seemed unsure the austerity measures would work: yields on the $3.5 billion junk bonds issued in March soared in June, reaching 9.65% on June 19.
Union leaders insist that the drastic measures are unnecessary. On June 20, Julio Vargas, the president of UTIER’s Solidarity Program (ProSol), charged at a press conference that management employees had given themselves raises of as much as $3,500 a month in the last third of 2013, shortly before insisting on sacrifices by unionized workers. Meanwhile, UIA president Pedro Irene Maymí told demonstrators outside the Government Development Bank that day that the government had outsourced work in a total of $8 billion in contracts, not the $1.5 billion claimed by Gov. García Padilla. “This is the way they’re carrying off the money, to García Padilla’s friends,” Maymí said. The Puerto Rican Socialist Workers Movement (MST) called for the government to declare a moratorium on the public debt. (In These Times 6/9/14; Reuters 6/19/14; El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 6/20/14; Prensa Latina 6/21/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration, US/policy
Latin America’s Rightwing Parties Are Falling Apart
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4903-latin-americas-rightwing-parties-are-falling-apart
Canada Found Guilty for Role in Mining Injustices in Latin America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12368
Is the Chilean Student Movement Being Co-opted by Its Government?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4902-is-the-chilean-student-movement-being-co-opted-by-its-government
Soccer Is Democratic. The World Cup Is Oligarchy. (Brazil)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/19/soccer-democratic-world-cup-oligarchy
Repressing World Cup protests — a booming business for Brazil
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/repressing-world-cup-protests-booming-business-brazil/
Peru: prison for regional leader who opposed mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13322
US Scientists, Oil Giant Stole Indigenous Blood (Ecuador)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/us-scientists-oil-giant-stole-indigenous-blood-24385/
Ecuador’s CONAIE Indigenous Movement: A Return to the Bases in a Fight for Water Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4901-ecuadors-conaie-indigenous-movement-a-return-to-the-bases-in-a-fight-for-water-rights
Against the war, a mandate for peace (Colombia)
http://alainet.org/active/74665
Colombia Peace Talks Survive Elections, May Have Lasting Implications for Regional Integration and US-Led “War on Drugs”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/colombia-peace-talks-survive-elections-may-have-lasting-implications-for-regional-integration-and-us-led-war-on-drugs
Santos' Presidential Win in Colombia is a Vote for Peace
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4900-santos-presidential-win-in-colombia-is-a-vote-for-peace
Protest and Destabilization in Venezuela: The Difference Between the Violent And Non-Violent Right Is Smaller Than You May Think
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/17/protest-and-destabilization-venezuela-difference-between-violent-and-non-violent-righ
Is Poverty Still Falling in Venezuela?
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10749
Venezuela: Amazon indigenous protest mining law
http://ww4report.com/node/13321
El Salvador: charter to recognize indigenous rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13320
The Root Causes of Migration: End U.S. Funding of the Drug War and the Corrupt Honduran Regime
http://www.peaceandjusticesonomaco.org/root-causes-migration-end-us-funding-drug-war-and-corrupt-honduran-regime
There Has Never Been a Better Time to be Forced into Exile for Being Gay in Honduras
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/there-has-never-been-a-better-time-to-be-forced-into-exile-for-being-gay-in-honduras
Guatemalans File Lawsuit Against Canadian Mining Company for 2013 Shooting
http://intercontinentalcry.org/guatemalans-file-lawsuit-canadian-mining-company-2013-shooting/
Zapatistas Mourn a Death and Begin a New Cycle of Building Indigenous Autonomy (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12372
Mexican Workers Battle Firings, Peso-Pinching
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-workers-battle-firings-peso-pinching/
Puerto Rico Unions Threaten Strike Against Austerity Budget
http://inthesetimes.org/working/entry/16814/puerto_rico_unions_threaten_strike_against_austerity_budget
Juarez Mother Seeks U.S. Political Asylum (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/juarez-mother-seeks-u-s-political-asylum/
The Latino Media Gap: A Conversation with Frances Negrón Muntaner (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/19/latino-media-gap-conversation-frances-negr%C3%B3n-muntaner
How Deportation Created A New Class Of Disposable Soldiers (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/6/20/how-deportation-created-new-class-disposable-soldiers
Another US Spying Problem in Latin America: The US DEA (US/policy)
http://alainet.org/active/74773
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. Central America: US Acts on Child Migrant “Danger”
2. Mexico: Wages Stay Down in Stalled Economy
3. Haiti: Martelly Harasses Opponents, Gets Award
4. Puerto Rico: Austerity Law May Spark Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration, US/policy
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. Central America: US Acts on Child Migrant “Danger”
US vice president Joe Biden made a one-day visit to Guatemala on June 20 for a meeting with regional authorities on the recent increase in Central Americans, especially underage minors, apprehended while attempting to enter the US without authorization at the Mexican border. Calling the influx of children “an enormous danger for security” as well as a “humanitarian issue,” Biden said the US planned to continue repatriating the young immigrants but would provide Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras with US$9.6 million to reintegrate the deportees into society. The US is also offering financial aid that US officials say will help stop the flow of immigrants: US$40 million to Guatemala to launch a five-year program to reduce youth recruitment into gangs; US$25 million for a five-year program to add 77 youth centers to the 30 already operating in El Salvador; US$18.5 million through the six-year-old US-sponsored Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) to support Honduran institutions in the fight against crime; and another US$161.5 million for CARSI throughout the region.
Participants in the meeting—the last stop on a tour that had taken Biden to Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic—included Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén, Honduran government coordinator Jorge Ramón Hernández and Mexican governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio.
The number of unaccompanied Central American minors detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through May 2014 increased by 66% over the number in the same period a year earlier, according to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The total of 34,611 detained Central American children included 9,850 Salvadorans, 11,479 Guatemalans and 13,282 Hondurans. US officials blame the sudden increase on Central American governments’ failure to control the drug-related violence that drives many youths to flee their countries; the US also cites reports of rumors that US immigrant authorities would be lenient with unaccompanied minors caught at the border.
Central American officials respond by pointing to the US government’s failure to control the demand for drugs in the US, the main stimulus for drug trafficking in the Caribbean Basin region, and also to frustration over the US government’s apparent inability to change its laws to accommodate some 11 million immigrants now living in the country without documents. The Central Americans “have focused their diplomatic efforts on pushing for better conditions for the detained children,” according to the New York Times. Guatemalan president Pérez Molina has asked the US to grant Guatemalans temporary protected status (TPS) in the US, while Honduran foreign minister Mireya Agüero de Corrales has called for Honduran minors to be granted special status to stay in the US with family members. Honduras’ rightwing president, Juan Orlando Hernández, pointedly skipped the meeting with Biden so he could attend the World Cup soccer championship in Brazil. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/18/14; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/20/14 from EFE; NYT 6/21/14)
Progressive organizations are also critical of US policies. In a June 18 statement SOA Watch, a US-based group that tracks abuses by Latin American military officers trained at the US Army’s School of the Americas (SOA, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC), noted that the increases in unauthorized migration from Honduras followed the “SOA-graduate led coup” in that country on June 28, 2009, almost exactly five years before Biden’s 2014 visit. “The current humanitarian crisis on the border is a direct result of the drastic US-led militarization of the drug war [in Central America and Mexico], unequal economic relationships (e.g. Free Trade Agreements that have ravaged campesino communities), and US support for the cartel-infiltrated post-coup government of Honduras,” SOA Watch charged. The group encourages US residents to sign a petition to the US Congress “to end the counterproductive funding of the Drug War and the corrupt Honduran regime” (accessible at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15901).
(SOA Watch 6/18/14 via Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County)
On June 21 the Mexican Senate’s Human Rights Commission called on the US government to respect the rights of the minors detained at the border and asked Mexican diplomats to make visits to detention centers to ensure that the youths are being treated properly. But Mexican human rights groups continued to focus on the mistreatment of Central American migrants passing through Mexico [see Update #1220]. Central Americans traveling in the northern state of Coahuila cite the local police along with criminal gangs as the main dangers they face. Pedro Pantoja, a Catholic priest and an adviser at a Coahuila shelter for migrants, says the travelers sometimes fear the police more than the gangs: “They don’t know who to run from.” A Mexican reporter describes the municipalities of Coatzacoalcos, Tierra Blanca and Las Choapas in the south of Veracruz as “the Bermuda Triangle for Central American migrants” because of the regular attacks by armed gangs. In the most recent case, three Central Americans were shot by robbers as they tried to ride a freight train in the area on the weekend of June 13; one died from his wounds. (LJ 6/18/14, 6/22/14)
*2. Mexico: Wages Stay Down in Stalled Economy
Even as Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto continues to push for economic “reforms” [see Update #1214], government agencies report that the economy still has one of the worst records in the hemisphere. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew just 1.1% in 2013, the poorest result in four years, and the government has reduced its forecast for growth in 2014 to 2.7%. The Banco de México, the country’s central bank, cut its key interest rate this June to stimulate economic activity, warning that the growth outlook was “weaker than expectations even a couple of weeks ago.” Only one-half of the population works in the formal economy, and even these workers are probably earning less than their parents did. Mexico’s legal minimum wage has fallen at least 66% in purchasing power over the last three decades, according to Alicia Bárcena, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish).
In an interview published by the left-leaning daily La Jornada, Bárcena said the largest drop in the minimum wage occurred in the 1980s; the wage stabilized in the 1990s, but it failed to grow and then fell slightly with the 2008 world economic crisis. Mexico is one of the few Latin American countries where the minimum wage didn’t recover during the past 10 years, in sharp contrast to Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Uruguay. Citing the example of Brazil, where the minimum wage doubled from 2002 to 2011, Bárcena said a clear and consistent minimum wage policy is what has been most effective in fighting poverty and inequality over the past decade. CEPAL is supporting a call from Miguel Angel Mancera, the center-left head of government for Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City), for a national discussion of the minimum wage. (LJ 6/9/14; Financial Times (UK) 6/18/14)
Mexico’s economy has been closely tied to the US economy, especially in the 20 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. The agreement has created both winners, such as Mexico’s automotive assembly sector, and losers, notably agriculture, according to Alicia Girón, an economic researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “In our case, with opening up and removing the duties on corn, genetically modified (GM) corn has arrived in Mexico and displaced production at the local level,” Girón told the Pervuvian online magazine Mariátegui. “So if we observe the fields that were abandoned or simply stopped producing corn, now they are centers for narco trafficking.” The loss of work in the countryside was also a major force driving migration to the US, she said. “It’s a lesson that all the free trade treaties that have been signed with the US, such as those with Colombia, Chile, Peru, should take into account.” (Mariátegui 6/6/14)
*3. Haiti: Martelly Harasses Opponents, Gets Award
Haitian investigative judge Sonel Jean François ordered political activist Rony Timothée provisionally released on June 4 while an inquiry continued into charges that he had set fire to a vehicle and incited others to crime during a May 14 demonstration against the government of President Michel Martelly. Timothée--a spokesperson for the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (FOPARC), which backs the Family Lavalas (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004)-- was arrested by armed civilians on May 17 with a misdated warrant and was held in prison in Arcahaie, a town some 30 km north of Port-au-Prince, starting on May 19. Judge François is also investigating two other defendants in the case, Assad Volcy and Buron Odigé.
“Everyone knows that Timothée’s arrest was of a political nature,” his attorney, André Michel, told the online news agency AlterPresse on June 4. “He had the good luck to appear before an independent judge,” Michel added, contrasting Timothée’s treatment to the situation of two other clients, Enold and Josué Florestal, who have been imprisoned since August 2013 [see Update #1188]. Another opposition figure has also faced government harassment. Moïse Jean-Charles, a senator for North department [see Update #1204], was attacked by national police agents on May 8 as he was returning to Port-au-Prince from a funeral for another activist, Fritz Gérald Civil, at Miragoâne in Nippes department. On May 30 the senator was barred from visiting Timothée at the Arcahaie prison, and several witnesses say he was attacked by guards at the prison. (AlterPresse 5/30/24, 6/5/14, 6/9/14)
On June 19 President Martelly attended a black-tie fundraiser in midtown New York to receive an award for work in education from the Happy Hearts Fund, a foundation that builds schools in areas hit by natural disasters. Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) was honored at the same event for his work as the top United Nations (UN) envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort. The event, which reportedly raised $2.5 million, featured business leaders, fashion models and entertainment figures. At one point Martelly, formerly a singer of Haitian konpa music under the stage name “Sweet Micky,” joined with Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean to perform Bob Marley's “No Woman No Cry.” The Happy Hearts Fund’s founder, the model Petra Nemcova, is romantically involved with Martelly’s prime minister, Laurent Lamothe.
Some 40-50 New York-area Haitians and their supporters protested outside on 42nd Street for about three hours, chanting “Where is the money?” from behind barricades as celebrities like fashion designer Donna Karan entered the event. Billions of dollars were raised for relief efforts after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti in January 2010, but Haitians say very little seemed to reach them. Bill Clinton headed the now-defunct Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), an international group charged with monitoring the funds. (Wall Street Journal online 6/20/14; report from Update editor)
*4. Puerto Rico: Austerity Law May Spark Strike
As of June 19 several Puerto Rican public employee unions appeared set to call a general strike to protest Law 76, a special austerity measure that Gov. Alejandro García Padilla signed on June 17. A coalition of 35 unions said it had selected a date for a general strike but would keep it secret so as to take the government by surprise; the union didn’t describe the form the strike would take. Two major unions—the Union of Workers of the Electrical Industry and Circulation (UTIER), which represents workers at the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA, AEE in Spanish), and the Authentic Independent Union (UIA), which represents workers at the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA, AAA in Spanish)--held strike votes on June 17 and then staged a protest at San Juan’s Plaza Las Américas shopping mall. Some unions also started holding smaller job actions in the first week of June. In October 2009 the unions responded to earlier austerity measures with a powerful one-day general strike [see Update #1008], but it was unclear whether they would be able to mount a similar action now.
Law 76, the Special Law of Fiscal and Operational Sustainability of the Government, is a response to a fiscal crisis from February, when US rating agencies decided to reduce Puerto Rican bonds to junk status [see Update #1208]. The measure allows the government to renegotiate public employees’ contracts, liquidate unused sick days and freeze salaries; there are also options for privatizing PREPA and closing 100 public schools. Investors seemed unsure the austerity measures would work: yields on the $3.5 billion junk bonds issued in March soared in June, reaching 9.65% on June 19.
Union leaders insist that the drastic measures are unnecessary. On June 20, Julio Vargas, the president of UTIER’s Solidarity Program (ProSol), charged at a press conference that management employees had given themselves raises of as much as $3,500 a month in the last third of 2013, shortly before insisting on sacrifices by unionized workers. Meanwhile, UIA president Pedro Irene Maymí told demonstrators outside the Government Development Bank that day that the government had outsourced work in a total of $8 billion in contracts, not the $1.5 billion claimed by Gov. García Padilla. “This is the way they’re carrying off the money, to García Padilla’s friends,” Maymí said. The Puerto Rican Socialist Workers Movement (MST) called for the government to declare a moratorium on the public debt. (In These Times 6/9/14; Reuters 6/19/14; El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 6/20/14; Prensa Latina 6/21/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration, US/policy
Latin America’s Rightwing Parties Are Falling Apart
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4903-latin-americas-rightwing-parties-are-falling-apart
Canada Found Guilty for Role in Mining Injustices in Latin America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12368
Is the Chilean Student Movement Being Co-opted by Its Government?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4902-is-the-chilean-student-movement-being-co-opted-by-its-government
Soccer Is Democratic. The World Cup Is Oligarchy. (Brazil)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/19/soccer-democratic-world-cup-oligarchy
Repressing World Cup protests — a booming business for Brazil
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/repressing-world-cup-protests-booming-business-brazil/
Peru: prison for regional leader who opposed mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13322
US Scientists, Oil Giant Stole Indigenous Blood (Ecuador)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/us-scientists-oil-giant-stole-indigenous-blood-24385/
Ecuador’s CONAIE Indigenous Movement: A Return to the Bases in a Fight for Water Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4901-ecuadors-conaie-indigenous-movement-a-return-to-the-bases-in-a-fight-for-water-rights
Against the war, a mandate for peace (Colombia)
http://alainet.org/active/74665
Colombia Peace Talks Survive Elections, May Have Lasting Implications for Regional Integration and US-Led “War on Drugs”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/colombia-peace-talks-survive-elections-may-have-lasting-implications-for-regional-integration-and-us-led-war-on-drugs
Santos' Presidential Win in Colombia is a Vote for Peace
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4900-santos-presidential-win-in-colombia-is-a-vote-for-peace
Protest and Destabilization in Venezuela: The Difference Between the Violent And Non-Violent Right Is Smaller Than You May Think
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/17/protest-and-destabilization-venezuela-difference-between-violent-and-non-violent-righ
Is Poverty Still Falling in Venezuela?
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10749
Venezuela: Amazon indigenous protest mining law
http://ww4report.com/node/13321
El Salvador: charter to recognize indigenous rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13320
The Root Causes of Migration: End U.S. Funding of the Drug War and the Corrupt Honduran Regime
http://www.peaceandjusticesonomaco.org/root-causes-migration-end-us-funding-drug-war-and-corrupt-honduran-regime
There Has Never Been a Better Time to be Forced into Exile for Being Gay in Honduras
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/there-has-never-been-a-better-time-to-be-forced-into-exile-for-being-gay-in-honduras
Guatemalans File Lawsuit Against Canadian Mining Company for 2013 Shooting
http://intercontinentalcry.org/guatemalans-file-lawsuit-canadian-mining-company-2013-shooting/
Zapatistas Mourn a Death and Begin a New Cycle of Building Indigenous Autonomy (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12372
Mexican Workers Battle Firings, Peso-Pinching
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-workers-battle-firings-peso-pinching/
Puerto Rico Unions Threaten Strike Against Austerity Budget
http://inthesetimes.org/working/entry/16814/puerto_rico_unions_threaten_strike_against_austerity_budget
Juarez Mother Seeks U.S. Political Asylum (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/juarez-mother-seeks-u-s-political-asylum/
The Latino Media Gap: A Conversation with Frances Negrón Muntaner (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/19/latino-media-gap-conversation-frances-negr%C3%B3n-muntaner
How Deportation Created A New Class Of Disposable Soldiers (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/6/20/how-deportation-created-new-class-disposable-soldiers
Another US Spying Problem in Latin America: The US DEA (US/policy)
http://alainet.org/active/74773
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, January 28, 2014
WNU #1206: Guatemalan Workers Cheated Out of $6 Million
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1206, January 26, 2014
1. Guatemala: Maquila Owner Stole $6 Million From Workers
2. Mexico: Police Break Up Blockade of Goldcorp Mine
3. Brazil: 143 Arrested as World Cup Protests Continue
4. Argentina: Peso Falls as Emerging Markets Weaken
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, 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. Guatemala: Maquila Owner Stole $6 Million From Workers
Over the course of 12 years management at the Alianza Fashion apparel factory in the central Guatemalan department of Chimaltenango cheated employees out of some $6 million dollars in back wages and benefits, according to a report released on Jan. 23 by the Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights (IGLHR, formerly the National Labor Committee). The maquiladora—a tax-exempt assembly plant producing for export—stitched items like suits and jackets for at least 60 US retailers, including Macy’s, JCPenney, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart. The owner, a South Korean national named Boon Chong Park, shut the factory down in March 2013.
The report is based on more than 200 documents--including pay stubs, invoices and manufacturing specifications—that were smuggled out of the plant last spring. According to the IGLHR, the documents show that while the plant usually employed from 1,050 to 1,500 workers, the company only made the legally required contributions for pensions and healthcare for 65 workers from 2001 to 2013. The total lost benefits came to more than $4.7 million. When Alianza closed down, the company failed to pay the 548 workers still employed there the $1.2 million it owed them in back wages and benefits. Base pay at the plant was $1.05 an hour, about the same as the minimum wage for the maquiladora sector in 2013, 65.63 quetzales (US$8.36) a day. In 2010 the company fired 60 workers without severance pay after they formed an independent union and registered it with the government.
The North American companies that had their goods produced at Alianza have tried to play down their connection to the plant; spokespeople said the companies hadn’t placed orders recently, or they insisted that the orders were placed through third parties. The Phillips-Van Heusen company has donated $100,000 to a fund for the 548 workers left out of work when the plant closed, but as of Jan. 23 other North American companies had failed to respond to requests that they make similar contributions. (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 12/26/13; ABC News 1/23/14; The Nation 1/23/14; Univision 1/24/14)
Shortly after the company closed last March, some 800 of the former workers occupied the plant to demand payment of back wages, apparently without success. They also complained that they had been underpaid during the year leading up to the closure, and that managers routinely subjected them to racist insults. (Prensa Libre 4/1/13)
*2. Mexico: Police Break Up Blockade of Goldcorp Mine
On Jan. 24 the government of the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas sent about 200 riot and ministerial police to remove some 30 campesinos and their relatives from an entrance they were blocking to the Peñasquito open-pit gold mine in Mazapil municipality. Campesinos from the Las Mesas ejido (communal farm) and the Cedros annex began blocking the entrance on Jan. 16 to get attention from state and federal authorities for their demand to reopen negotiations with the mine’s owner, the Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc., about the rent the company is paying to use ejido land. In addition to removing the protesters, the police arrested two campesino leaders, the brothers Epifanio and Mónico Morquecho, and took them to the prison in Concepción del Oro municipality, 40 km away; they were charged with damages, looting and extortion, based on a criminal complaint from Goldcorp.
The Peñasquito mine occupies 5,400 hectares in the Mazapil Valley, including 240 hectares Goldcorp rented from the ejido in 2006 for 30 years in exchange for a one-time payment of 10,000 pesos (about US$744) per hectare. Goldcorp “took advantage of our ignorance,” the ejido members told a reporter on Jan. 24. The campesinos’ blockade was mostly symbolic, since the mine’s employees and trucks could use at least three other entrances. The state government reportedly ordered the large-scale police operation against the protesters after Goldcorp threatened to suspend work at the Peñasquito and withdraw its investments in the state. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/14)
In other news, activist and theater director Francisco Kuykendall (“Kuy”) died on Jan. 25 after suffering a cardiopulmonary arrest. A supporter of The Other Campaign, a political movement inspired by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), Kuykendall was one of two protesters seriously injured during demonstrations in Mexico City against the inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto on Dec. 1, 2012 [see Update #1155]. His skull was fractured when he was hit by a police projectile—either a rubber bullet or a tear gas grenade—and he never completely recovered. Kuykendall’s friends and colleagues said his death was an example of the impunity that continues in Mexico, as well a message from the government intended to intimidate dissident groups. (LJ 1/26/14)
*3. Brazil: 143 Arrested as World Cup Protests Continue
Brazilians demonstrated in 36 cities on Jan. 25 to protest the underfunding of health, education, transportation and infrastructure at the same time that the government is pouring money into preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games and the World Cup soccer championship, which is to be held June 12-July 13 this year in 12 Brazilian cities. The protests, reportedly called by the clandestine internet activist group Anonymous, were a continuation of massive demonstrations targeting these issues last June [see Update #1181], but only a few thousand people turned out on Jan. 25, in contrast to the million or more who marched in 2013.
At least 143 people were arrested at the Jan. 25 demonstration in São Paulo. Some 2,000 protesters gathered at the Museo de Arte and then marched up Paulista Avenue, carrying signs with such slogans as “No rights, no Cup,” and, in English, “FIFA go home”—a reference to the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), which sponsors the World Cup games. The protest began peacefully, but later some demonstrators split off and confronted the police. At least one vehicle was burned and there were acts of vandalism at several banks. In Natal, in the northeastern state of Rio Grande, 15 people were arrested during a protest in front of the Arena das Dunas soccer stadium, which Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff had inaugurated on Jan. 22. A group attempting to enter the stadium reportedly damaged access steps and set fire to an area used by the stadium workers. Demonstrations in other cities were generally peaceful. (El Nacional (Venezuela) 1/25/14, from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/26/14 from AFP)
*4. Argentina: Peso Falls as Emerging Markets Weaken
The Argentine peso fell by some 8% on Jan. 23, declining from 7.14 pesos to the US dollar to 7.75 at the end of the day. The currency plunged by 20% in the early hours, to 8.50 pesos to the dollar, but regained much of the loss after the central bank intervened later in the day; the bank reportedly spent $100 million in the process. This was the worst showing for the peso since the country’s financial crisis in late 2001 and early 2002.
The problems in Argentina affected other Latin American markets. The Brazilian real fell by 1.2% to 2.40 reais to the dollar, and the São Paulo stock exchange, the BM&F Bovespa, declined by almost 2%. The Mexican peso, which has been falling since the beginning of the month, continued to decline, ending Jan. 23 at 13.42 pesos to the dollar, a 2.44% decline since Jan. 1. The fall of the Argentine peso was probably one of the factors contributing to the decline in the New York Stock Exchange on Jan. 24. The Dow Jones index fell by 318 points, 2.1%, while Standard and Poor’s fell by 38.17 units, 2.09%, and the Nasdaq fell by 90 points, 2.2%.
Analysts offered different explanations for the Argentine peso’s decline. One cause appeared to be a slowing of China’s economy, which led investors to pull out of emerging markets around the world. The immediate cause may have been a decision by Argentina’ s new economy minister, Axel Kicillof, to protect the country’s foreign reserves by withdrawing support for the peso. Until late January the government had been propping the peso up by selling off reserves. Kicillof himself offered a different explanation. He charged that Juan José Aranguren, the president of Shell Argentina, Royal Dutch Shell’s local subsidiary, had intentionally precipitated the crisis on Jan. 23 by offering to buy $3 million at a rate of 8.40 pesos to the dollar. “The maneuver was so obvious that there’s no need to explain it too much,” Kicillof said on Jan. 24. Aranguren was trying to destabilize the government by pushing the peso down, according to Kicillof. (Wall Street Journal 1/23/14; New York Times 1/24/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/14, 1/25/14, 1/25/14 from correspondent, 1/26/14 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
Chile: wildcat strike paralyzes ports
http://ww4report.com/node/12952
ICJ rules on Peru-Chile maritime border dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/12959
Large-Scale Mining in Uruguay: Time to Vote?
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/17/large-scale-mining-uruguay-time-vote
Brazil: prison violence spills into streets —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12951
The Criminalization of Poverty in Brazil, a Global Power
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11352
Peru: mineral company evicts campesino family
http://ww4report.com/node/12956
Peru: no sterilization abuse charges for Fujimori
http://ww4report.com/node/12955
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/
Bogotá stand-off amid renewed repression (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12954
Colombia: Embera indigenous leaders assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12953
Brookings Institution Calls on Obama to Support a Hypothetical Coup Against Venezuela's Maduro
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/brookings-institution-calls-on-obama-to-support-a-hypothetical-coup-against-venezuelas-maduro
Latest Human Rights Watch Report: 30 Lies about Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10301
Rethinking the Drug War in Central America and Mexico (Full Report)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11315
El Salvador: Increase in Homicides Linked to “Extermination Groups” and ARENA Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4665-el-salvador-increase-in-homicides-linked-to-extermination-groups-and-arena-campaign
World Bank Forced To Admit Failings On Controversial Human Rights Scandal (Honduras)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/world-bank-forced-admit-failings-controversial-human-rights-scandal/
SOA Grads Prominent among New Military Leadership in Honduras as New President Prepares to Take Office
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4658-soa-grads-prominent-among-new-military-leadership-in-honduras-as-new-president-prepares-to-take-office
U.S. Government Holding World Bank and IADB Accountable to Ensure Reparations for Chixoy Dam Victims in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4654-us-government-holding-world-bank-and-iadb-accountable-to-ensure-reparations-for-chixoy-dam-victims-in-guatemala
Reviewing NAFTA and the Environment (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/reviewing-nafta-and-the-environment
The Rainbow Warrior Comes to Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-rainbow-warrior-comes-to-mexico/
Insecurity: The Achilles Heel of Mexican Reforms?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/insecurity-the-achilles-heel-of-mexican-reforms/
Mexico: The Politics of a State Meltdown
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexico-the-politics-of-a-state-meltdown/
Mexico: First Statement from the Self-Defense Group of Aquila, Michoacán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4656-mexico-first-statement-from-the-self-defense-group-of-aquila-michoacan
Mexican Labor Year in Review – 2013
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=220#1671
Twenty Years since the Chiapas Rebellion: the Zapatistas, Their Politics, and Their Impact (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=220#1672
At anniversary of Zapatista uprising, rebellion belongs to all (Mexico)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/anniversary-zapatista-uprising-rebellion-belongs/
Mesoamérica Resiste! The Beehive Collective: Building Solidarity through Storytelling and Art (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4655-mesoamerica-resiste-the-beehive-collective-building-solidarity-through-storytelling-and-art
Mexico: nine dead in prison massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/12946
Four Years After Haiti’s Earthquake, Still Waiting for a Roof
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/4659-four-years-after-haitis-earthquake-still-waiting-for-a-roof
Venezuela Chairs Committee on Draconian Anti-Haitian Citizenship Ruling (Dominican Republic)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/21/venezuela-chairs-committee-draconian-anti-haitian-citizenship-ruling
Latino New York: An Introduction (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/23/latino-new-york-introduction
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/
Issue #1206, January 26, 2014
1. Guatemala: Maquila Owner Stole $6 Million From Workers
2. Mexico: Police Break Up Blockade of Goldcorp Mine
3. Brazil: 143 Arrested as World Cup Protests Continue
4. Argentina: Peso Falls as Emerging Markets Weaken
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, 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. Guatemala: Maquila Owner Stole $6 Million From Workers
Over the course of 12 years management at the Alianza Fashion apparel factory in the central Guatemalan department of Chimaltenango cheated employees out of some $6 million dollars in back wages and benefits, according to a report released on Jan. 23 by the Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights (IGLHR, formerly the National Labor Committee). The maquiladora—a tax-exempt assembly plant producing for export—stitched items like suits and jackets for at least 60 US retailers, including Macy’s, JCPenney, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart. The owner, a South Korean national named Boon Chong Park, shut the factory down in March 2013.
The report is based on more than 200 documents--including pay stubs, invoices and manufacturing specifications—that were smuggled out of the plant last spring. According to the IGLHR, the documents show that while the plant usually employed from 1,050 to 1,500 workers, the company only made the legally required contributions for pensions and healthcare for 65 workers from 2001 to 2013. The total lost benefits came to more than $4.7 million. When Alianza closed down, the company failed to pay the 548 workers still employed there the $1.2 million it owed them in back wages and benefits. Base pay at the plant was $1.05 an hour, about the same as the minimum wage for the maquiladora sector in 2013, 65.63 quetzales (US$8.36) a day. In 2010 the company fired 60 workers without severance pay after they formed an independent union and registered it with the government.
The North American companies that had their goods produced at Alianza have tried to play down their connection to the plant; spokespeople said the companies hadn’t placed orders recently, or they insisted that the orders were placed through third parties. The Phillips-Van Heusen company has donated $100,000 to a fund for the 548 workers left out of work when the plant closed, but as of Jan. 23 other North American companies had failed to respond to requests that they make similar contributions. (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 12/26/13; ABC News 1/23/14; The Nation 1/23/14; Univision 1/24/14)
Shortly after the company closed last March, some 800 of the former workers occupied the plant to demand payment of back wages, apparently without success. They also complained that they had been underpaid during the year leading up to the closure, and that managers routinely subjected them to racist insults. (Prensa Libre 4/1/13)
*2. Mexico: Police Break Up Blockade of Goldcorp Mine
On Jan. 24 the government of the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas sent about 200 riot and ministerial police to remove some 30 campesinos and their relatives from an entrance they were blocking to the Peñasquito open-pit gold mine in Mazapil municipality. Campesinos from the Las Mesas ejido (communal farm) and the Cedros annex began blocking the entrance on Jan. 16 to get attention from state and federal authorities for their demand to reopen negotiations with the mine’s owner, the Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc., about the rent the company is paying to use ejido land. In addition to removing the protesters, the police arrested two campesino leaders, the brothers Epifanio and Mónico Morquecho, and took them to the prison in Concepción del Oro municipality, 40 km away; they were charged with damages, looting and extortion, based on a criminal complaint from Goldcorp.
The Peñasquito mine occupies 5,400 hectares in the Mazapil Valley, including 240 hectares Goldcorp rented from the ejido in 2006 for 30 years in exchange for a one-time payment of 10,000 pesos (about US$744) per hectare. Goldcorp “took advantage of our ignorance,” the ejido members told a reporter on Jan. 24. The campesinos’ blockade was mostly symbolic, since the mine’s employees and trucks could use at least three other entrances. The state government reportedly ordered the large-scale police operation against the protesters after Goldcorp threatened to suspend work at the Peñasquito and withdraw its investments in the state. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/14)
In other news, activist and theater director Francisco Kuykendall (“Kuy”) died on Jan. 25 after suffering a cardiopulmonary arrest. A supporter of The Other Campaign, a political movement inspired by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), Kuykendall was one of two protesters seriously injured during demonstrations in Mexico City against the inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto on Dec. 1, 2012 [see Update #1155]. His skull was fractured when he was hit by a police projectile—either a rubber bullet or a tear gas grenade—and he never completely recovered. Kuykendall’s friends and colleagues said his death was an example of the impunity that continues in Mexico, as well a message from the government intended to intimidate dissident groups. (LJ 1/26/14)
*3. Brazil: 143 Arrested as World Cup Protests Continue
Brazilians demonstrated in 36 cities on Jan. 25 to protest the underfunding of health, education, transportation and infrastructure at the same time that the government is pouring money into preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games and the World Cup soccer championship, which is to be held June 12-July 13 this year in 12 Brazilian cities. The protests, reportedly called by the clandestine internet activist group Anonymous, were a continuation of massive demonstrations targeting these issues last June [see Update #1181], but only a few thousand people turned out on Jan. 25, in contrast to the million or more who marched in 2013.
At least 143 people were arrested at the Jan. 25 demonstration in São Paulo. Some 2,000 protesters gathered at the Museo de Arte and then marched up Paulista Avenue, carrying signs with such slogans as “No rights, no Cup,” and, in English, “FIFA go home”—a reference to the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), which sponsors the World Cup games. The protest began peacefully, but later some demonstrators split off and confronted the police. At least one vehicle was burned and there were acts of vandalism at several banks. In Natal, in the northeastern state of Rio Grande, 15 people were arrested during a protest in front of the Arena das Dunas soccer stadium, which Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff had inaugurated on Jan. 22. A group attempting to enter the stadium reportedly damaged access steps and set fire to an area used by the stadium workers. Demonstrations in other cities were generally peaceful. (El Nacional (Venezuela) 1/25/14, from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/26/14 from AFP)
*4. Argentina: Peso Falls as Emerging Markets Weaken
The Argentine peso fell by some 8% on Jan. 23, declining from 7.14 pesos to the US dollar to 7.75 at the end of the day. The currency plunged by 20% in the early hours, to 8.50 pesos to the dollar, but regained much of the loss after the central bank intervened later in the day; the bank reportedly spent $100 million in the process. This was the worst showing for the peso since the country’s financial crisis in late 2001 and early 2002.
The problems in Argentina affected other Latin American markets. The Brazilian real fell by 1.2% to 2.40 reais to the dollar, and the São Paulo stock exchange, the BM&F Bovespa, declined by almost 2%. The Mexican peso, which has been falling since the beginning of the month, continued to decline, ending Jan. 23 at 13.42 pesos to the dollar, a 2.44% decline since Jan. 1. The fall of the Argentine peso was probably one of the factors contributing to the decline in the New York Stock Exchange on Jan. 24. The Dow Jones index fell by 318 points, 2.1%, while Standard and Poor’s fell by 38.17 units, 2.09%, and the Nasdaq fell by 90 points, 2.2%.
Analysts offered different explanations for the Argentine peso’s decline. One cause appeared to be a slowing of China’s economy, which led investors to pull out of emerging markets around the world. The immediate cause may have been a decision by Argentina’ s new economy minister, Axel Kicillof, to protect the country’s foreign reserves by withdrawing support for the peso. Until late January the government had been propping the peso up by selling off reserves. Kicillof himself offered a different explanation. He charged that Juan José Aranguren, the president of Shell Argentina, Royal Dutch Shell’s local subsidiary, had intentionally precipitated the crisis on Jan. 23 by offering to buy $3 million at a rate of 8.40 pesos to the dollar. “The maneuver was so obvious that there’s no need to explain it too much,” Kicillof said on Jan. 24. Aranguren was trying to destabilize the government by pushing the peso down, according to Kicillof. (Wall Street Journal 1/23/14; New York Times 1/24/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/14, 1/25/14, 1/25/14 from correspondent, 1/26/14 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
Chile: wildcat strike paralyzes ports
http://ww4report.com/node/12952
ICJ rules on Peru-Chile maritime border dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/12959
Large-Scale Mining in Uruguay: Time to Vote?
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/17/large-scale-mining-uruguay-time-vote
Brazil: prison violence spills into streets —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12951
The Criminalization of Poverty in Brazil, a Global Power
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11352
Peru: mineral company evicts campesino family
http://ww4report.com/node/12956
Peru: no sterilization abuse charges for Fujimori
http://ww4report.com/node/12955
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/
Bogotá stand-off amid renewed repression (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12954
Colombia: Embera indigenous leaders assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12953
Brookings Institution Calls on Obama to Support a Hypothetical Coup Against Venezuela's Maduro
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/brookings-institution-calls-on-obama-to-support-a-hypothetical-coup-against-venezuelas-maduro
Latest Human Rights Watch Report: 30 Lies about Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10301
Rethinking the Drug War in Central America and Mexico (Full Report)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11315
El Salvador: Increase in Homicides Linked to “Extermination Groups” and ARENA Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4665-el-salvador-increase-in-homicides-linked-to-extermination-groups-and-arena-campaign
World Bank Forced To Admit Failings On Controversial Human Rights Scandal (Honduras)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/world-bank-forced-admit-failings-controversial-human-rights-scandal/
SOA Grads Prominent among New Military Leadership in Honduras as New President Prepares to Take Office
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4658-soa-grads-prominent-among-new-military-leadership-in-honduras-as-new-president-prepares-to-take-office
U.S. Government Holding World Bank and IADB Accountable to Ensure Reparations for Chixoy Dam Victims in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4654-us-government-holding-world-bank-and-iadb-accountable-to-ensure-reparations-for-chixoy-dam-victims-in-guatemala
Reviewing NAFTA and the Environment (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/reviewing-nafta-and-the-environment
The Rainbow Warrior Comes to Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-rainbow-warrior-comes-to-mexico/
Insecurity: The Achilles Heel of Mexican Reforms?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/insecurity-the-achilles-heel-of-mexican-reforms/
Mexico: The Politics of a State Meltdown
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexico-the-politics-of-a-state-meltdown/
Mexico: First Statement from the Self-Defense Group of Aquila, Michoacán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4656-mexico-first-statement-from-the-self-defense-group-of-aquila-michoacan
Mexican Labor Year in Review – 2013
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=220#1671
Twenty Years since the Chiapas Rebellion: the Zapatistas, Their Politics, and Their Impact (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=220#1672
At anniversary of Zapatista uprising, rebellion belongs to all (Mexico)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/anniversary-zapatista-uprising-rebellion-belongs/
Mesoamérica Resiste! The Beehive Collective: Building Solidarity through Storytelling and Art (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4655-mesoamerica-resiste-the-beehive-collective-building-solidarity-through-storytelling-and-art
Mexico: nine dead in prison massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/12946
Four Years After Haiti’s Earthquake, Still Waiting for a Roof
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/4659-four-years-after-haitis-earthquake-still-waiting-for-a-roof
Venezuela Chairs Committee on Draconian Anti-Haitian Citizenship Ruling (Dominican Republic)
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/1/21/venezuela-chairs-committee-draconian-anti-haitian-citizenship-ruling
Latino New York: An Introduction (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/1/23/latino-new-york-introduction
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, December 31, 2012
WNU #1158: Mexico Frees Last Detainees From Dec. 1 Protests
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1158, December 30, 2012
1. Mexico: Remaining Detainees From Dec. 1 Protests Are Freed
2. Argentina: Silver Mine Is Defeated, But Chevron Gets Fracking Deal
3. Argentina: Ex-President Gets Off for 2001 Repression
4. Chile: Ex-Officers to Stand Trial for Jara Murder
5. Cuba: Imprisoned Spanish Rightist Is Sent Home
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: There will be links but no Update on January 6, 2013. Publication will resume the following week.
*1. Mexico: Remaining Detainees From Dec. 1 Protests Are Freed
On the evening of Dec. 27 the authorities in Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City) released 13 men and one woman who had been in detention since Dec. 1 on charges of “attacks on the public peace” during protests that day against the inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A total of 106 people were arrested during the demonstrations, in which masked youths caused considerable property damage, but 92 of the detainees were released within eight days, after human rights organizations and the DF’s own Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) presented evidence that many detainees were clearly not involved in the destruction [see Update #1155].
The continuing detention of the remaining 14 arrestees sparked protests and the creation of a defense committee, the Dec. 1 Coordinating Committee. On Dec. 24 five of the 13 male detainees started a hunger strike, saying they would go without food until they were released. The other eight men held a 72-hour fast, as did a number of relatives and supporters, who were camped outside the DF government’s main building in central Mexico City and outside the Reclusorio Norte prison, where the men were being held, in the north of the city. The only woman among the detainees, nursing student Rita Neri Moctezuma, decided not to join the strike, since she was the only one of the detainees in the Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison. Moctezuma is reportedly the great niece of the famous leftist schoolteacher and labor leader Othón Salazar Ramírez.
In addition to criticizing the arrests, the CDHDF recommended that the DF Legislative Assembly (ALDF) repeal the DF criminal code’s article 362, which provided a broad definition of “attacks on the public peace” and mandated a five to 30 year prison sentence for the offense. The legislators compromised on Dec. 26 by passing an amendment lowering the sentence to two to seven years and restricting the definition of the crime. With the gravity of the crime reduced, the courts were able to free the detainees on bail. The total bail and other compensation the courts set for the 14 detainees came to 141,000 pesos (US$10,820); the money was put up by two legislators from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), José Luis Muñoz Soria and Roberto López Suárez.
After their release, the detainees held a press conference to say they intended to continue the struggle for their ideals, which they still considered correct. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/26/12, 12/27/12, 12/28/12; Univision 12/28/12; Milenio 12/28/12)
The handling of the Dec. 1 protests has been an embarrassment for the PRD, which has governed the DF since 1997. The demonstrations took place during the transition between the administrations of former DF head of government Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón (2006-2012) and Miguel Angel Mancera Espinosa, who took office on Dec. 5. An unnamed DF police captain told the left-leaning daily La Jornada that there was a “command vacuum” on Dec. 1, although he accused Ebrard of ordering the police to start arresting protesters.
The captain appeared to back up reports that agents provocateurs were involved in the damage to property. Some of the alleged anarchist vandals wore a black glove with the fingers cut off, he said, and several didn’t even know how to paint the anarchist symbol. The police captain said he considered it inexplicable that videos made by the police Command and Control Center hadn’t been used to determine what happened during the protests. (LJ 12/10/12) (A number of plainclothes agents reportedly wore white gloves during the October 1968 massacre of students and their supporters at the Tlatelolco housing project so that uniformed soldiers and police would know they were agents.)
*2. Argentina: Silver Mine Is Defeated, But Chevron Gets Fracking Deal
Minera Argenta, the Argentine subsidiary of the Vancouver-based mining company Pan American Silver Corp., announced on Dec. 21 that it was suspending its Navidad silver mining project in the southern province of Chubut and would close its offices in Puerto Madryn and Trelew. The principal reason for the suspension was the failure of the province’s governor, Martín Buzzi, to get the legislature to back his plan to circumvent Law 5001, which bans open-pit mines and the use of cyanide in mining operations in Chubut. Residents of the province had organized popular assemblies to oppose Buzzi’s plan; dozens of mining opponents were injured when construction workers attacked them in Rawson, the province’s administrative capital, on Nov. 27 [see Update #1154].
Gov. Buzzi had also antagonized Pan American Silver: he proposed a law that would add a 5% net smelter-return royalty to the province’s current 3% royalty on mines and would also give the provincial government’s oil and mine company, Petrominera, at least 4% of total mineral sales. Pan American faces similar problems at its Manantial Espejo silver mine in the southern province of Santa Cruz, where Gov. Daniel Peralta has proposed legislation that would raise the province’s royalties to 8% and give the provincial mining company Fomicruz a 10% equity stake in current and future mines.
The Canadian company says it spent some $82.5 million developing the Navidad project in 2010 and 2011; the mine was expected to produce 632 million ounces of silver and around 3 billion pounds of lead, making it one of the world’s largest mining projects. (Adital (Brazil) 12/21/12; Eldiario24.com (Tucumán) 12/21/12; Dow Jones Newswires 12/21/12 via Fox Business)
Just two days before the victory for Argentine environmentalists in Chubut, Miguel Galuccio, president of Argentina’s state-controlled Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) oil company, was in Houston on Dec. 19 to sign a letter of intent with Ali Moshiri, Latin America and Africa chief for the California-based Chevron Corporation, for a $1 billion pilot project to drill for natural gas in shale deposits in the southwestern province of Neuquén’s Vaca Muerta region. Experts say the area has the world’s third-largest shale resources. A little more than a week later, on Dec. 28, YPF signed a preliminary agreement with the Bridas Corporation, which is jointly owned by Argentine oil magnate Carlos Bulgheroni and China’s state-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corporation, also for shale exploration in the Vaca Muerta region.
Argentine environmentalists say the extraction of the gas from the shale deposits would be carried out through hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”), a controversial practice with serious environmental side effects. In the US, where it has been used extensively, it is now banned in the state of Vermont, and its use has been suspended in New Jersey and New York. France and Bulgaria have banned hydrofracking, and the United Kingdom has imposed a moratorium on its use.
YPF was privatized in 1992, partly to the Spanish company Repsol, which by 1999 had bought the majority of shares. Center-left Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner re-nationalized YPF in the spring of 2012 by taking over 51% of the shares [see Update #1126]. The deal between YPF and Chevron was made despite an Argentine judge’s decision on Nov. 8 to embargo Chevron’s assets in Argentina because of a $19 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador for environmental damage and injuries to the health of indigenous residents in the Amazon rainforest [see World War Report 11/11/12]. Chevron’s Moshiri said the judge’s decision was not a problem. “It’s a legal action of Ecuador’s government against Chevron,” he told reporters, “an issue between lawyers trying to sue everyone and not benefiting anyone.”
Meanwhile, Repsol is threatening to sue any company partnering with Argentina over the $10 billion investment it claims it lost in the re-nationalization. (Time 12/19/12; Kaos en la Red 12/25/12; Reuters 12/28/12)
*3. Argentina: Ex-President Gets Off for 2001 Repression
On Dec. 27 an Argentine federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to stay a possible prosecution of former president Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) in connection with the deaths of 39 people during protests and massive looting after an economic collapse in December 2001. De la Rúa had been under investigation for the killing of five people and the wounding of 110 others by federal police when thousands of people defied the state of siege by demonstrating in Buenos Aires in the Plaza de Mayo and at the Obelisk in the Plaza de la República [see Update #621]. The other 34 victims were killed in the provinces, where the police were not under the orders of the federal president.
The court ruled that De la Rúa’s declaration of the state of siege was legitimate and that he was not responsible for the repression that followed. The ruling doesn’t cover former security secretary Enrique Mathov, former federal police chief Rubén Santos and six other former police agents, who will be tried for the five deaths in Buenos Aires. Relatives of the dead and the wounded said they would appeal the exoneration of De la Rúa.
The ruling would seem to clear the way for current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to declare a state of siege in response to a new wave of lootings that hit the country from Dec. 20 through Dec. 22 of this year [see Update #1157]. The death toll in the current disturbances had risen to five as of Dec. 26, when hospital authorities in Rosario, Santa Fe province, announced that Carina Paz and Emiliano Sánchez, a teenager, had died from gunshot wounds they received several days earlier during the looting there. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/27/12, 12/28/12 from correspondent; El País (Madrid) 12/28/12 from correspondent)
In other news, former economy minister Felisa Miceli (2005-2007) was sentenced to four years in prison on Dec. 27, the day that the appeals court ruled in De la Rúa’s favor. Police discovered 100,000 in pesos and $30,000 in US currency in the private bathroom of Miceli’s government office in 2007. Miceli claimed the cash was a loan she was going to use to buy a house, not money connected to her government post. After the sentencing she announced her intention to appeal. In an interview published on Dec. 30 by the daily Tiempo Argentino, Miceli called the sentence “arbitrary and out of proportion with other influential judicial cases that leave criminals free, or absolve De la Rúa, who was guilty of deaths.”
The decision by center-left former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) to appoint Miceli, the first woman to head the country’s economy ministry, was considered at the time a move to the left on the part of the government [see Update #828]. Some groups on the left are backing her up now, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and former labor leader Luis D’Elía. It was “striking that the bribes in the IBM-Banco Nación scandal for $30 million didn’t bring a single conviction,” D’Elía said, referring to the revelation in 1994 that IBM's Argentine subsidiary had paid off officials in order to win a $250 million contract for a computer system at Banco de la Nación; the amount most sources give for the bribes is $21 million [see World War 4 Report 8/12/12]. (LJ 12/28/12 from correspondent; La Gaceta (Tucumán) 12/30/12 from DyN)
*4. Chile: Ex-Officers to Stand Trial for Jara Murder
Chilean judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza issued an order on Dec. 28 for the detention and trial of eight former military officers for their alleged participation in the murder of renowned singer and songwriter Víctor Jara during the military coup that established the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The leftist musician was one of the first and best known of the estimated 3,000 people murdered or disappeared by the dictatorship.
The judge named former lieutenants Hugo Sánchez Marmonti and Pedro Barrientos Núñez as the people who carried out the murder, which took place on Sept. 16, 1973 at a Santiago sports stadium where political prisoners were being held. Jara was tortured and then shot dead; when found, his body had at least 44 bullet wounds. The judge charged former officers Roberto Souper Onfray, Raúl Jofré González, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Hasse Mazzei, Luis Bethke Wolf and Jorge Smith Gumucio as accomplices in the killing. Pedro Barrientos is living in Daytona Beach, Florida; Chile is expected to seek his extradition. The suspects will probably be held at Santiago’s Police Battalion Number 1, which the Mexican daily La Jornada describes as a “luxury prison for murderers in uniform.”
Four of the eight officers took courses at the US Army’s School of the Americas (SOA), then located in Panama, according to SOA Watch, which monitors the school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and based in Fort Benning, Georgia. Pedro Barrientos, second in command at the stadium, and Raúl Jofré took the Officers' Orientation course in 1968; Edwin Dimter Bianchi took a Combat Arms Orientation course in 1970; and Jorge Smith Gumucio took a Combat Arms Orientation course in 1972. SOA holds protests each November at Fort Benning, charging that the school is responsible for training many of the most notorious human rights abusers in Latin America [see Update #1153]. (BBC News 12/28/12; La Jornada 12/29/12 from correspondent; SOA Watch website, accessed 12/30/12)
*5. Cuba: Imprisoned Spanish Rightist Is Sent Home
Spanish national Angel Francisco Carromero Barrios, sentenced to four years in Cuba after being convicted of causing an automobile accident that killed Cuban dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero on July 22 [see Update #1148], was flown from Havana to Madrid on Dec. 29 accompanied by four Spanish Interpol agents. Carromero will be able serve out his sentence in Spain because of a 1998 agreement between Cuba and Spain. Another Spanish citizen, Miguel Vives Cutillas, was with Carromero on the flight; under the same agreement Vives will be able to stay in Spain for the remaining 14 years of an 18-year sentence imposed by a Cuban court for drug trafficking.
At the time of Carromero’s sentencing in October, there was speculation that the Cuban and Spanish governments had worked out a deal for his speedy return to Spain; Carromero is the leader of the New Generations youth movement of Spain’s governing rightwing Popular Party (PP). A Spanish prison board will review his classification. If it assigns him to Class 3, Carromero will be only be required to sleep in the prison on Sunday through Thursday nights; he will able to carry on normal activities during the day and stay at home during the weekend. (EFE 12/29/12 via ABC.es)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
A Year of Progress in Argentina’s Human Rights Trials
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4042-a-year-of-progress-in-argentinas-human-rights-trials
Peru: Conga project to advance in 2013?
http://ww4report.com/node/11835
Peru: protest over mine's water diversion
http://ww4report.com/node/11834
Bolivia: progress seen in coca policy
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11833
Bolivia: Aymara declare mine personnel "fugitives"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11832
Bolivia: prison corruption scandal widens
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11831
The Electoral Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition Comes Back to Haunt Them
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7574
Miguel Facusse is Tragically Misunderstood (Honduras)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-most-powerful-man-is-simply-misunderstood-qi-probably-had-reasons-to-kill-himbut-im-not
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Announces Next Steps (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4047-the-zapatista-army-of-national-liberation-announces-next-steps
2012: Year of Indigenous Resistance in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8769
Campesinos block gold mine in Zacatecas (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11828
Mexico: bloody Christmas in Michoacán, Sinaloa
http://ww4report.com/node/11827
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
Note: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
Wilson will be speaking at a forum in New York City on the third anniversary of the earthquake on January 12, 2013. More information at:
http://nycal.mayfirst.org/node/13401
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1158, December 30, 2012
1. Mexico: Remaining Detainees From Dec. 1 Protests Are Freed
2. Argentina: Silver Mine Is Defeated, But Chevron Gets Fracking Deal
3. Argentina: Ex-President Gets Off for 2001 Repression
4. Chile: Ex-Officers to Stand Trial for Jara Murder
5. Cuba: Imprisoned Spanish Rightist Is Sent Home
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: There will be links but no Update on January 6, 2013. Publication will resume the following week.
*1. Mexico: Remaining Detainees From Dec. 1 Protests Are Freed
On the evening of Dec. 27 the authorities in Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City) released 13 men and one woman who had been in detention since Dec. 1 on charges of “attacks on the public peace” during protests that day against the inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A total of 106 people were arrested during the demonstrations, in which masked youths caused considerable property damage, but 92 of the detainees were released within eight days, after human rights organizations and the DF’s own Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) presented evidence that many detainees were clearly not involved in the destruction [see Update #1155].
The continuing detention of the remaining 14 arrestees sparked protests and the creation of a defense committee, the Dec. 1 Coordinating Committee. On Dec. 24 five of the 13 male detainees started a hunger strike, saying they would go without food until they were released. The other eight men held a 72-hour fast, as did a number of relatives and supporters, who were camped outside the DF government’s main building in central Mexico City and outside the Reclusorio Norte prison, where the men were being held, in the north of the city. The only woman among the detainees, nursing student Rita Neri Moctezuma, decided not to join the strike, since she was the only one of the detainees in the Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison. Moctezuma is reportedly the great niece of the famous leftist schoolteacher and labor leader Othón Salazar Ramírez.
In addition to criticizing the arrests, the CDHDF recommended that the DF Legislative Assembly (ALDF) repeal the DF criminal code’s article 362, which provided a broad definition of “attacks on the public peace” and mandated a five to 30 year prison sentence for the offense. The legislators compromised on Dec. 26 by passing an amendment lowering the sentence to two to seven years and restricting the definition of the crime. With the gravity of the crime reduced, the courts were able to free the detainees on bail. The total bail and other compensation the courts set for the 14 detainees came to 141,000 pesos (US$10,820); the money was put up by two legislators from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), José Luis Muñoz Soria and Roberto López Suárez.
After their release, the detainees held a press conference to say they intended to continue the struggle for their ideals, which they still considered correct. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/26/12, 12/27/12, 12/28/12; Univision 12/28/12; Milenio 12/28/12)
The handling of the Dec. 1 protests has been an embarrassment for the PRD, which has governed the DF since 1997. The demonstrations took place during the transition between the administrations of former DF head of government Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón (2006-2012) and Miguel Angel Mancera Espinosa, who took office on Dec. 5. An unnamed DF police captain told the left-leaning daily La Jornada that there was a “command vacuum” on Dec. 1, although he accused Ebrard of ordering the police to start arresting protesters.
The captain appeared to back up reports that agents provocateurs were involved in the damage to property. Some of the alleged anarchist vandals wore a black glove with the fingers cut off, he said, and several didn’t even know how to paint the anarchist symbol. The police captain said he considered it inexplicable that videos made by the police Command and Control Center hadn’t been used to determine what happened during the protests. (LJ 12/10/12) (A number of plainclothes agents reportedly wore white gloves during the October 1968 massacre of students and their supporters at the Tlatelolco housing project so that uniformed soldiers and police would know they were agents.)
*2. Argentina: Silver Mine Is Defeated, But Chevron Gets Fracking Deal
Minera Argenta, the Argentine subsidiary of the Vancouver-based mining company Pan American Silver Corp., announced on Dec. 21 that it was suspending its Navidad silver mining project in the southern province of Chubut and would close its offices in Puerto Madryn and Trelew. The principal reason for the suspension was the failure of the province’s governor, Martín Buzzi, to get the legislature to back his plan to circumvent Law 5001, which bans open-pit mines and the use of cyanide in mining operations in Chubut. Residents of the province had organized popular assemblies to oppose Buzzi’s plan; dozens of mining opponents were injured when construction workers attacked them in Rawson, the province’s administrative capital, on Nov. 27 [see Update #1154].
Gov. Buzzi had also antagonized Pan American Silver: he proposed a law that would add a 5% net smelter-return royalty to the province’s current 3% royalty on mines and would also give the provincial government’s oil and mine company, Petrominera, at least 4% of total mineral sales. Pan American faces similar problems at its Manantial Espejo silver mine in the southern province of Santa Cruz, where Gov. Daniel Peralta has proposed legislation that would raise the province’s royalties to 8% and give the provincial mining company Fomicruz a 10% equity stake in current and future mines.
The Canadian company says it spent some $82.5 million developing the Navidad project in 2010 and 2011; the mine was expected to produce 632 million ounces of silver and around 3 billion pounds of lead, making it one of the world’s largest mining projects. (Adital (Brazil) 12/21/12; Eldiario24.com (Tucumán) 12/21/12; Dow Jones Newswires 12/21/12 via Fox Business)
Just two days before the victory for Argentine environmentalists in Chubut, Miguel Galuccio, president of Argentina’s state-controlled Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) oil company, was in Houston on Dec. 19 to sign a letter of intent with Ali Moshiri, Latin America and Africa chief for the California-based Chevron Corporation, for a $1 billion pilot project to drill for natural gas in shale deposits in the southwestern province of Neuquén’s Vaca Muerta region. Experts say the area has the world’s third-largest shale resources. A little more than a week later, on Dec. 28, YPF signed a preliminary agreement with the Bridas Corporation, which is jointly owned by Argentine oil magnate Carlos Bulgheroni and China’s state-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corporation, also for shale exploration in the Vaca Muerta region.
Argentine environmentalists say the extraction of the gas from the shale deposits would be carried out through hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”), a controversial practice with serious environmental side effects. In the US, where it has been used extensively, it is now banned in the state of Vermont, and its use has been suspended in New Jersey and New York. France and Bulgaria have banned hydrofracking, and the United Kingdom has imposed a moratorium on its use.
YPF was privatized in 1992, partly to the Spanish company Repsol, which by 1999 had bought the majority of shares. Center-left Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner re-nationalized YPF in the spring of 2012 by taking over 51% of the shares [see Update #1126]. The deal between YPF and Chevron was made despite an Argentine judge’s decision on Nov. 8 to embargo Chevron’s assets in Argentina because of a $19 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador for environmental damage and injuries to the health of indigenous residents in the Amazon rainforest [see World War Report 11/11/12]. Chevron’s Moshiri said the judge’s decision was not a problem. “It’s a legal action of Ecuador’s government against Chevron,” he told reporters, “an issue between lawyers trying to sue everyone and not benefiting anyone.”
Meanwhile, Repsol is threatening to sue any company partnering with Argentina over the $10 billion investment it claims it lost in the re-nationalization. (Time 12/19/12; Kaos en la Red 12/25/12; Reuters 12/28/12)
*3. Argentina: Ex-President Gets Off for 2001 Repression
On Dec. 27 an Argentine federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to stay a possible prosecution of former president Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) in connection with the deaths of 39 people during protests and massive looting after an economic collapse in December 2001. De la Rúa had been under investigation for the killing of five people and the wounding of 110 others by federal police when thousands of people defied the state of siege by demonstrating in Buenos Aires in the Plaza de Mayo and at the Obelisk in the Plaza de la República [see Update #621]. The other 34 victims were killed in the provinces, where the police were not under the orders of the federal president.
The court ruled that De la Rúa’s declaration of the state of siege was legitimate and that he was not responsible for the repression that followed. The ruling doesn’t cover former security secretary Enrique Mathov, former federal police chief Rubén Santos and six other former police agents, who will be tried for the five deaths in Buenos Aires. Relatives of the dead and the wounded said they would appeal the exoneration of De la Rúa.
The ruling would seem to clear the way for current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to declare a state of siege in response to a new wave of lootings that hit the country from Dec. 20 through Dec. 22 of this year [see Update #1157]. The death toll in the current disturbances had risen to five as of Dec. 26, when hospital authorities in Rosario, Santa Fe province, announced that Carina Paz and Emiliano Sánchez, a teenager, had died from gunshot wounds they received several days earlier during the looting there. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/27/12, 12/28/12 from correspondent; El País (Madrid) 12/28/12 from correspondent)
In other news, former economy minister Felisa Miceli (2005-2007) was sentenced to four years in prison on Dec. 27, the day that the appeals court ruled in De la Rúa’s favor. Police discovered 100,000 in pesos and $30,000 in US currency in the private bathroom of Miceli’s government office in 2007. Miceli claimed the cash was a loan she was going to use to buy a house, not money connected to her government post. After the sentencing she announced her intention to appeal. In an interview published on Dec. 30 by the daily Tiempo Argentino, Miceli called the sentence “arbitrary and out of proportion with other influential judicial cases that leave criminals free, or absolve De la Rúa, who was guilty of deaths.”
The decision by center-left former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) to appoint Miceli, the first woman to head the country’s economy ministry, was considered at the time a move to the left on the part of the government [see Update #828]. Some groups on the left are backing her up now, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and former labor leader Luis D’Elía. It was “striking that the bribes in the IBM-Banco Nación scandal for $30 million didn’t bring a single conviction,” D’Elía said, referring to the revelation in 1994 that IBM's Argentine subsidiary had paid off officials in order to win a $250 million contract for a computer system at Banco de la Nación; the amount most sources give for the bribes is $21 million [see World War 4 Report 8/12/12]. (LJ 12/28/12 from correspondent; La Gaceta (Tucumán) 12/30/12 from DyN)
*4. Chile: Ex-Officers to Stand Trial for Jara Murder
Chilean judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza issued an order on Dec. 28 for the detention and trial of eight former military officers for their alleged participation in the murder of renowned singer and songwriter Víctor Jara during the military coup that established the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The leftist musician was one of the first and best known of the estimated 3,000 people murdered or disappeared by the dictatorship.
The judge named former lieutenants Hugo Sánchez Marmonti and Pedro Barrientos Núñez as the people who carried out the murder, which took place on Sept. 16, 1973 at a Santiago sports stadium where political prisoners were being held. Jara was tortured and then shot dead; when found, his body had at least 44 bullet wounds. The judge charged former officers Roberto Souper Onfray, Raúl Jofré González, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Hasse Mazzei, Luis Bethke Wolf and Jorge Smith Gumucio as accomplices in the killing. Pedro Barrientos is living in Daytona Beach, Florida; Chile is expected to seek his extradition. The suspects will probably be held at Santiago’s Police Battalion Number 1, which the Mexican daily La Jornada describes as a “luxury prison for murderers in uniform.”
Four of the eight officers took courses at the US Army’s School of the Americas (SOA), then located in Panama, according to SOA Watch, which monitors the school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and based in Fort Benning, Georgia. Pedro Barrientos, second in command at the stadium, and Raúl Jofré took the Officers' Orientation course in 1968; Edwin Dimter Bianchi took a Combat Arms Orientation course in 1970; and Jorge Smith Gumucio took a Combat Arms Orientation course in 1972. SOA holds protests each November at Fort Benning, charging that the school is responsible for training many of the most notorious human rights abusers in Latin America [see Update #1153]. (BBC News 12/28/12; La Jornada 12/29/12 from correspondent; SOA Watch website, accessed 12/30/12)
*5. Cuba: Imprisoned Spanish Rightist Is Sent Home
Spanish national Angel Francisco Carromero Barrios, sentenced to four years in Cuba after being convicted of causing an automobile accident that killed Cuban dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero on July 22 [see Update #1148], was flown from Havana to Madrid on Dec. 29 accompanied by four Spanish Interpol agents. Carromero will be able serve out his sentence in Spain because of a 1998 agreement between Cuba and Spain. Another Spanish citizen, Miguel Vives Cutillas, was with Carromero on the flight; under the same agreement Vives will be able to stay in Spain for the remaining 14 years of an 18-year sentence imposed by a Cuban court for drug trafficking.
At the time of Carromero’s sentencing in October, there was speculation that the Cuban and Spanish governments had worked out a deal for his speedy return to Spain; Carromero is the leader of the New Generations youth movement of Spain’s governing rightwing Popular Party (PP). A Spanish prison board will review his classification. If it assigns him to Class 3, Carromero will be only be required to sleep in the prison on Sunday through Thursday nights; he will able to carry on normal activities during the day and stay at home during the weekend. (EFE 12/29/12 via ABC.es)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
A Year of Progress in Argentina’s Human Rights Trials
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4042-a-year-of-progress-in-argentinas-human-rights-trials
Peru: Conga project to advance in 2013?
http://ww4report.com/node/11835
Peru: protest over mine's water diversion
http://ww4report.com/node/11834
Bolivia: progress seen in coca policy
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11833
Bolivia: Aymara declare mine personnel "fugitives"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11832
Bolivia: prison corruption scandal widens
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11831
The Electoral Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition Comes Back to Haunt Them
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7574
Miguel Facusse is Tragically Misunderstood (Honduras)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-most-powerful-man-is-simply-misunderstood-qi-probably-had-reasons-to-kill-himbut-im-not
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Announces Next Steps (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4047-the-zapatista-army-of-national-liberation-announces-next-steps
2012: Year of Indigenous Resistance in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8769
Campesinos block gold mine in Zacatecas (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11828
Mexico: bloody Christmas in Michoacán, Sinaloa
http://ww4report.com/node/11827
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
Note: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
Wilson will be speaking at a forum in New York City on the third anniversary of the earthquake on January 12, 2013. More information at:
http://nycal.mayfirst.org/node/13401
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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