Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #960, September 7, 2008
1. Argentina: Passengers Set Train on Fire
2. Mexico: President's Report Protested
3. In Other News: Cuba, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Argentina: Passengers Set Train on Fire
Infuriated by a delay in service, hundreds of Argentines attacked trains and facilities of the TCB company in two stations outside Buenos Aires on Sept. 4. Protests started when a commuter train broke down near the Castelar station west of the capital, stopping service to Buenos Aires. Hundreds of people trying to get to work threw stones at train company offices, blocked trains headed in the other direction, and set a conductor's cabin on fire. In the neighboring station of Merlo, passengers set an entire eight-car train on fire, along with a ticket machine. About 100 helmeted riot police arrived after an hour, dispersing the crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets; about 20 people were arrested.
Federal justice minister Aníbal Fernández and Buenos Aires province police chief Daniel Salcedo were quick to attribute the attacks to sabotage by militant groups, including two Trotskyist organiztions, the Workers Party (PO) and the Socialist Workers Movement (MST); and Quebracho ("ax breaker"), a militant group named for a South American tree with exceptionally hard wood. Government officials said they had videos of infiltrators, including José María Escobar, a PO member who was in the Castelar station passing out fliers against the "bullet train," a planned high-speed train strongly promoted by the center-left government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Government officials even implicated Project South, which is headed by renowned filmmaker Fernando "Pino" Solanas; his latest film, "The Next Station," is a documentary on the deterioration of the railroad system.
Some sources implied the incidents were connected to the reported sabotage of two high-voltage towers in Buenos Aires province and to forest fires in Córdoba province which the authorities said were set intentionally during the week.
The militants denied any responsibility. "It's a real disgrace that the national government is inventing a conspiracy against us," Solanas said. The MST announced it was planning a defamation suit against Justice Minister Fernández. While Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo suggested that PO and Quebracho were both involved, observers noted that the two groups have little in common. The PO is a national party which runs in elections; Quebracho, which describes itself as a "patriotic revolutionary movement" rather than leftist, rejects elections. This wasn't the first violent protest since the railroad lines were privatized in the 1990s under President Carlos Menem (1989-1999). In 2005, the cancellation of service in Haedo, near Castelar on the western outskirts of Buenos Aires, provoked incidents in which 21 people were injured and 87 arrested; the station and 15 train cars were set on fire. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/5/08 from AFP, Reuters, 9/6/08 from correspondent; Clarín (Buenos Aires) 9/4/08, 9/5/08)
Correction: In Update #941 we inadvertently called the MST the "Movement Toward Socialism."
*2. Mexico: President's Report Protested
Tens of thousands of Mexican workers, tradespeople, doctors and nurses, oil workers, telephone workers, miners, teachers, parents, students and campesinos demonstrated on Sept. 1 to protest the economic policies of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa as he presented Congress with the annual state of the union report. Until two years ago, the president read the report to the two houses of Congress in an elaborate televised ceremony; the tradition ended in 2006 when opposition legislators kept then-president Vicente Fox Quesada from giving his last report [see Update #866]. This year Governance Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo simply handed a copy of the report to congressional leaders; the event took eight minutes.
In the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), protesters held some 15 different marches, rallies and sit-ins at different places and times, creating some of the biggest traffic problems in the capital in years. In the southern part of the city, 300 members of the Francisco Villa Popular Front took over tollbooths on the highway to Puebla at 7am and let traffic pass for free for two hours; others from the group did the same on the highway to Cuernavaca; the organization then tied up traffic for three hours with a march of 500 people through the city toward the Zócalo, the main plaza. Also in the southern part of the capital, employees of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) blocked the Insurgentes Sur boulevard. At other end of the DF a group of 200 members of the Popular Movement occupied five lanes of a highway at 8am to oppose Calderón's energy policies and then marched to the Tlatelolco housing project. Flight attendants demonstrated in the city's international airport, and at 4pm thousands of unionists and campesinos held the biggest demonstration of the day--a march to the Zócalo from different parts of the downtown area to demand better living conditions.
Outside the capital, dissident teachers took over Education Secretariat and Social Security offices in various states; electricity workers leafleted; and telephone workers held a one-hour strike around the country. (Crónica de Hoy (Mexico City) 9/2/08; La Jornada 9/2/08, ___)
Teachers continued to hold protests and strikes to build opposition to the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), a plan supported by President Calderón and National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) head Elba Esther Gordillo [see Update #959]. On Sept. 2 teachers and students blocked the Guerrero state legislature building in Chilpancingo and set up an encampment in front of the governor's office; teachers demonstrated in 11 cities in Campeche; and 100 teachers in Yucatán announced they were forming an independent union. (LJ 9/3/08) On Sept. 3 hundreds of teachers from SNTE Section 19 in Morelos occupied tollbooths on the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway, letting vehicles pass for free; Morelos teachers had been on strike since Aug. 13 to protest the ACE. (LJ 9/4/08) Some 50,000 Morelos teachers and supporters marched in Cuernavaca on Sept. 5. (LJ 9/6/08)
*3. In Other News...
Although it caused no deaths, Cuban officials said on Aug. 31 that hurricane Gustav was the island's most destructive hurricane in 50 years, knocking out electricity on the Isla de la Juventud and in much of Pinar del Río province and La Habana province. Former president Fidel Castro estimated the economic impact at $3-4 billion. (La Jornada 9/1/08, 9/4/08 from correspondent)... As of Sept. 6 more than 500 people had reportedly died in Gonaïves, Haiti's third largest city, following the passage of tropical storm Hanna; deforestation has left the Gonaïves area vulnerable to flooding, and as many as 3,000 people died there in 2004 as a result of tropical storm Jeanne [see Updates #765, 768]. Hanna came less than a week after hurricane Gustav hit the country and caused some 77 deaths; flooding from tropical storm Kay left about 40 people dead earlier in August. (Haiti Support Group News Briefs 9/5/08, 9/6/08 from AFP)... On Aug. 29 Guatemalan interior minister Francisco Jiménez announced the capture of former legislative deputy Manuel Castillo at a luxurious residence he owned near the border with El Salvador. Castillo is accused of masterminding the murder of three Salvadoran deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and their driver on Feb. 19, 2007 [see Updates #889, 891]. (Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala) 8/29/08 from EFE)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba
The Winner in Argentina? Transgenic Soy
http://nacla.org/node/4973
Lugo Faces First Challenges: Coup Plots and the Multi-Ring
Political Circus of Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1449/1/
Bolivia Confirms Constitution Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1451/68/
Interview with Former Bolivian Justice Minister Casimira
Rodríguez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1458/1/
Radio: Residents from Ecuador's Amazon Challenge Chevron-Texaco http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1454/68/
Colombia: deadly car blast in Cali
http://ww4report.com/node/5987
Fugitive Colombian para-pol busted in Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/5986
Cauca: A Microcosm of Colombia, A Reflection of Our World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1452/1/
A Third Term in Office? Entrenching Colombian Authoritarianism http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1453/68/
Chávez to nationalize oil distro, move towards "Gas Revolution"
http://ww4report.com/node/5962
Venezuela refuses renewed Drug War cooperation
http://ww4report.com/node/5988
Venezuela: Creating an Endogenous Cooperative Culture
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1457/1/
Nicaragua recognizes South Ossetia, Abkhazia
http://ww4report.com/node/5985
Chiapas: one wounded as paras attack Zapatistas
http://ww4report.com/node/5990
Displaced People: NAFTA's Most Important Product
http://nacla.org/node/4980
Cuba: dissident punk rocker scores political win
http://ww4report.com/node/5963
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Monday, September 1, 2008
WNU #959: Brazilian Indigenous Win, Argentine Generals Lose
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #959, August 31, 2008
1. Brazil: Roraima Indigenous Win Round
2. Argentina: Two Coup Generals Get Life
3. Mexico: New Sentences in Atenco Case
4. Mexico: Morelos Teachers Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Brazil: Roraima Indigenous Win Round
On Aug. 27 Minister Carlos Ayres Britto of Brazil's Supreme Court issued a recommendation favoring indigenous people in the northwestern state of Roraima who seek to maintain the Raposa Serra do Sol (RSS) area as a continuous indigenous land. Ayres Britto's 105-page opinion needs to be confirmed by the other 10 members of the Supreme Court, and the final vote will be probably be delayed to the end of the year because another member of the court, Minister Carlos Alberto Menezes, has asked to review the case.
Located on the border with Guyana and Venezuela, the 6,000-square-mile Raposa Serra do Sol region is the traditional home of some 19,000 Ingaricó, Macuxi, Patamona, Taurepang and Wapichana people. Indigenous people struggled for 30 years to have RSS recognized as indigenous land. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made the formal recognition in an April 2005 decree and stipulated that non-indigenous occupants would be removed within a year. Some powerful rice growers refused to leave and organized sometimes violent resistance when the federal government finally began removing them in March 2008. The state government backed the rice growers and filed an injunction against the removals. Ayres ruled that "[t]he rice growers have no acquired right in relation to possession of the land" and that their "presence takes extensive areas of fertile soil" from the indigenous peoples.
The indigenous groups were represented by Joenia Batista de Carvalho, a Wapichana lawyer and the head of the Indigenous Council of Roraima's legal department. She is the first indigenous lawyer to argue an indigenous rights case before the Supreme Court. (Adital 8/29/08; Rainforest Foundation Update 8/29/08)
*2. Argentina: Two Coup Generals Get Life
On Aug. 28 a federal criminal court in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán sentenced former generals Antonio Domingo Bussi and Luciano Benjamín Menéndez to life in prison for the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of ex-senator Guillermo Vargas Aignasse in 1976, during the coup that started the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Menéndez had already received a life sentence in a different case in Córdoba in July. Along with six other military officers and a civilian, he was found guilty in the kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial execution of four people in 1977. The court agreed to let the 82-year-old Bussi serve his sentence at home, at least until a further decision is made in early September. Bussi was the de facto governor of Tucumán during the military regime and served as elected governor 1995-1999 after the return of democracy [see Updates #702, 718, 950; #718 erroneously gives his elected term as 1991-1995]. Claiming he was in poor health, Bussi appeared before the court in a wheelchair with a plastic tube in his nose. He didn't express regret for the crime, but he cried during the Aug. 28 sentencing and said: "My physical sufferings don't allow me to confront this ultimate combat."
The decision to let Bussi serve his sentence at home produced clashes outside the courthouse between security forces and human rights and leftist groups, resulting in some injuries. (Adital 8/29/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/29/08 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: New Sentences in Atenco Case
On Aug. 21 Alberto Cervantes Juárez, first criminal court judge in Texcoco for the central Mexican state of México, sentenced campesino leader Ignacio del Valle Medina to 45 years in prison for allegedly kidnapping state officials and state and federal police agents. Judge Cervantes Juárez sentenced 10 other campesino activists to 31 years, 10 months and 15 days on the same charges. He handed down the sentences in the Molino de Flores state prison in Texcoco; 500 state riot police guarded the prison to "protect" the judge. About 150 Atenco residents arrived at the prison later in the day to protest the sentences.
The 11 defendants are members of the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino movement that formed in 2001 and successfully opposed plans to build a new international airport on farmlands in and around San Salvador Atenco municipality northeast of Mexico City in México state. The charges arose out of a May 3-4, 2006 confrontation between police and FPDT members which resulted in the deaths of two protesters, 209 arrests and accusations that police agents systematically beat and sexually abused prisoners. Del Valle is already serving a sentence of 67 years and six months in another case, concerning the alleged detention of state government officials during protests in February and April 2006 [see Update #897]
.
Del Valle's attorney, Bárbara Zamora, called the new sentences "unjust," especially for Del Valle, "since it was demonstrated that he was never in the place of the actions." According to FPDT attorney Juan de Dios Hernández Monje, "the judge himself indicated to one of the family members that he didn't decide on the sentence but that the State of México Superior Court of Justice ordered it, which demonstrates that this is an eminently political question, not a juridical one." Many Mexican and international human rights groups and activists have signed on to a petition calling for the withdrawal of the sentences against Atenco activists; it can be accessed at http://www.contraimpunidad.blogspot.com/2008/08/contra-la-represinla-accin.html
(La Jornada 8/22/08; Indymedia (US) 8/27/08)
In other news, on Aug. 27 Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice voted 11-3 to uphold an April 2007 law in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) allowing voluntary abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [see Update #896]. The Catholic Church and the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) had sought to have the law declared unconstitutional. The court's decision, which opens the way for other state government to legalize abortion, became official on Aug. 28. (LJ 8/28/08, 8/29/08)
*4. Mexico: Morelos Teachers Strike
Most of the 23,000 school teachers in the central Mexican state of Morelos went on strike on Aug. 13 to protest the local implementation of a national plan called the Alliance for Quality of Education (ACE). The teachers, in Local 19 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), say that the plan is oriented towards consumerism and the commercialization of education and that it was imposed in ways that violate their constitutional rights. ACE was created through an agreement between Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, longtime national president of the 1.5 million-member SNTE.
On Aug. 22 some 20,000 teachers marched through Cuernavaca, the state capital, announcing plans to continue the strike and to set up an encampment in a plaza. Teachers and parents also demonstrated in other Morelos communities. Some 900 education workers marched on the same day in Veracruz state, while more than 9,000 teachers held a two-hour strike in the eastern state of Quintana Roo. On Aug. 28 Morelos teachers stepped up their actions by occupying tollbooths on highways and letting cars pass without paying; the actions were continuing as of Aug. 30. Meanwhile, federal senators from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) called for Morelos governor Marco Antonio Adame to respond to the teachers' demands. (La Jornada 8/23/08, 8/24/08, 8/31/08; Mexican Labor News and Analysis, August 2008, Vol. 13, #8)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Asunción's Bañados Neighborhood: The Power of Community in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1445/1/
Stiglitz Goes To Paraguay: Move Over Chicago, A Cambridge Boy's in Town
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1439/1/
Bolivia: Beef Producers' Boycott - Latest Opposition Strategy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1440/68/
Peru: Indigenous Occupations End With Victory in Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1448/68/
Landowners Attack Venezuelan Indigenous Clamoring for Land Rights in Zulia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1444/68/
Honduras: Joining ALBA 'A Step Towards the Centre-Left,' Says President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1443/68/
Guatemala: The Forgotten Spirits of Rabinal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1442/1/
Development and the Desert: Border Land Struggle Turns Bloody in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1446/1/
US Actions to Block Life-saving Funds to Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1441/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #959, August 31, 2008
1. Brazil: Roraima Indigenous Win Round
2. Argentina: Two Coup Generals Get Life
3. Mexico: New Sentences in Atenco Case
4. Mexico: Morelos Teachers Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Brazil: Roraima Indigenous Win Round
On Aug. 27 Minister Carlos Ayres Britto of Brazil's Supreme Court issued a recommendation favoring indigenous people in the northwestern state of Roraima who seek to maintain the Raposa Serra do Sol (RSS) area as a continuous indigenous land. Ayres Britto's 105-page opinion needs to be confirmed by the other 10 members of the Supreme Court, and the final vote will be probably be delayed to the end of the year because another member of the court, Minister Carlos Alberto Menezes, has asked to review the case.
Located on the border with Guyana and Venezuela, the 6,000-square-mile Raposa Serra do Sol region is the traditional home of some 19,000 Ingaricó, Macuxi, Patamona, Taurepang and Wapichana people. Indigenous people struggled for 30 years to have RSS recognized as indigenous land. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made the formal recognition in an April 2005 decree and stipulated that non-indigenous occupants would be removed within a year. Some powerful rice growers refused to leave and organized sometimes violent resistance when the federal government finally began removing them in March 2008. The state government backed the rice growers and filed an injunction against the removals. Ayres ruled that "[t]he rice growers have no acquired right in relation to possession of the land" and that their "presence takes extensive areas of fertile soil" from the indigenous peoples.
The indigenous groups were represented by Joenia Batista de Carvalho, a Wapichana lawyer and the head of the Indigenous Council of Roraima's legal department. She is the first indigenous lawyer to argue an indigenous rights case before the Supreme Court. (Adital 8/29/08; Rainforest Foundation Update 8/29/08)
*2. Argentina: Two Coup Generals Get Life
On Aug. 28 a federal criminal court in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán sentenced former generals Antonio Domingo Bussi and Luciano Benjamín Menéndez to life in prison for the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of ex-senator Guillermo Vargas Aignasse in 1976, during the coup that started the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Menéndez had already received a life sentence in a different case in Córdoba in July. Along with six other military officers and a civilian, he was found guilty in the kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial execution of four people in 1977. The court agreed to let the 82-year-old Bussi serve his sentence at home, at least until a further decision is made in early September. Bussi was the de facto governor of Tucumán during the military regime and served as elected governor 1995-1999 after the return of democracy [see Updates #702, 718, 950; #718 erroneously gives his elected term as 1991-1995]. Claiming he was in poor health, Bussi appeared before the court in a wheelchair with a plastic tube in his nose. He didn't express regret for the crime, but he cried during the Aug. 28 sentencing and said: "My physical sufferings don't allow me to confront this ultimate combat."
The decision to let Bussi serve his sentence at home produced clashes outside the courthouse between security forces and human rights and leftist groups, resulting in some injuries. (Adital 8/29/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/29/08 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: New Sentences in Atenco Case
On Aug. 21 Alberto Cervantes Juárez, first criminal court judge in Texcoco for the central Mexican state of México, sentenced campesino leader Ignacio del Valle Medina to 45 years in prison for allegedly kidnapping state officials and state and federal police agents. Judge Cervantes Juárez sentenced 10 other campesino activists to 31 years, 10 months and 15 days on the same charges. He handed down the sentences in the Molino de Flores state prison in Texcoco; 500 state riot police guarded the prison to "protect" the judge. About 150 Atenco residents arrived at the prison later in the day to protest the sentences.
The 11 defendants are members of the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino movement that formed in 2001 and successfully opposed plans to build a new international airport on farmlands in and around San Salvador Atenco municipality northeast of Mexico City in México state. The charges arose out of a May 3-4, 2006 confrontation between police and FPDT members which resulted in the deaths of two protesters, 209 arrests and accusations that police agents systematically beat and sexually abused prisoners. Del Valle is already serving a sentence of 67 years and six months in another case, concerning the alleged detention of state government officials during protests in February and April 2006 [see Update #897]
.
Del Valle's attorney, Bárbara Zamora, called the new sentences "unjust," especially for Del Valle, "since it was demonstrated that he was never in the place of the actions." According to FPDT attorney Juan de Dios Hernández Monje, "the judge himself indicated to one of the family members that he didn't decide on the sentence but that the State of México Superior Court of Justice ordered it, which demonstrates that this is an eminently political question, not a juridical one." Many Mexican and international human rights groups and activists have signed on to a petition calling for the withdrawal of the sentences against Atenco activists; it can be accessed at http://www.contraimpunidad.blogspot.com/2008/08/contra-la-represinla-accin.html
(La Jornada 8/22/08; Indymedia (US) 8/27/08)
In other news, on Aug. 27 Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice voted 11-3 to uphold an April 2007 law in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) allowing voluntary abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [see Update #896]. The Catholic Church and the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) had sought to have the law declared unconstitutional. The court's decision, which opens the way for other state government to legalize abortion, became official on Aug. 28. (LJ 8/28/08, 8/29/08)
*4. Mexico: Morelos Teachers Strike
Most of the 23,000 school teachers in the central Mexican state of Morelos went on strike on Aug. 13 to protest the local implementation of a national plan called the Alliance for Quality of Education (ACE). The teachers, in Local 19 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), say that the plan is oriented towards consumerism and the commercialization of education and that it was imposed in ways that violate their constitutional rights. ACE was created through an agreement between Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, longtime national president of the 1.5 million-member SNTE.
On Aug. 22 some 20,000 teachers marched through Cuernavaca, the state capital, announcing plans to continue the strike and to set up an encampment in a plaza. Teachers and parents also demonstrated in other Morelos communities. Some 900 education workers marched on the same day in Veracruz state, while more than 9,000 teachers held a two-hour strike in the eastern state of Quintana Roo. On Aug. 28 Morelos teachers stepped up their actions by occupying tollbooths on highways and letting cars pass without paying; the actions were continuing as of Aug. 30. Meanwhile, federal senators from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) called for Morelos governor Marco Antonio Adame to respond to the teachers' demands. (La Jornada 8/23/08, 8/24/08, 8/31/08; Mexican Labor News and Analysis, August 2008, Vol. 13, #8)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Asunción's Bañados Neighborhood: The Power of Community in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1445/1/
Stiglitz Goes To Paraguay: Move Over Chicago, A Cambridge Boy's in Town
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1439/1/
Bolivia: Beef Producers' Boycott - Latest Opposition Strategy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1440/68/
Peru: Indigenous Occupations End With Victory in Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1448/68/
Landowners Attack Venezuelan Indigenous Clamoring for Land Rights in Zulia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1444/68/
Honduras: Joining ALBA 'A Step Towards the Centre-Left,' Says President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1443/68/
Guatemala: The Forgotten Spirits of Rabinal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1442/1/
Development and the Desert: Border Land Struggle Turns Bloody in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1446/1/
US Actions to Block Life-saving Funds to Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1441/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, August 25, 2008
Links but no Update for August 24, 2008
[Due to other commitments, we are unable to send out an Update this week. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Dispatch From Paraguay: Hope Reigns at Dawn of Fernando Lugo Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1434/1/
Paraguay: former slave becomes indigenous affairs minister
http://ww4report.com/node/5926
Bolivian Government Condemns Opposition Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1435/68/
What did Bolivian Society Say Through the Recall Referendum?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5486
Democracy and Conflict: Bolivia's Constituent Assembly, Federal Government, and Departmental Autonomy Statutes
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5487
Bolivia: opposition strike shuts down five departments
http://ww4report.com/node/5927
Bolivia: Evo sends army to oil installations
http://ww4report.com/node/5939
Peru: Conflict Grows, Government Slumpshttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1436/68/
Peru: indigenous uprising claims victory —for now
http://ww4report.com/node/5925
Venezuela: Land Reform Conflict Arises Around Strategic Water Sourcehttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1433/1/
Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Hondurashttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1437/1/
Guatemala: SalvaVidas Purified Water Union Suffers Threats and Injustice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1429/1/
Deadly attacks on police across Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/5934
Inter-American Court Focuses on Forced Disappearances
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1430/68/
An Introduction to Regional Financial Institutions in Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5460
Should Obama, If Elected, Make a Clean Break With Bush's Latin America Policy?http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1432/68/
Would There Be Change in Obama's Americas Policy?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5479
Dispatch From Paraguay: Hope Reigns at Dawn of Fernando Lugo Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1434/1/
Paraguay: former slave becomes indigenous affairs minister
http://ww4report.com/node/5926
Bolivian Government Condemns Opposition Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1435/68/
What did Bolivian Society Say Through the Recall Referendum?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5486
Democracy and Conflict: Bolivia's Constituent Assembly, Federal Government, and Departmental Autonomy Statutes
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5487
Bolivia: opposition strike shuts down five departments
http://ww4report.com/node/5927
Bolivia: Evo sends army to oil installations
http://ww4report.com/node/5939
Peru: Conflict Grows, Government Slumpshttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1436/68/
Peru: indigenous uprising claims victory —for now
http://ww4report.com/node/5925
Venezuela: Land Reform Conflict Arises Around Strategic Water Sourcehttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1433/1/
Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Hondurashttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1437/1/
Guatemala: SalvaVidas Purified Water Union Suffers Threats and Injustice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1429/1/
Deadly attacks on police across Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/5934
Inter-American Court Focuses on Forced Disappearances
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1430/68/
An Introduction to Regional Financial Institutions in Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5460
Should Obama, If Elected, Make a Clean Break With Bush's Latin America Policy?http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1432/68/
Would There Be Change in Obama's Americas Policy?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5479
Monday, August 18, 2008
WNU #958: Crackdown on Left and Press in Colombia?
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #958, August 17, 2008
1. Colombia: Crackdown on Left and Press?
2. Colombia: Support Group Issues Alerts
3. Mexico: Sit-in in PEMEX Union Office
4. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Crackdown on Left and Press?
On Aug. 8 the Colombian Attorney General's Office arrested sociologist Liliana (or Liliany) Patricia Obando Villota in Bogotá on charges of organizing events and managing money for the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On Aug. 9 the Attorney General's Office announced that police had also arrested Dr. César Augusto Arango García, the director of a public hospital in the indigenous municipality of Planadas in Tolima department; Arango was described as the personal physician of Alfonso Cano, who has led the FARC since the death of longtime leader Manuel Marulanda in March. The Attorney General's Office says it is also seeking William Parra, a journalist now working with the left-leaning Venezuelan-based Telesur television network.
Colombian authorities say the charges against Obando and Parra are based on information found in computers used by FARC spokesperson and negotiator Raúl Reyes; the computers were seized in March when the Colombian military bombed and raided a FARC camp in Ecuador, killing Reyes and about 20 other people [see Updates #937, 939].
Obando is a consultant with the National Unified Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO). Founded 20 years ago in the Urabá region, the federation includes 37 campesino unions with a total of 80,000 members, according to an unnamed spokesperson. The authorities say Obando was in frequent correspondence with Reyes and may have had romantic relations with him. Obando told Colombia's RCN Radio on Aug. 11 that she had not financed the rebels; she admitted she had met Reyes but denied having romantic relations with him. She said she was working on a study for FENSUAGRO of the murders of more than 1,500 of the organization's members.
Parra was chief spokesperson for former president Ernesto Samper during his second term (1994-1998). He has been ordered to appear for questioning on Sept. 11. Parra lives outside Colombia and hasn't indicated whether he will respond to the order; however, he has named Sandra Gamboa Rubiano of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective to be his defense attorney in Colombia. (AFP 9/8/08; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 8/10/08 from correspondent; Peace and Justice For Colombia (Australia) announcement 8/13/08; RCN Radio 8/11/08; El País (Cali) 8/12/08 from Colprensa)
On Aug. 12 Colombian media reported that Carlos Lozano Guillén, director of the weekly magazine Voz, had been ordered to testify on his alleged links to the FARC. Colombia authorities say messages from Lozano appear on Reyes' computers. Lozano indicated that any correspondence he had with the FARC was in connection with peace efforts or negotiations for the release of hostages. He said he hadn't been notified of the judicial order and called the situation "a spectacle by means of the media." Lozano is a member of the Executive Committee of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) and the National Council of the center-left Democratic Alternative Pole (PDA). On July 11 French president Nicholas Sarkozy awarded Lozano and National Conciliation Commission head Father Darío Echeverri the French government's highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
Colombian authorities say Reyes' computers also implicate at least four opposition members of Congress: Senator Piedad Córdoba de Castro, a member of the Liberal Party and a negotiator for the release of hostages held by the FARC [see Update #937, where she is only identified as a former senator]; and Senator Gloria Inés Ramírez, Senator Gustavo Petro and Deputy Wilson Borja, all from the PDA. Investigations of Petro and Borja are already underway, and on Aug. 12 Colombia president Alvaro Uribe called for an investigation of Córdoba, who told the newspaper El Tiempo that she might sue him for libel. (El Pais 8/12/08; Carlos Lozano Guillén blog 8/5/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/13/08 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Several of the people now under investigation were targeted in the past by paramilitary or rebel groups. The rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) kidnapped Piedad Córboba and held her for two weeks in May and June 1997 [see Updates #486, 488]. In December 2000 Wilson Borja, then president of the National Federation of State Workers (Fenaltrase), was seriously injured in an attack by alleged rightwing paramilitaries outside his Bogotá home; a bystander was killed along with one of the assailants [see Update #568]. In 2005 unidentified people stabbed William Parra in the rural zone of Nemocón, 60 km north of Bogotá, injuring a lung. (ENH 8/10/08) Parra has also been the victim of a FARC action: in December 1997, when he was a government official, rebels kidnapped him along with another journalist and held them both for more than a week [see Update #441].
*2. Colombia: Support Group Issues Alerts
The government of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe continues to be plagued by the parapolítica ("parapolitics") scandal, in which some 60 members of Congress have been linked to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing paramilitary group that is now officially demobilized. The majority of these politicians are in Uribe's governing coalition, and some are in the president's extended family. On Aug. 12 a former paramilitary, Luis Adrián Palacio ("Diomedes"), gave testimony to the Attorney General's Office linking Gen. Mario Montoya, the head of the military, to the AUC. Diomedes said that in April 2002 Montoya, who then commanded the Army's Fourth Brigade, personally delivered a "present" of six AK-47 rifles and an M-16 rifle to the AUC's Bloque Mineros. Montoya denies the charge.
Uribe's popularity remains high; the latest polls gave him a 91% rating. He has been helped by a series of successes against the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Charges that leftist politicians are linked to the FARC--known as the farcpolítica ("FARC politics") scandal --have helped relieve pressure from the paramilitary scandal. (La Jornada 8/13/08 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)
An agreement between Uribe and the administration of US president George Bush has also helped diffuse the scandal. Some paramilitary leaders are now being extradited to the US to stand trial for drug trafficking, and many analysts think this will keep Colombian investigators from getting valuable information about paramilitary links to politicians. (The Nation 7/29/08) Ever Veloza ("H.H."), former leader of the Bloques Calima and Bananeros paramilitary units, has begun to talk about these ties, and Senator Gustavo Petro (himself threatened with investigation in the farcpolítica scandal) is urging Uribe to hold up Veloza's extradition until he has told his story. The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) is asking for letters to US attorney general Michael Mukasey (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov) and Colombian attorney general Dr. Mario Hernán Iguarán Arana (contacto@fiscalia.gov.co and denuncias@fiscalia.gov.co) "urging them to place a hold on extradition until the human rights violation stories can be told." (CSN alert 8/5/08)
CSN is also urging activists to circulate a letter to Uribe in support of sociologist and journalist Alfredo Molano Bravo. The powerful Araujo family of Valledupar, capital of Cesar department, has brought criminal libel charges against Molano for a column the newspaper El Espectador published on Feb. 24, 2007, about various crimes committed by unidentified "notables" in Valledupar. On Aug. 12, Molano Bravo was ordered to appear at a preliminary hearing in the case. CSN is asking for people to sign on to a statement in solidarity with Molano. The group calls the criminal action against the journalist "part of a plan to muzzle the Colombian press at a time when investigations of ties of many Colombian politicians, including members of the Araujo family, with illegal paramilitaries are leading to convictions." The letter is available from CSN at csn@igc.org. (CSN alert 8/12/08)
*3. Mexico: Sit-in in PEMEX Union Office
In the early morning of Aug. 15 a group of about 40 dissident unionists occupied the Mexico City headquarters of the Union of Petroleum Workers of the Mexican Republic (STPRM) to protest the recent reelection of Carlos Romero Deschamps, who has headed the union for 17 years. Dissident leader Omar Toledo Aburto gave a press conference in Romero Deschamps' luxurious office, announcing that he would be the "interim national leader of the more than 97,000 petroleum workers while elections take place." Two hours after the sit-in began, about 50 supporters of Romero Deschamps arrived wielding metal pipes and carrying pistols in their belts. They retook the office, beat the dissidents and confiscated their documents and cellphones. (La Jornada 8/16/08)
Opponents of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's plan for the partial privatization of the state-owned oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), say that Romero Deschamps' leadership of the STPRM is "key" to the plan. The current leader will keep the petroleum workers from mobilizing and protesting any privatization, according to Francisco Carrillo Soberón, a former secretary in the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). (LJ 8/17/08) Meanwhile, voting on a non-binding referendum organized by opponents of Calderón's plan continues. Organizers projected a turnout of about 393,000 for the second round, which took place on Aug. 10 in seven states: Campeche, Colima, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. As in the first round--on July 27 in the Federal District (DF) and nine states--the vote was overwhelmingly against Calderón's plan [see Updates #956, 957]. The final round of voting is set for Aug. 24. (LJ 8/11/08)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, US policy
Repression of Documentary Filmmakers in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1424/1/
Paraguay: Rocky Road Ahead for Lugo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1427/68/
Asunción's Bañados Neighborhood: The Power of Community
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5451
Lula: give Doha a chance
http://ww4report.com/node/5876
Bolivia, Shell Oil reach pipeline compensation deal
http://ww4report.com/node/5874
Bolivia: Miner Clashes Leave Two Dead, Gov't Investigates
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1415/68/
Bolivia: Summit Cancelled Due to Social Unrest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1410/68/
Bolivian Conflict Revolves Around Control of Land and Gas
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1414/68/
Bolivia: opposition calls civil strike in wake of recall vote
http://ww4report.com/node/5903
The Street and the Ballot Box: Voices From Bolivia's Recall Vote http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1426/1/
Bolivia: Prefect Reyes Villa Resigns After Losing Referendum
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1422/1/
Optimism and Uncertainty Follow Bolivian Recall Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1418/1/
Bolivia: After Recall Vote, Opposition Rejects Morales' Call for Unity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1419/68/
Bolivian President Ratified in Post, Three Prefects Lose Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1417/68/
Peru: Secret Arms Deals - An Invitation to Corruption?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1406/68/
Peru: indigenous protesters occupy gas fields
http://ww4report.com/node/5899
Ecuador's Constitution and Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1423/68/
Colombia: investigate "misuse" of Red Cross insignia
http://ww4report.com/node/5873
Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Colombia: Corporations with a License to Kill
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1411/1/
Colombia: Interview with Antonio Navarro Wolf
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1408/1/
Colombia: indigenous groups face "extinction"
http://ww4report.com/node/5901
Colombia: Terror Campaign Targets Indigenous Population
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1420/68/
FARC's international supporters targeted after Colombia terror blast
http://ww4report.com/node/5900
Chávez charges US intervention in Georgia
http://ww4report.com/node/5896
Chávez Signs 26 Law-Decrees on Final Day of Enabling Law Power
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1407/68/
Guatemala: The Hope for an Endless Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1421/1/
Honduras: Garifuna Resistance to Mega-Tourism in Tela Bay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1409/1/
Mexico: top drug prosecutors step down in shake-up
http://ww4report.com/node/5872
U.S. Recession, Drug War Violence Cause Crisis in Mexico Tourism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5421
A Primer on Plan Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5204
Mexico: feds probe "forced disappearance" of leftist militants
http://ww4report.com/node/5905
Mexico: narco-killings surpass last year's total
http://ww4report.com/node/5904
Haiti's Compounding Food and Health Crises
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5446
'A New Alliance of the Americas'? Reflections of 1961 for Obama in 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1405/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #958, August 17, 2008
1. Colombia: Crackdown on Left and Press?
2. Colombia: Support Group Issues Alerts
3. Mexico: Sit-in in PEMEX Union Office
4. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Crackdown on Left and Press?
On Aug. 8 the Colombian Attorney General's Office arrested sociologist Liliana (or Liliany) Patricia Obando Villota in Bogotá on charges of organizing events and managing money for the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On Aug. 9 the Attorney General's Office announced that police had also arrested Dr. César Augusto Arango García, the director of a public hospital in the indigenous municipality of Planadas in Tolima department; Arango was described as the personal physician of Alfonso Cano, who has led the FARC since the death of longtime leader Manuel Marulanda in March. The Attorney General's Office says it is also seeking William Parra, a journalist now working with the left-leaning Venezuelan-based Telesur television network.
Colombian authorities say the charges against Obando and Parra are based on information found in computers used by FARC spokesperson and negotiator Raúl Reyes; the computers were seized in March when the Colombian military bombed and raided a FARC camp in Ecuador, killing Reyes and about 20 other people [see Updates #937, 939].
Obando is a consultant with the National Unified Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO). Founded 20 years ago in the Urabá region, the federation includes 37 campesino unions with a total of 80,000 members, according to an unnamed spokesperson. The authorities say Obando was in frequent correspondence with Reyes and may have had romantic relations with him. Obando told Colombia's RCN Radio on Aug. 11 that she had not financed the rebels; she admitted she had met Reyes but denied having romantic relations with him. She said she was working on a study for FENSUAGRO of the murders of more than 1,500 of the organization's members.
Parra was chief spokesperson for former president Ernesto Samper during his second term (1994-1998). He has been ordered to appear for questioning on Sept. 11. Parra lives outside Colombia and hasn't indicated whether he will respond to the order; however, he has named Sandra Gamboa Rubiano of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective to be his defense attorney in Colombia. (AFP 9/8/08; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 8/10/08 from correspondent; Peace and Justice For Colombia (Australia) announcement 8/13/08; RCN Radio 8/11/08; El País (Cali) 8/12/08 from Colprensa)
On Aug. 12 Colombian media reported that Carlos Lozano Guillén, director of the weekly magazine Voz, had been ordered to testify on his alleged links to the FARC. Colombia authorities say messages from Lozano appear on Reyes' computers. Lozano indicated that any correspondence he had with the FARC was in connection with peace efforts or negotiations for the release of hostages. He said he hadn't been notified of the judicial order and called the situation "a spectacle by means of the media." Lozano is a member of the Executive Committee of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) and the National Council of the center-left Democratic Alternative Pole (PDA). On July 11 French president Nicholas Sarkozy awarded Lozano and National Conciliation Commission head Father Darío Echeverri the French government's highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
Colombian authorities say Reyes' computers also implicate at least four opposition members of Congress: Senator Piedad Córdoba de Castro, a member of the Liberal Party and a negotiator for the release of hostages held by the FARC [see Update #937, where she is only identified as a former senator]; and Senator Gloria Inés Ramírez, Senator Gustavo Petro and Deputy Wilson Borja, all from the PDA. Investigations of Petro and Borja are already underway, and on Aug. 12 Colombia president Alvaro Uribe called for an investigation of Córdoba, who told the newspaper El Tiempo that she might sue him for libel. (El Pais 8/12/08; Carlos Lozano Guillén blog 8/5/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/13/08 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Several of the people now under investigation were targeted in the past by paramilitary or rebel groups. The rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) kidnapped Piedad Córboba and held her for two weeks in May and June 1997 [see Updates #486, 488]. In December 2000 Wilson Borja, then president of the National Federation of State Workers (Fenaltrase), was seriously injured in an attack by alleged rightwing paramilitaries outside his Bogotá home; a bystander was killed along with one of the assailants [see Update #568]. In 2005 unidentified people stabbed William Parra in the rural zone of Nemocón, 60 km north of Bogotá, injuring a lung. (ENH 8/10/08) Parra has also been the victim of a FARC action: in December 1997, when he was a government official, rebels kidnapped him along with another journalist and held them both for more than a week [see Update #441].
*2. Colombia: Support Group Issues Alerts
The government of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe continues to be plagued by the parapolítica ("parapolitics") scandal, in which some 60 members of Congress have been linked to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing paramilitary group that is now officially demobilized. The majority of these politicians are in Uribe's governing coalition, and some are in the president's extended family. On Aug. 12 a former paramilitary, Luis Adrián Palacio ("Diomedes"), gave testimony to the Attorney General's Office linking Gen. Mario Montoya, the head of the military, to the AUC. Diomedes said that in April 2002 Montoya, who then commanded the Army's Fourth Brigade, personally delivered a "present" of six AK-47 rifles and an M-16 rifle to the AUC's Bloque Mineros. Montoya denies the charge.
Uribe's popularity remains high; the latest polls gave him a 91% rating. He has been helped by a series of successes against the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Charges that leftist politicians are linked to the FARC--known as the farcpolítica ("FARC politics") scandal --have helped relieve pressure from the paramilitary scandal. (La Jornada 8/13/08 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)
An agreement between Uribe and the administration of US president George Bush has also helped diffuse the scandal. Some paramilitary leaders are now being extradited to the US to stand trial for drug trafficking, and many analysts think this will keep Colombian investigators from getting valuable information about paramilitary links to politicians. (The Nation 7/29/08) Ever Veloza ("H.H."), former leader of the Bloques Calima and Bananeros paramilitary units, has begun to talk about these ties, and Senator Gustavo Petro (himself threatened with investigation in the farcpolítica scandal) is urging Uribe to hold up Veloza's extradition until he has told his story. The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) is asking for letters to US attorney general Michael Mukasey (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov) and Colombian attorney general Dr. Mario Hernán Iguarán Arana (contacto@fiscalia.gov.co and denuncias@fiscalia.gov.co) "urging them to place a hold on extradition until the human rights violation stories can be told." (CSN alert 8/5/08)
CSN is also urging activists to circulate a letter to Uribe in support of sociologist and journalist Alfredo Molano Bravo. The powerful Araujo family of Valledupar, capital of Cesar department, has brought criminal libel charges against Molano for a column the newspaper El Espectador published on Feb. 24, 2007, about various crimes committed by unidentified "notables" in Valledupar. On Aug. 12, Molano Bravo was ordered to appear at a preliminary hearing in the case. CSN is asking for people to sign on to a statement in solidarity with Molano. The group calls the criminal action against the journalist "part of a plan to muzzle the Colombian press at a time when investigations of ties of many Colombian politicians, including members of the Araujo family, with illegal paramilitaries are leading to convictions." The letter is available from CSN at csn@igc.org. (CSN alert 8/12/08)
*3. Mexico: Sit-in in PEMEX Union Office
In the early morning of Aug. 15 a group of about 40 dissident unionists occupied the Mexico City headquarters of the Union of Petroleum Workers of the Mexican Republic (STPRM) to protest the recent reelection of Carlos Romero Deschamps, who has headed the union for 17 years. Dissident leader Omar Toledo Aburto gave a press conference in Romero Deschamps' luxurious office, announcing that he would be the "interim national leader of the more than 97,000 petroleum workers while elections take place." Two hours after the sit-in began, about 50 supporters of Romero Deschamps arrived wielding metal pipes and carrying pistols in their belts. They retook the office, beat the dissidents and confiscated their documents and cellphones. (La Jornada 8/16/08)
Opponents of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's plan for the partial privatization of the state-owned oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), say that Romero Deschamps' leadership of the STPRM is "key" to the plan. The current leader will keep the petroleum workers from mobilizing and protesting any privatization, according to Francisco Carrillo Soberón, a former secretary in the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). (LJ 8/17/08) Meanwhile, voting on a non-binding referendum organized by opponents of Calderón's plan continues. Organizers projected a turnout of about 393,000 for the second round, which took place on Aug. 10 in seven states: Campeche, Colima, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. As in the first round--on July 27 in the Federal District (DF) and nine states--the vote was overwhelmingly against Calderón's plan [see Updates #956, 957]. The final round of voting is set for Aug. 24. (LJ 8/11/08)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, US policy
Repression of Documentary Filmmakers in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1424/1/
Paraguay: Rocky Road Ahead for Lugo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1427/68/
Asunción's Bañados Neighborhood: The Power of Community
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5451
Lula: give Doha a chance
http://ww4report.com/node/5876
Bolivia, Shell Oil reach pipeline compensation deal
http://ww4report.com/node/5874
Bolivia: Miner Clashes Leave Two Dead, Gov't Investigates
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1415/68/
Bolivia: Summit Cancelled Due to Social Unrest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1410/68/
Bolivian Conflict Revolves Around Control of Land and Gas
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1414/68/
Bolivia: opposition calls civil strike in wake of recall vote
http://ww4report.com/node/5903
The Street and the Ballot Box: Voices From Bolivia's Recall Vote http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1426/1/
Bolivia: Prefect Reyes Villa Resigns After Losing Referendum
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1422/1/
Optimism and Uncertainty Follow Bolivian Recall Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1418/1/
Bolivia: After Recall Vote, Opposition Rejects Morales' Call for Unity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1419/68/
Bolivian President Ratified in Post, Three Prefects Lose Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1417/68/
Peru: Secret Arms Deals - An Invitation to Corruption?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1406/68/
Peru: indigenous protesters occupy gas fields
http://ww4report.com/node/5899
Ecuador's Constitution and Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1423/68/
Colombia: investigate "misuse" of Red Cross insignia
http://ww4report.com/node/5873
Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Colombia: Corporations with a License to Kill
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1411/1/
Colombia: Interview with Antonio Navarro Wolf
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1408/1/
Colombia: indigenous groups face "extinction"
http://ww4report.com/node/5901
Colombia: Terror Campaign Targets Indigenous Population
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1420/68/
FARC's international supporters targeted after Colombia terror blast
http://ww4report.com/node/5900
Chávez charges US intervention in Georgia
http://ww4report.com/node/5896
Chávez Signs 26 Law-Decrees on Final Day of Enabling Law Power
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1407/68/
Guatemala: The Hope for an Endless Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1421/1/
Honduras: Garifuna Resistance to Mega-Tourism in Tela Bay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1409/1/
Mexico: top drug prosecutors step down in shake-up
http://ww4report.com/node/5872
U.S. Recession, Drug War Violence Cause Crisis in Mexico Tourism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5421
A Primer on Plan Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5204
Mexico: feds probe "forced disappearance" of leftist militants
http://ww4report.com/node/5905
Mexico: narco-killings surpass last year's total
http://ww4report.com/node/5904
Haiti's Compounding Food and Health Crises
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5446
'A New Alliance of the Americas'? Reflections of 1961 for Obama in 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1405/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, August 4, 2008
WNU #957: Mexicans Vote No on PEMEX "Reform"
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #957, August 3, 2008
1. Mexico: "No" Vote on PEMEX "Reform"
2. Venezuela: Chavez Embraces Russia, Spain
3. Haiti: Pierre-Louis Ratified as PM
4. Haiti: Brazil Offers Food Program
5. Cuba: US Computers Reach Havana
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: "No" Vote on PEMEX "Reform"
Some 1.8 million Mexicans voted overwhelmingly in an unofficial, non-binding referendum on July 27 to reject President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's proposals to allow more involvement in the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), by local and foreign private companies. The vote was held in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and nine states; similar unofficial votes are planned for the remaining 23 states on Aug. 10 and Aug. 24 [see Update #956].
A rapid count late on July 27 showed about 870,000 people voting in the DF. Exit polls by the Consulta Mitofsky polling firm estimated that 84.7% voted no on the first question--whether to allow private companies to participate in activities relating to petroleum exploitation--while 15.3% voted yes. A second question asked if voters agreed "in general" with Calderón's energy reform proposals; some 82.9% voted no, and 17.1% voted yes, according to the exit poll. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/28/08)
Vote counting was slower outside the DF, but as of July 31 organizers reported that about 968,000 voters had participated in the nine states, which include such populous areas as México state. Some 93% of these voted no on the first question while 5% voted yes, with 2% of the votes ruled invalid; 91% voted no on the second question, and 7% voted yes, with the rest invalid. (LJ 8/1/08)
Organizers insisted that they were "satisfied" with voter participation. However, the center-left government of the DF had printed enough ballots for 6 million voters, many more than the number of voters that turned out. Unofficial referendums in the past seem to have drawn more voters: organizers claimed that an August 1998 vote on a government bailout of banks brought out more than 3 million voters, while 2.4 million Mexicans reportedly participated in a March 1999 "consultation" by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) on indigenous rights [see Updates #449, 478, 956]. Carlos Payán Velver, former editor of the left-leaning daily La Jornada, noted that in the DF people had to present voter credentials before voting in this year's referendum. Participation was much higher than for other votes in the DF with the same requirements, he said, such as a 2002 referendum on building a second level for the Mexico City beltway, which brought out 420,000 voters. (LJ 7/28/08; LJ 7/29/08)
*2. Venezuela: Chávez Embraces Russia, Spain
On July 22, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías met with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow as the two countries signed agreements for joint work on energy projects in Venezuela. Chávez said the accords would promote "a strategic alliance in the energy sector." Venezuela and Russia have "a perfect identity in their foreign policy lines," he said. "If the Russian armed forces want to be in Venezuela, they'll be welcomed warmly." Chávez added that he intended to pursue military cooperation with Russia in response to the "aggressive plans" of the US. In recent years Venezuela has bought arms worth an estimated $4 billion from Russia. This was Chávez's sixth visit to Russia since 2001, although the first since Medvedev became president. Previous visits were with former president Vladimir Putin, who is now Medvedev's prime minister. (La Jornada 7/23/08 from correspondent)
Chávez was in Spain on July 25. He proposed discussions about Europe's new policies towards immigrants from Latin America [see Update #951], and also used the visit to mend fences with President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and King Juan Carlos I. During the 17th Iberian-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, in November 2007, Chávez had repeatedly interrupted Zapatero, and Juan Carlos finally told Chávez: "Why don't you shut up?" This time Chávez held the king in a long embrace. Juan Carlos gave him a t-shirt reading: "Why don't you shut up?" and Chávez joked about the king's royalties from the expression. (LJ 7/26/08 from correspondent)
*3. Haiti: Pierre-Louis Ratified as PM
The Haitian Senate voted on July 31 to ratify the appointment of economist Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis as prime minister. Twelve of the 18 senators present voted in favor, and five abstained; as required by the regulations, Senate president Kelly Bastien did not vote. The Senate's action completes the ratification process, since the Chamber of Deputies approved Pierre-Louis' appointment on July 17. President René Garcia Préval nominated Pierre-Louis on June 23; it was his third effort to find a prime minister to succeed Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was forced to resign on Apr. 12 following violent protests over the rising cost of food [see Update #954]. Pierre-Louis is Haiti's second woman prime minister.
Some of the opposition to Pierre-Louis stemmed from her position as director of the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty (FOKAL), a nongovernmental organization supported by the Open Society Institute of US financier George Soros, who has backed neoliberal economic policies in Latin America. Some opposition was because of rumors about her sexual orientation. In the debate on July 31, Sen. Edmonde Supplice Beauzile said she wouldn't vote for Pierre-Louis for moral reasons, while Sen. Rudy Hériveaux said people shouldn't be penalized for their sexual orientation. Challenges facing Pierre-Louis now include dealing with the rising cost of living; finding a way to jump-start food production in the country; handling protests by former members of the army, which was disbanded in 1995; preparing for the start of the school year on Sept. 1; and arranging elections for nine of the 27 seats in the Senate. (Associated Press 7/31/08; Reuters 7/31/08; AlterPresse 7/31/08, _ )
*4. Haiti: Brazil Offers Food Program
A mission representing several Brazilian government ministries arrived in Haiti on July 19 for a two-week visit aimed at developing a plan for combatting hunger in the country. A pilot project will be modeled on Brazil's Program of Acquisition of Food from Family Agriculture (PAA). "The objective is to encourage family agriculture, generating income and producing food," said César Medeiros, director of Brazil's National Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat. "The project will be administered by Haiti; Brazil will only provide advice." The aid is part of an agreement Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva signed with President René Préval during a visit to Haiti on May 28. (Adital (Brazil) 7/31/08)
Brazil heads the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a four-year-old military and policing operation opposed by many Haitian and Brazilian activists [see Update #549].
*5. Cuba: US Computers Reach Havana
Computers confiscated by US customs agents in Texas at the beginning of July finally arrived in Cuba on Aug. 1 in a cargo of 100 tons of humanitarian aid raised by the New York-based group Pastors for Peace in its 19th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan. After collecting the aid in 137 US and Canadian cities during June, the caravan drove into Mexico at the border crossing at McAllen, Texas. US agents let the other material through, including five buses, but confiscated 32 computers [see Update #953, where we reported the number as 35, following our source]. The caravan members took the rest of the aid to Tampico in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to send it to Cuba by ship; the members themselves then flew to Havana on July 5.
"When we came back from our visit to Cuba, the people from Customs gave us back the computers...saying they had determined that we could ask for a permit," Pastors for Peace associate director Ellen Bernstein told a press conference in Havana on Aug. 1. "But we didn't ask for anything; we carried the computers by hand and crossed the international bridge to Mexico to leave them on the other side to make sure that they got from Customs to Cuba." The group, which has shipped aid to Cuba since 1992, protests the US trade embargo against Cuba by refusing to apply for permits.
At the press conference Bernstein announced that eight US students would graduate on Aug. 2 from Havana's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). Currently 103 students from disadvantaged US communities are studying there on full scholarship; eventually Cuba hopes to have 500 US students in the program. (Granma Internacional (Cuba) 8/1/08; Soitu.Es (Spain) 8/1/08 from EFE)
On July 31 Pastors for Peace founder Rev. Lucius Walker was in court in New York City facing contempt charges for refusing to answer questions from the Special Commission of Investigation (SCI) for the city's Department of Education about a delegation from Beacon High School that traveled to Cuba in 2007. Judge Judith Gische refused to rule because of errors in the SCI's motion, but she said the SCI could correct the errors and resubmit the motion. Charging that "precious Department of Education funds are being used to harass rather than to serve the urgent educational needs of our schools," Pastors for Peace is asking for supporters to urge Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard J. Condon (80 Maiden Lane, 20th floor, New York, NY 10038-4811) to withdraw the SCI's subpoena of Walker. (Court Update from Pastors for Peace 8/1/08; Pan-African News Wire 1/23/08 from AP, New York Daily News)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
Argentina: Soy - High Profits Now, Hell to Pay Later
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1398/68/
Bolivia: It's All about the Gas Revenues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1399/68/
Indigenous Organizations to Support Ecuador's Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1404/1/
Colombia: army colonel admits participation in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5841
Colombia: banana executive admits participation in Peace Community massacres
http://ww4report.com/node/5839
Colombian paras cop plea in Miami; "New Generation" wreaks terror in Narino
http://ww4report.com/node/5838
What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1397/1/
Venezuelan Youth: A Potential Antidote to the Weaknesses of the Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1401/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #957, August 3, 2008
1. Mexico: "No" Vote on PEMEX "Reform"
2. Venezuela: Chavez Embraces Russia, Spain
3. Haiti: Pierre-Louis Ratified as PM
4. Haiti: Brazil Offers Food Program
5. Cuba: US Computers Reach Havana
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: "No" Vote on PEMEX "Reform"
Some 1.8 million Mexicans voted overwhelmingly in an unofficial, non-binding referendum on July 27 to reject President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's proposals to allow more involvement in the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), by local and foreign private companies. The vote was held in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and nine states; similar unofficial votes are planned for the remaining 23 states on Aug. 10 and Aug. 24 [see Update #956].
A rapid count late on July 27 showed about 870,000 people voting in the DF. Exit polls by the Consulta Mitofsky polling firm estimated that 84.7% voted no on the first question--whether to allow private companies to participate in activities relating to petroleum exploitation--while 15.3% voted yes. A second question asked if voters agreed "in general" with Calderón's energy reform proposals; some 82.9% voted no, and 17.1% voted yes, according to the exit poll. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/28/08)
Vote counting was slower outside the DF, but as of July 31 organizers reported that about 968,000 voters had participated in the nine states, which include such populous areas as México state. Some 93% of these voted no on the first question while 5% voted yes, with 2% of the votes ruled invalid; 91% voted no on the second question, and 7% voted yes, with the rest invalid. (LJ 8/1/08)
Organizers insisted that they were "satisfied" with voter participation. However, the center-left government of the DF had printed enough ballots for 6 million voters, many more than the number of voters that turned out. Unofficial referendums in the past seem to have drawn more voters: organizers claimed that an August 1998 vote on a government bailout of banks brought out more than 3 million voters, while 2.4 million Mexicans reportedly participated in a March 1999 "consultation" by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) on indigenous rights [see Updates #449, 478, 956]. Carlos Payán Velver, former editor of the left-leaning daily La Jornada, noted that in the DF people had to present voter credentials before voting in this year's referendum. Participation was much higher than for other votes in the DF with the same requirements, he said, such as a 2002 referendum on building a second level for the Mexico City beltway, which brought out 420,000 voters. (LJ 7/28/08; LJ 7/29/08)
*2. Venezuela: Chávez Embraces Russia, Spain
On July 22, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías met with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow as the two countries signed agreements for joint work on energy projects in Venezuela. Chávez said the accords would promote "a strategic alliance in the energy sector." Venezuela and Russia have "a perfect identity in their foreign policy lines," he said. "If the Russian armed forces want to be in Venezuela, they'll be welcomed warmly." Chávez added that he intended to pursue military cooperation with Russia in response to the "aggressive plans" of the US. In recent years Venezuela has bought arms worth an estimated $4 billion from Russia. This was Chávez's sixth visit to Russia since 2001, although the first since Medvedev became president. Previous visits were with former president Vladimir Putin, who is now Medvedev's prime minister. (La Jornada 7/23/08 from correspondent)
Chávez was in Spain on July 25. He proposed discussions about Europe's new policies towards immigrants from Latin America [see Update #951], and also used the visit to mend fences with President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and King Juan Carlos I. During the 17th Iberian-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, in November 2007, Chávez had repeatedly interrupted Zapatero, and Juan Carlos finally told Chávez: "Why don't you shut up?" This time Chávez held the king in a long embrace. Juan Carlos gave him a t-shirt reading: "Why don't you shut up?" and Chávez joked about the king's royalties from the expression. (LJ 7/26/08 from correspondent)
*3. Haiti: Pierre-Louis Ratified as PM
The Haitian Senate voted on July 31 to ratify the appointment of economist Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis as prime minister. Twelve of the 18 senators present voted in favor, and five abstained; as required by the regulations, Senate president Kelly Bastien did not vote. The Senate's action completes the ratification process, since the Chamber of Deputies approved Pierre-Louis' appointment on July 17. President René Garcia Préval nominated Pierre-Louis on June 23; it was his third effort to find a prime minister to succeed Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was forced to resign on Apr. 12 following violent protests over the rising cost of food [see Update #954]. Pierre-Louis is Haiti's second woman prime minister.
Some of the opposition to Pierre-Louis stemmed from her position as director of the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty (FOKAL), a nongovernmental organization supported by the Open Society Institute of US financier George Soros, who has backed neoliberal economic policies in Latin America. Some opposition was because of rumors about her sexual orientation. In the debate on July 31, Sen. Edmonde Supplice Beauzile said she wouldn't vote for Pierre-Louis for moral reasons, while Sen. Rudy Hériveaux said people shouldn't be penalized for their sexual orientation. Challenges facing Pierre-Louis now include dealing with the rising cost of living; finding a way to jump-start food production in the country; handling protests by former members of the army, which was disbanded in 1995; preparing for the start of the school year on Sept. 1; and arranging elections for nine of the 27 seats in the Senate. (Associated Press 7/31/08; Reuters 7/31/08; AlterPresse 7/31/08, _ )
*4. Haiti: Brazil Offers Food Program
A mission representing several Brazilian government ministries arrived in Haiti on July 19 for a two-week visit aimed at developing a plan for combatting hunger in the country. A pilot project will be modeled on Brazil's Program of Acquisition of Food from Family Agriculture (PAA). "The objective is to encourage family agriculture, generating income and producing food," said César Medeiros, director of Brazil's National Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat. "The project will be administered by Haiti; Brazil will only provide advice." The aid is part of an agreement Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva signed with President René Préval during a visit to Haiti on May 28. (Adital (Brazil) 7/31/08)
Brazil heads the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a four-year-old military and policing operation opposed by many Haitian and Brazilian activists [see Update #549].
*5. Cuba: US Computers Reach Havana
Computers confiscated by US customs agents in Texas at the beginning of July finally arrived in Cuba on Aug. 1 in a cargo of 100 tons of humanitarian aid raised by the New York-based group Pastors for Peace in its 19th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan. After collecting the aid in 137 US and Canadian cities during June, the caravan drove into Mexico at the border crossing at McAllen, Texas. US agents let the other material through, including five buses, but confiscated 32 computers [see Update #953, where we reported the number as 35, following our source]. The caravan members took the rest of the aid to Tampico in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to send it to Cuba by ship; the members themselves then flew to Havana on July 5.
"When we came back from our visit to Cuba, the people from Customs gave us back the computers...saying they had determined that we could ask for a permit," Pastors for Peace associate director Ellen Bernstein told a press conference in Havana on Aug. 1. "But we didn't ask for anything; we carried the computers by hand and crossed the international bridge to Mexico to leave them on the other side to make sure that they got from Customs to Cuba." The group, which has shipped aid to Cuba since 1992, protests the US trade embargo against Cuba by refusing to apply for permits.
At the press conference Bernstein announced that eight US students would graduate on Aug. 2 from Havana's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). Currently 103 students from disadvantaged US communities are studying there on full scholarship; eventually Cuba hopes to have 500 US students in the program. (Granma Internacional (Cuba) 8/1/08; Soitu.Es (Spain) 8/1/08 from EFE)
On July 31 Pastors for Peace founder Rev. Lucius Walker was in court in New York City facing contempt charges for refusing to answer questions from the Special Commission of Investigation (SCI) for the city's Department of Education about a delegation from Beacon High School that traveled to Cuba in 2007. Judge Judith Gische refused to rule because of errors in the SCI's motion, but she said the SCI could correct the errors and resubmit the motion. Charging that "precious Department of Education funds are being used to harass rather than to serve the urgent educational needs of our schools," Pastors for Peace is asking for supporters to urge Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard J. Condon (80 Maiden Lane, 20th floor, New York, NY 10038-4811) to withdraw the SCI's subpoena of Walker. (Court Update from Pastors for Peace 8/1/08; Pan-African News Wire 1/23/08 from AP, New York Daily News)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
Argentina: Soy - High Profits Now, Hell to Pay Later
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1398/68/
Bolivia: It's All about the Gas Revenues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1399/68/
Indigenous Organizations to Support Ecuador's Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1404/1/
Colombia: army colonel admits participation in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5841
Colombia: banana executive admits participation in Peace Community massacres
http://ww4report.com/node/5839
Colombian paras cop plea in Miami; "New Generation" wreaks terror in Narino
http://ww4report.com/node/5838
What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1397/1/
Venezuelan Youth: A Potential Antidote to the Weaknesses of the Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1401/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Sunday, July 27, 2008
WNU #956: Mexicans Start PEMEX Referendum
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #956, July 27, 2008
1. Mexico: PEMEX Referendum Starts
2. Colombia: Bogotá Unionist Found Dead
3. Haiti: Téléco Probe Hits McCain Backer
4. Haiti: Constant Convicted in New York
5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: PEMEX Referendum Starts
On July 27 voters in Mexico's Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and nine states were scheduled to vote in a non-binding referendum on President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's proposals to allow more involvement the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), by local and foreign private companies. Voters were to answer yes or no to two questions: "1) Currently the exploitation, transport, distribution and refining of hydrocarbons are exclusively activities of the government. Do you agree or not that private companies should now be able to participate in these activities? 2) In general, do you agree or not that the initiatives currently being debated in Congress relating to energy reform should be approved?"
The vote has been promoted by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and by an alliance of left parties known as the Broad Progressive Front (FAP). Congress and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) refused to implement the referendum, arguing that it has no basis in the Constitution or in Mexican law. The DF's PRD government is sponsoring the vote in the capital, while in the rest of the country political and social organizations are organizing the balloting.
The July 27 vote includes the DF, México state, Michoacán, Guerrero, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Baja California Sur, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo. In the DF 17,000 volunteers were to oversee voting at 5,586 ballot boxes; 25,000 people volunteered to manage 6,500 ballot boxes in the nine states. A total of 12 million ballots--one for each question--were printed for the DF. The operation is headed by Manuel Camacho Solís, now a PRD politician but formerly Mexico City mayor (1988-1993) for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the head government negotiator in 1994 talks with the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). A group of intellectuals and artists have been prominent in the drive to turn out the vote.
Two more stages are planned in the referendum: the southeastern states and a few others are voting on Aug. 10, while the northern and western states vote on Aug. 24. Organizers said they expected the votes in the DF and México state to be tallied by the end of the day on July 27. (Mexican Labor News and Analysis, July 2008, Vol. 13, #7; La Jornada (Mexico 7/27/08, _, _ )
*2. Colombia: Bogotá Unionist Found Dead
The body of Colombian unionist Guillermo Rivera Fúquene was found buried in a garbage dump in a rural area of Ibagué, Tolima department, on July 15. Rivera Fúquene, an economist in the Bogotá Controller's Office and the president of the Public Services Union of Bogotá (Sinserpub), disappeared on Apr. 22 after putting his daughter on a school bus in the Tunal section of the capital. According to his wife, Sonya Betancur (also given as "Sonia Betancourt"), the last news she heard after his disappearance was that he had been detained by the police. The center-left Democratic Alternative Pole (PDA), of which Rivera Fúquene was a member, said it had indications from a witness and videotapes that the Bogotá police were involved. The authorities in Ibagué determined that Rivera Fúquene was strangled and then buried on Apr. 28.
In a press conference in Bogotá on July 15 after Rivera Fúquene's body was identified, members of the Unitary Workers Confederation (CUT) charged that the government was carrying out a "dirty war" against members of leftist groups. The CUT demanded an investigation into the murder and said "the facts demonstrate that, contrary to the official propaganda, there still aren't sufficient guarantees on the part of the state" for leftists "to exercise constitutional rights to life, liberty and union organizing and participation." (Notice from Confederacíon de Trabajadores de Colombia 7/15/08; El Tiempo (Colombia) 7/17/08; TeleSUR 7/18/08, some from EFE)
*3. Haiti: Téléco Probe Hits McCain Backer
On July 14 former US Congress member James "Jim" Courter (R-NJ, 1979-1991) resigned from the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in which he was one of 20 national finance co-chairpeople. The resignation followed a July 9 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fine IDT--the New Jersey telecommunications company of which Courter is CEO--$1.3 million for failing to file a contract for telephone service to Haiti in 2004, during the administration of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
The fine results from a 2005 lawsuit by IDT's former manager for the Caribbean, Michael Jewett, who claims he was fired when he balked at negotiating an illegal deal involving IDT, Aristide and Haiti's state-owned telephone monopoly Télécommunications d'Haïti (Téléco). According to Jewett, IDT's long-distance payments to Haiti were just 8.75 cents a minute rather than the legal tariff, 23 cents, which mainline US carriers such as AT&T were paying. In exchange for the lower rate, IDT allegedly sent its payments to a shell company, Mont Salem (or Mount Salem) in the Turks & Caicos, which then sent 3 cents to Aristide and the rest to Téléco.
According to New York-based investigative reporter Lucy Komisar, IDT was tightly linked to prominent Republican politicians. The company's board included former Massachusetts governor William Weld, former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp and former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick. Courter himself is close to US vice president Dick Cheney, Komisar told Radio Métropole, a Haitian radio station. Except for Courter, the Republican politicians all bailed out after Jewett's suit was unsealed in July 2005. (Condé Nast Portfolio 7/11/08, 7/15/08; Radio Métropole 7/23/08)
Aristide supporters, who say the administration of Republican US president George W. Bush removed the Haitian president from office in 2004 because of his leftist stances, deny the claims that IDT was paying a kickback to Aristide. They say Komisar's reporting is suspect because it is funded by the anti-Aristide Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project (HDP). Turks & Caicos lawyer Adrian Corr--who Komisar says is legal counsel for Aristide at Miller Simons O'Sullivan--and Aristide's US attorney, Ira Kurzban, both say they are contemplating a defamation suit against Komisar and Portfolio, a monthly business magazines that carried her stories on its website. (Haïti Liberté 7/23/08)
*4. Haiti: Constant Convicted in New York
On July 25 a jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted rightwing paramilitary leader Emmanuel ("Toto") Constant of mortgage fraud [see Update #910]. He faces a 5-to-15 prison sentence in New York, followed by deportation to Haiti. "The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," said Constant's lawyer, Samuel Karliner. "His role was minor." But attorney Jennie Green from the New York-based nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) expressed a "hope that after [Constant] serves a stiff sentence in New York, he faces trial" for crimes in Haiti that included "murder and rape and other torture of thousands." (New York Daily News 7/25/08; CCR press release 7/25/08)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico
Eduardo Galeano - Latin America: A Kingdom of Paradoxes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1389/68/
United States Announces IV Fleet Resumes Operations Amid South American Suspicions
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5362
Total Recall in Bolivia: Divided Nation Faces Historic Vote Written http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1388/1/
Bolivian President Evo Morales on the WTO's Round of Negotiations http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1387/1/
Peru's García unpopular despite boom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1394/68/
Ecuador: Tension rises in the 'citizens' revolution'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1391/68/
Wayward Allies: President Rafael Correa and the Ecuadorian Left http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1396/1/
Colombia: FARC releases eight hostages
http://ww4report.com/node/5825
Robert Gates joins PR offensive for Colombia FTA
http://ww4report.com/node/5821
Scenarios for the FARC
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5408
Nicaragua: The Tenuous Indigenous-Sandinista Alliance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1392/68/
Guatemala: Forced Disappearance and the Search for Justice in El Jutehttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1386/1/
Oaxaca: After the Barricades
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5364
Mexico: excavations conclude at "dirty war" site
http://ww4report.com/node/5806
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #956, July 27, 2008
1. Mexico: PEMEX Referendum Starts
2. Colombia: Bogotá Unionist Found Dead
3. Haiti: Téléco Probe Hits McCain Backer
4. Haiti: Constant Convicted in New York
5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: PEMEX Referendum Starts
On July 27 voters in Mexico's Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and nine states were scheduled to vote in a non-binding referendum on President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's proposals to allow more involvement the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), by local and foreign private companies. Voters were to answer yes or no to two questions: "1) Currently the exploitation, transport, distribution and refining of hydrocarbons are exclusively activities of the government. Do you agree or not that private companies should now be able to participate in these activities? 2) In general, do you agree or not that the initiatives currently being debated in Congress relating to energy reform should be approved?"
The vote has been promoted by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and by an alliance of left parties known as the Broad Progressive Front (FAP). Congress and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) refused to implement the referendum, arguing that it has no basis in the Constitution or in Mexican law. The DF's PRD government is sponsoring the vote in the capital, while in the rest of the country political and social organizations are organizing the balloting.
The July 27 vote includes the DF, México state, Michoacán, Guerrero, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Baja California Sur, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo. In the DF 17,000 volunteers were to oversee voting at 5,586 ballot boxes; 25,000 people volunteered to manage 6,500 ballot boxes in the nine states. A total of 12 million ballots--one for each question--were printed for the DF. The operation is headed by Manuel Camacho Solís, now a PRD politician but formerly Mexico City mayor (1988-1993) for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the head government negotiator in 1994 talks with the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). A group of intellectuals and artists have been prominent in the drive to turn out the vote.
Two more stages are planned in the referendum: the southeastern states and a few others are voting on Aug. 10, while the northern and western states vote on Aug. 24. Organizers said they expected the votes in the DF and México state to be tallied by the end of the day on July 27. (Mexican Labor News and Analysis, July 2008, Vol. 13, #7; La Jornada (Mexico 7/27/08, _, _ )
*2. Colombia: Bogotá Unionist Found Dead
The body of Colombian unionist Guillermo Rivera Fúquene was found buried in a garbage dump in a rural area of Ibagué, Tolima department, on July 15. Rivera Fúquene, an economist in the Bogotá Controller's Office and the president of the Public Services Union of Bogotá (Sinserpub), disappeared on Apr. 22 after putting his daughter on a school bus in the Tunal section of the capital. According to his wife, Sonya Betancur (also given as "Sonia Betancourt"), the last news she heard after his disappearance was that he had been detained by the police. The center-left Democratic Alternative Pole (PDA), of which Rivera Fúquene was a member, said it had indications from a witness and videotapes that the Bogotá police were involved. The authorities in Ibagué determined that Rivera Fúquene was strangled and then buried on Apr. 28.
In a press conference in Bogotá on July 15 after Rivera Fúquene's body was identified, members of the Unitary Workers Confederation (CUT) charged that the government was carrying out a "dirty war" against members of leftist groups. The CUT demanded an investigation into the murder and said "the facts demonstrate that, contrary to the official propaganda, there still aren't sufficient guarantees on the part of the state" for leftists "to exercise constitutional rights to life, liberty and union organizing and participation." (Notice from Confederacíon de Trabajadores de Colombia 7/15/08; El Tiempo (Colombia) 7/17/08; TeleSUR 7/18/08, some from EFE)
*3. Haiti: Téléco Probe Hits McCain Backer
On July 14 former US Congress member James "Jim" Courter (R-NJ, 1979-1991) resigned from the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in which he was one of 20 national finance co-chairpeople. The resignation followed a July 9 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fine IDT--the New Jersey telecommunications company of which Courter is CEO--$1.3 million for failing to file a contract for telephone service to Haiti in 2004, during the administration of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
The fine results from a 2005 lawsuit by IDT's former manager for the Caribbean, Michael Jewett, who claims he was fired when he balked at negotiating an illegal deal involving IDT, Aristide and Haiti's state-owned telephone monopoly Télécommunications d'Haïti (Téléco). According to Jewett, IDT's long-distance payments to Haiti were just 8.75 cents a minute rather than the legal tariff, 23 cents, which mainline US carriers such as AT&T were paying. In exchange for the lower rate, IDT allegedly sent its payments to a shell company, Mont Salem (or Mount Salem) in the Turks & Caicos, which then sent 3 cents to Aristide and the rest to Téléco.
According to New York-based investigative reporter Lucy Komisar, IDT was tightly linked to prominent Republican politicians. The company's board included former Massachusetts governor William Weld, former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp and former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick. Courter himself is close to US vice president Dick Cheney, Komisar told Radio Métropole, a Haitian radio station. Except for Courter, the Republican politicians all bailed out after Jewett's suit was unsealed in July 2005. (Condé Nast Portfolio 7/11/08, 7/15/08; Radio Métropole 7/23/08)
Aristide supporters, who say the administration of Republican US president George W. Bush removed the Haitian president from office in 2004 because of his leftist stances, deny the claims that IDT was paying a kickback to Aristide. They say Komisar's reporting is suspect because it is funded by the anti-Aristide Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project (HDP). Turks & Caicos lawyer Adrian Corr--who Komisar says is legal counsel for Aristide at Miller Simons O'Sullivan--and Aristide's US attorney, Ira Kurzban, both say they are contemplating a defamation suit against Komisar and Portfolio, a monthly business magazines that carried her stories on its website. (Haïti Liberté 7/23/08)
*4. Haiti: Constant Convicted in New York
On July 25 a jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted rightwing paramilitary leader Emmanuel ("Toto") Constant of mortgage fraud [see Update #910]. He faces a 5-to-15 prison sentence in New York, followed by deportation to Haiti. "The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," said Constant's lawyer, Samuel Karliner. "His role was minor." But attorney Jennie Green from the New York-based nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) expressed a "hope that after [Constant] serves a stiff sentence in New York, he faces trial" for crimes in Haiti that included "murder and rape and other torture of thousands." (New York Daily News 7/25/08; CCR press release 7/25/08)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico
Eduardo Galeano - Latin America: A Kingdom of Paradoxes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1389/68/
United States Announces IV Fleet Resumes Operations Amid South American Suspicions
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5362
Total Recall in Bolivia: Divided Nation Faces Historic Vote Written http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1388/1/
Bolivian President Evo Morales on the WTO's Round of Negotiations http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1387/1/
Peru's García unpopular despite boom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1394/68/
Ecuador: Tension rises in the 'citizens' revolution'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1391/68/
Wayward Allies: President Rafael Correa and the Ecuadorian Left http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1396/1/
Colombia: FARC releases eight hostages
http://ww4report.com/node/5825
Robert Gates joins PR offensive for Colombia FTA
http://ww4report.com/node/5821
Scenarios for the FARC
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5408
Nicaragua: The Tenuous Indigenous-Sandinista Alliance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1392/68/
Guatemala: Forced Disappearance and the Search for Justice in El Jutehttp://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1386/1/
Oaxaca: After the Barricades
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5364
Mexico: excavations conclude at "dirty war" site
http://ww4report.com/node/5806
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, July 21, 2008
WNU #955: Argentine Senate Kills Export Tax
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #955, July 20, 2008
1. Argentina: Senate Kills Export Tax
2. Colombia: Lula and Uribe Sign Pacts
3. Venezuela: Citgo Gives US Lightbulbs
4. Mexico: Activist's Home Is Searched
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Central America, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Argentina: Senate Kills Export Tax
On the morning of July 17, after 16 hours of debate, Argentina's Senate rejected a law proposed by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to raise the tax on soy exports from 34% to 44%. The Chamber of Deputies had approved the bill earlier. The measure would have made into law a tax hike that Fernández put into effect previously by decree. The Senate was tied over the bill until Vice President Julio Cobos, who is connected to agricultural interests, ended the impasse by voting against his own government. It was "the most difficult day of my life," he said. A number of senators from Fernández's Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) also voted against the bill.
Soy is a major export crop for Argentine farmers, and in March agricultural producers responded to the tax increase with a strike that at times threatened to cut off food from the main cities. The strike also sharply divided much of the left, with some groups supporting Fernández, some supporting the strikers and some opposing both sides [see Updates #941, 946, 950]. On July 15 supporters of the farmers and of the government held massive competing demonstrations in Buenos Aires. Former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández's husband, addressed the pro-government demonstration, which local media said drew 95,000 supporters, including such left-leaning groups as the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Other leftist groups participated in the pro-strike demonstration, along with rightwing organizations; about 225,000 people reportedly came out for the farmers' protest, far more than for the government. (Xinhua 7/15/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/16/08, 7/18/08 from correspondent)
*2. Colombia: Lula and Uribe Sign Pacts
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva arrived in Bogotá on July 18 for a three-day visit to Colombia that included joining Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in the inauguration of a meeting of business leaders from the two countries. On July 19 Lula and Uribe met in the Hatogrande estate on the outskirts of the capital to sign accords on investment, the environment and biofuels, and on security along the 1,500-km border Brazil and Colombia share in the Amazon region. At a press conference Uribe announced that Colombia would be joining the Defense Council of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). On July 20 the two presidents were scheduled to meet with Peruvian president Alan García at Leticia on the southern border to sign a tripartite agreement, although the content wasn't revealed. The three presidents were also planning to celebrate Colombia's Independence Day together.
According to Colombian foreign minister Jaime Bermúdez, the agreements between Lula, a center-leftist, and the rightwing Uribe include "a memorandum of cooperation in the fight against trafficking in arms, munitions and explosives," and another memorandum on the exchange of military intelligence. These agreements would undercut the position of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the Amazon region. The Brazilian daily O Estado de Sao Paulo had reported before Lula's visit that he would give Uribe "explicit support" in the fight against the FARC. (La Jornada 7/19/08 from DPA, AFP, Notmex, 7/20/08 from AFP, DPA)
*3. Venezuela: Citgo Gives US Lightbulbs
In mid-July Citgo--the US oil distributor owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA)--began a program to distribute compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to low- and middle-income families in Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas; Lamont, Illinois; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Washington, DC. Ultimately the program is intended to supply some 460,000 of the energy-saving lightbulbs to homes in these cities and in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin. Former Congress member Joe Kennedy II (D-MA), Venezuelan ambassador Bernardo Alvarez and Citgo president Alejandro Grarado attended the inauguration of the program in a Washington, DC home. The CFL supplements the Citgo-Venezuela Heating Oil program, which has provided winter fuel assistance to more than 1.2 million US households during the past two years [see Update #826]. (People's Weekly World 7/15/08 from correspondent)
The state of New Hampshire is now participating in the heating oil program; it is the last state in the Northeast to
participate. Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) called the program a "disgrace" when it started in 2006, and Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, kept New Hampshire out of it. Now that the price of heating oil has risen from about $2.50 a gallon in the Northeast to an average $4.61--as of June 2008--the local politicians have changed their position. On July 17 Sununu criticized Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías but said he has no problem with people getting help from Citizens Energy, a nonprofit organization set up by Joseph Kennedy that is managing the program. (San Francisco Chronicle 7/18/08 from AP)
*4. Mexico: Activist's Home Is Searched
On July 15 Abdallán Guzmán Cruz, a former deputy in Mexico's federal Congress, charged that unknown persons broke into his home in Morelia, Michoacán, the night of July 7 and stole papers that he had gathered during years of investigation into the disappearance of five relatives from 1974 to 1976, during the Mexican military's "dirty war" against suspected leftists. He said some books formerly considered "subversive" were also stolen, along with 60,000 pesos (about $5,900) and some rings, but other valuable objects were not touched. Guzmán Cruz is an activist in the Diego Lucero Foundation, a human rights group. Another activist from the foundation, José Francisco Paredes Ruiz, went missing in September 2007; no information is available on where he is now and on his physical condition.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders--a program sponsored jointly by the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)--has called for the Mexican government to guarantee the safety of Cruz Guzmán, his family and other members of the Diego Lucero Foundation, and to carry out a thorough and impartial investigation of the events of July 7 and the disappearance of Paredes Ruiz. Letters can be sent to Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx), Governance Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo (frjramirez@segob.gob.mx) and Michoacán governor Leonel Godoy Rangel (contacto.despacho@michoacan.gob.mx). Sample letters are available from the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH). (Cambio de Michoacan 7/16/08; OMCT-FIDH urgent action 7/16/08)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Central America, Mexico
Argentina: "Domino Effect" Feared in Withdrawal of Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1381/1/
The Soybean Crop in Uruguay: The Creation of a Power Block
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1378/1/
Peru: Social Rebellion Spreads Nationwide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1376/68/
Colombia bashes Nicaragua over FARC dialogue offer; Ortega bashes back
http://ww4report.com/node/5805
Venezuela: opposition protest "blacklist"
http://ww4report.com/node/5777
Anti-Chávez Student Group Attacks Police, Creates Chaos in Mérida, Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1375/68/
Venezuela to Give Energy-Saving Light Bulbs to Low-Income U.S. Communities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1382/68/
A Recent History of the Disability Rights Movement in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1384/1/
Central America: Winners and Losers in the Global Mining Industry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1383/1/
Metal Mining in Central America: Pain and Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1380/1/
Solidarity Needed in Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1379/68/
Mexico: narco gangs gird with car bombs, submarines
http://ww4report.com/node/5798
National Human Rights Commission blasts Mexican army
http://ww4report.com/node/5776
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #955, July 20, 2008
1. Argentina: Senate Kills Export Tax
2. Colombia: Lula and Uribe Sign Pacts
3. Venezuela: Citgo Gives US Lightbulbs
4. Mexico: Activist's Home Is Searched
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Central America, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Argentina: Senate Kills Export Tax
On the morning of July 17, after 16 hours of debate, Argentina's Senate rejected a law proposed by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to raise the tax on soy exports from 34% to 44%. The Chamber of Deputies had approved the bill earlier. The measure would have made into law a tax hike that Fernández put into effect previously by decree. The Senate was tied over the bill until Vice President Julio Cobos, who is connected to agricultural interests, ended the impasse by voting against his own government. It was "the most difficult day of my life," he said. A number of senators from Fernández's Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) also voted against the bill.
Soy is a major export crop for Argentine farmers, and in March agricultural producers responded to the tax increase with a strike that at times threatened to cut off food from the main cities. The strike also sharply divided much of the left, with some groups supporting Fernández, some supporting the strikers and some opposing both sides [see Updates #941, 946, 950]. On July 15 supporters of the farmers and of the government held massive competing demonstrations in Buenos Aires. Former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández's husband, addressed the pro-government demonstration, which local media said drew 95,000 supporters, including such left-leaning groups as the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Other leftist groups participated in the pro-strike demonstration, along with rightwing organizations; about 225,000 people reportedly came out for the farmers' protest, far more than for the government. (Xinhua 7/15/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/16/08, 7/18/08 from correspondent)
*2. Colombia: Lula and Uribe Sign Pacts
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva arrived in Bogotá on July 18 for a three-day visit to Colombia that included joining Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in the inauguration of a meeting of business leaders from the two countries. On July 19 Lula and Uribe met in the Hatogrande estate on the outskirts of the capital to sign accords on investment, the environment and biofuels, and on security along the 1,500-km border Brazil and Colombia share in the Amazon region. At a press conference Uribe announced that Colombia would be joining the Defense Council of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). On July 20 the two presidents were scheduled to meet with Peruvian president Alan García at Leticia on the southern border to sign a tripartite agreement, although the content wasn't revealed. The three presidents were also planning to celebrate Colombia's Independence Day together.
According to Colombian foreign minister Jaime Bermúdez, the agreements between Lula, a center-leftist, and the rightwing Uribe include "a memorandum of cooperation in the fight against trafficking in arms, munitions and explosives," and another memorandum on the exchange of military intelligence. These agreements would undercut the position of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the Amazon region. The Brazilian daily O Estado de Sao Paulo had reported before Lula's visit that he would give Uribe "explicit support" in the fight against the FARC. (La Jornada 7/19/08 from DPA, AFP, Notmex, 7/20/08 from AFP, DPA)
*3. Venezuela: Citgo Gives US Lightbulbs
In mid-July Citgo--the US oil distributor owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA)--began a program to distribute compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to low- and middle-income families in Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas; Lamont, Illinois; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Washington, DC. Ultimately the program is intended to supply some 460,000 of the energy-saving lightbulbs to homes in these cities and in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin. Former Congress member Joe Kennedy II (D-MA), Venezuelan ambassador Bernardo Alvarez and Citgo president Alejandro Grarado attended the inauguration of the program in a Washington, DC home. The CFL supplements the Citgo-Venezuela Heating Oil program, which has provided winter fuel assistance to more than 1.2 million US households during the past two years [see Update #826]. (People's Weekly World 7/15/08 from correspondent)
The state of New Hampshire is now participating in the heating oil program; it is the last state in the Northeast to
participate. Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) called the program a "disgrace" when it started in 2006, and Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, kept New Hampshire out of it. Now that the price of heating oil has risen from about $2.50 a gallon in the Northeast to an average $4.61--as of June 2008--the local politicians have changed their position. On July 17 Sununu criticized Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías but said he has no problem with people getting help from Citizens Energy, a nonprofit organization set up by Joseph Kennedy that is managing the program. (San Francisco Chronicle 7/18/08 from AP)
*4. Mexico: Activist's Home Is Searched
On July 15 Abdallán Guzmán Cruz, a former deputy in Mexico's federal Congress, charged that unknown persons broke into his home in Morelia, Michoacán, the night of July 7 and stole papers that he had gathered during years of investigation into the disappearance of five relatives from 1974 to 1976, during the Mexican military's "dirty war" against suspected leftists. He said some books formerly considered "subversive" were also stolen, along with 60,000 pesos (about $5,900) and some rings, but other valuable objects were not touched. Guzmán Cruz is an activist in the Diego Lucero Foundation, a human rights group. Another activist from the foundation, José Francisco Paredes Ruiz, went missing in September 2007; no information is available on where he is now and on his physical condition.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders--a program sponsored jointly by the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)--has called for the Mexican government to guarantee the safety of Cruz Guzmán, his family and other members of the Diego Lucero Foundation, and to carry out a thorough and impartial investigation of the events of July 7 and the disappearance of Paredes Ruiz. Letters can be sent to Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx), Governance Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo (frjramirez@segob.gob.mx) and Michoacán governor Leonel Godoy Rangel (contacto.despacho@michoacan.gob.mx). Sample letters are available from the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH). (Cambio de Michoacan 7/16/08; OMCT-FIDH urgent action 7/16/08)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Central America, Mexico
Argentina: "Domino Effect" Feared in Withdrawal of Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1381/1/
The Soybean Crop in Uruguay: The Creation of a Power Block
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1378/1/
Peru: Social Rebellion Spreads Nationwide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1376/68/
Colombia bashes Nicaragua over FARC dialogue offer; Ortega bashes back
http://ww4report.com/node/5805
Venezuela: opposition protest "blacklist"
http://ww4report.com/node/5777
Anti-Chávez Student Group Attacks Police, Creates Chaos in Mérida, Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1375/68/
Venezuela to Give Energy-Saving Light Bulbs to Low-Income U.S. Communities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1382/68/
A Recent History of the Disability Rights Movement in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1384/1/
Central America: Winners and Losers in the Global Mining Industry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1383/1/
Metal Mining in Central America: Pain and Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1380/1/
Solidarity Needed in Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1379/68/
Mexico: narco gangs gird with car bombs, submarines
http://ww4report.com/node/5798
National Human Rights Commission blasts Mexican army
http://ww4report.com/node/5776
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly
Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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