Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #993, June 14, 2009
1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
On June 3 students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) began a series of militant demonstrations to protest the failure of President René Préval to promulgate a measure raising the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97)--the first increase since 2003. Although Parliament finished the process of approving the measure on May 4, it will not become law until it is approved by the president and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur [see Update #989]. Students from various UEH faculties have been protesting over academic issues at different times since February [see Update #983].
From June 3 through June 5 hundreds of students blocked streets in downtown Port-au-Prince, hurled rocks and set vehicles on fire. The protesters targeted the area near the National Palace, the president’s official residence, along with the offices of the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty (FOKAL), an educational group linked to US financier George Soros which Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis headed before she was named prime minister in 2008 [see Update #954]. Rock-throwing students shut the foundation down in incidents on June 3 and June 4.
According to witnesses, Haitian police agents and elements from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) repressed the demonstrations brutally, indiscriminately launching tear gas grenades and firing warning shots in the air. Ludger Laguerre, a student in the UEH Department of Social Work, was hit in the head by a police bullet on June 4; he was taken to the UEH hospital, but his injuries were not considered dangerous. On June 5 the police hit a 10-year-old boy in his right shoulder as they fired warning shots, and Radio Métropole reported that a man was shot in the leg when an off-duty police agent fired at a crowd after being pelted with stones.
Tear gas filled the downtown area during the protests. Three students from a primary school were hospitalized after breathing the fumes on June 4, and two women fainted. Security forces reportedly fired tear gas into the UEH hospital when some of Laguerre’s friends went there to inquire about his condition. According to one witness, the hospital wards were filled with the fumes and parents were forced to run out of the building carrying sick and injured children. The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) described this as a “barbaric intervention by the forces of order.” (Alterpresse 6/4/09, 6/5/09, __; Haiti Support Group (HSG) News Briefs 6/4/09 from AP, 6/6/09 from AP; HSG press release 6/9/09; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 6/10/09)
On June 5 several media employees were injured by people that Haiti’s Alterpresse news website described as “demonstrators appearing to be students.” An employee of the Télé Haïti TV station required eight stitches on his head after his vehicle was hit by a stream of rocks. A photojournalist from the daily Le Nouvelliste was struck in the arm by a rock. (Alterpresse 6/5/09)
On June 8 the government released eight of 24 people arrested during the protest on June 4, but this did little to placate the demonstrators, who smashed windshields outside the Port-au-Prince civil tribunal building. According to the UEH’s attorney, Aviol Fleurant, the remaining 16 prisoners included three high school students, two mechanics who had been in their garage at the time of the protest, and three passersby. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 6/8/09)
By June 9 students from other schools had joined the UEH protesters. Several thousand people marched through the Champ de Mars plaza, near the National Palace, and along Christophe Avenue, despite the efforts of the security forces to stop them. The protesters paralyzed the entire center of the city with flaming barricades and showers of rocks, and many businesses shut down. Again the police responded with tear gas. Local residents, medical personnel and school authorities expressed anger at the police. “To obey the political authorities, they’re even ready to poison the babies,” a nurse from the UEH hospital complained, referring to the tear gas. (AHP 6/9/09; Radio Métropole 6/10/09)
The protests are the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Préval government. The president has now promised to send Parliament a statement by June 17 explaining his position on the minimum wage increase. Four days later, on June 21, polls will open for runoff elections for a third of the Senate; the first round, on Apr. 19, was marked by violence and massive abstention [see Update #986].
Employers have been campaigning heavily against the wage increase, arguing that the current exceptionally low wages attract assembly plants to the country. The Haiti Industries Association (ADIH) claims half of the 25,000 workers in Haiti’s apparel industry would lose their jobs if the new minimum wage went into effect. Supporters of the wage increase counter this by pointing to the Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in the Haitian town of Ouanaminthe near the border with the Dominican Republic; the workers there get 350 gourdes a day, the result of a labor organizing drive in 2004-2005 [see Update #785]. Supporters insist that even with the increase Haitian workers would still be competitive with the 200,000 workers in similar industries in the Dominican Republic, where the assembly sector has a minimum wage of about $5.50 a day. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; RFI 6/10/09; Adital 6/12/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
Youths and campesinos in a protest encampment at the edge of Los Haitises National Park in the eastern Dominican Republic reported on June 11 that they were being surrounded by military units and that they feared they might be attacked. This report followed a June 10 attack by National Police on the encampment, where dozens of protesters have been staying since May 16 in an effort to prevent the construction of a cement factory near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality, Monte Plata province. The agents removed a barricade the protesters had set up to block trucks going to the factory site. There was one unconfirmed report that the police fired shots during the June 10 incident and wounded several protesters.
In Santo Domingo on June 10 police agents blocked a march by dozens of representatives of campesino and environmental organizations as they tried to reach the National Palace to deliver a letter protesting the cement factory to President Leonel Fernández.
The protests began in response to a decision by Environmental Minister Jaime David Fernández Mirabal to grant a concession to Consorcio Minero Dominicano , SA--a mining company that also produces cooking oil and other commodities--to extract limestone from sedimentary rocks to manufacture cement at Gonzalo. Environmentalists, geologists and local residents say the factory would displace 500 peasant families and degrade the water from Los Haitises, the second largest source of natural water in the country, which benefits more than 1 million people. Student groups, leftists, the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the environmental commission of the Catholic Church have all come out against the project. Activists in the US can protest by contacting the Dominican Embassy in Washington (telephone 202-332-6280, fax 202-265-8057, email embassy@us.serex.gov.do). (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/11/09 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; La Nación Dominicana 6/11/09; Socialist Worker (US) 5/28/09)
*3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
On June 8 Peru’s Transportation and Communication Ministry (MTC) cancelled the license of Radio La Voz de Bagua, a family-owned radio station with a signal of 100 watts in Utcubamba province in the Amazonas region in the north of the country. The MTC cited technical issues with the station’s equipment, but La Voz news director Carlos Flores Burgos dismissed this as “a lie.” The station is based in the area where dozens of people died on June 5 in a confrontation between police and indigenous protesters [see Update #992], and Flores said the station had made it possible for members of the public to report alleged abuses by security forces. After the June 5 killings, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas accused the station of agitating the situation and called for sanctions against it, while Congress members Aurelio Pastor, Jorge Del Castillo and Mauricio Mulde, all from the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) of President Alan García, accused La Voz and Flores of supporting and inciting violence.
The Press and Society Institute of Peru (IPYS), an organization of independent journalists, questioned the license cancellation and said it might be a “reprisal.” (Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 6/12/09; Los Andes (Puno, Peru) 6/13/08; La República (Peru) 6/13/09)
On June 12 the Peruvian Congress, which is dominated by the PAP, voted a 120-day suspension for seven legislators from the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala for having staged a protest in the legislature’s chamber in support of the Amazonian indigenous protesters. The suspended Congress members were María Sumire, Hilaria Supa, Nancy Obregón, Juana Huancahuari, Cayo Galindo, Yaneth Cajahuanca and Rafael Vásquez. The suspension was approved 58-18 with one abstention; voting with the PAP for the suspension was National Unity and the Alliance for the Future of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), convicted of human rights abuses on Apr. 7 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The protests in the Congress began on June 10 after the legislators voted to suspend indefinitely decrees on drilling, mining and land use that had sparked the indigenous protests. The PNP members called for the decrees to be repealed rather than suspended, and nine PNP legislators began a fast to protest the vote. A total of 22 Congress members from the PNP and left groups stayed in the chamber overnight and prevented Congress from holding a session the morning of June 11. The protesters finally left later to join a march in Lima, part of a day of nationwide strikes and mobilizations in support of the indigenous demands. (Correo (Lima) 6/12/09; La Raza (Chicago) 6/13/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 6/12/09 from Reuters, AFP, DPA; AFP 6/12/09; NACLA 4/15/09)
*4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
On June 3 the Brazilian Senate approved a bill regulating government transfers of land in the Amazon region. The bill—Conversion Bill 09 (PLV 09/2009, originally MP 458/09)—was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in May and awaits the signature of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), Greenpeace, WWF-Brasil (the Brazilian affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund) and other groups say some articles in the measure will enable companies and individuals to keep lands they seized illegally. The law “especially benefits people who should be on trial for usurping areas covered by the agrarian reform,” according to Greenpeace. The groups are urging people to call on Lula (phone +61-3411.1200, +61-3411.1201 or email at https://sistema.planalto.gov.br/falepr2/index.php) to veto the articles. (Adital 6/12/09)… German author Günter Grass, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and eight other Nobel Prize winners have joined supporters filing amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs with the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2001 convictions of five Cuban men (known as the “Cuban Five”) charged with spying against the US [see Updates #824, 863). Eleven other groups, including legislators from the European Parliament, also have filed briefs, and a panel of the United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned the original trial for the men; this was the first time the group ever condemned a US judicial proceeding. The Supreme Court may rule by the end of June on whether to hear the Cubans’ appeal. (Miami Herald 6/9/09)… The governments of many developed countries will in effect boycott a conference the United Nations is holding in New York June 24-26 to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries. The developed countries object to efforts by the General Assembly president—Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, who was foreign minister for Nicaragua’s leftist government in the 1980s—to have the conference discuss reforming such bodies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "You can't have a few calling the shots and others suffering the consequences of their decisions,” D’Escoto said to the British daily Financial Times about the major powers. “If they were more frank, they should say might is right." His one-year term ends in September. (FT 6/7/09)
Update June 15: Today the Supreme Court declined without comment to review the case of the “Cuban Five.” (Reuters 6/15/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: Charlie abandoned his chocolate factory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1897/68/
Fallen Banker with Ties to Citigroup Involved in Shooting of Brazilian Landless Workers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6140
Moving Forward: The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples (Peru)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1903/1/
Blood at the Blockade: Peru's Indigenous Uprising
https://nacla.org/node/5879
Video: 60 Die in Peru Rainforest Protest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1902/68/
Emergency Action: Stop Police Violence Against Amazon Defenders / Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1898/68/
Massacre in Peru: Photo Essay and Dispatch on the Bloody Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1896/1/
Peru: ‘Police Are Throwing Bodies in the River,’ Say Native Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1901/1/
Peru: congress suspends decrees on Amazon resources as protests mount
http://ww4report.com/node/7422
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6148
Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1904/1/
Venezuela's Media Quake
https://nacla.org/node/5888
Nicaragua grants asylum to Peruvian indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/7420
Nicaragua: Miskito elders declare independence
http://ww4report.com/node/7421
Eating to Dream: A Tortillería in Oaxaca
https://nacla.org/node/5878
Ciudad Juárez mourns assassinated activist academic
http://ww4report.com/node/7412
Mexico: arrest in reporter's death
http://ww4report.com/node/7426
Mexico: Monterrey cops lose cell phones
http://ww4report.com/node/7425
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6122
May Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6121
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. 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, June 15, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
WNU #992: Puerto Ricans Protest Layoffs
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #992, June 7, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
In one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history, tens of thousands of people marched in front of the Capitol building in San Juan on June 5 to protest plans by Gov. Luis Fortuño of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off about 30,000 government workers and to privatize some public services. Estimates of participation ranged from 50,000 to 100,000. Many public employees attended despite veiled threats of reprisals if they were absent from work on June 5; supervisors had been drawing up lists of people who planned to take the day off.
Fortuño, who was elected by a wide margin last November [see Update #967], faces a growing movement against his economic policies. The Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, brought out an estimated 30,000 workers to protest the government’s policies during this year’s May 1 march for International Workers’ Day [see Update #988]. For the June 5 mobilization the FASyL was joined by a broad range of groups, including student and women’s organizations, environmental and religious groups, and the main opposition parties. Participants included Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD); Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP); actors René Monclova and Ineabelle Colón; and Denise Quiñones, Miss Universe 2001. The coalition’s spokesperson was Methodist bishop Juan Vera, while the Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a press release in solidarity with laid-off workers.
The organizers called the protest a “National Assembly of the People”; the demonstration became a mass meeting which adopted a declaration including demands from the various constituent groups. The protesters said they would continue the struggle with educational events and Assemblies of the People in each of the island’s 78 municipalities.
Fortuño says Puerto Rico is facing a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely because of the US economic crisis, and that this can only be reduced through layoffs and cutbacks. The layoffs started with an announcement in late May by Carlos García, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB, BGF in Spanish), that 10,400 employees would be let go. (Univision 6/5/09 from AP; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 6/5/09, __, __; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/6/09 from EFE)
*2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
Thousands of Guatemalan campesinos blocked roads at seven or more sites on June 4 in a nationwide protest organized by the Committee for Campesino Development (Codeca) to demand that the government carry out agrarian reform, provide agricultural products for about 25,000 campesinos, buy land for cultivation and forgive debts that some campesinos incurred by taking out bank loans to buy land. Codeca spokesperson Mauro Bay said the campesinos had been making these requests of President Alvaro Colom’s government since Feb. 5, 2008 but had received no response. Presidential spokesperson Fernando Barillas said the government had offered to meet with Codeca leaders about the demands but Codeca had turned down the offer.
Campesinos blocked roads in at least seven departments: Mazatenango and Retalhuleu in the south, Suchitepéquez in the southwest, Totonicapán and Quetzaltenango in the west, and Alta Verapaz and Petén in the north. Some 500 campesinos blocked a bridge in El Zarco, Retalhuleu. A caravan of motorcyclists tried to break through, but campesinos with clubs blocked them; agents from the National Civil Police (PNC) were then called in. About 3,000 farmers from three communities in Suchitepéquez blocked the Pacific highway at a place known as Cocales. In Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, 800 local people cut off the road with rocks and boards, creating a 6 km line of vehicles and infuriating motorists. In Quetzaltenango, residents of five villages in Colomba municipality closed off a highway leading to the Mexico border, and many passengers walked kilometers to transfer to other buses.
Five Codeca leaders met with Agricultural Affairs Secretary Juan Alfredo de León in Guatemala City during the day. In the afternoon they agreed to suspend the actions and continue the dialogue on June 16. (Prensa Latina 6/4/09; ADN (Spain) 6/4/09 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/4/09, 6/5/09)
*3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
On June 5 Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), condemned what it called “the slaughter ordered by the government of President Alan García,” referring to the deaths of at least 20 police agents and indigenous protesters earlier that day when police tried to break up a demonstration blocking a road in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas. The CGTP called for Congress to repeal the decrees on drilling, mining and land rights that Amazonian indigenous groups had been protesting since Apr. 9. The labor group had held a one-day national strike on May 26 to support the demands of the Amazonian indigenous group leading the protests, the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) [see Update #991]. (CGTP press release 6/5/09)
A June 5 statement by the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) said “56 days of peaceful indigenous struggle and of supposed dialogues and negotiations…ended in the usual bullets, the same bullets as in more than 500 years of oppression.” The group, including organizations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, called for indigenous people to hold sit-ins in front of Peruvian embassies and for United Nations (UN) agencies and international organizations like Amnesty International (AI) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to “send missions immediately to Peru to stop this violence and to see that indigenous rights are respected.” (CAOI statement 6/5/09 via Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales)
Colombian human rights and grassroots organizations planned a demonstration at the Peruvian embassy in Bogotá for the afternoon of June 8. Indigenous and other organizations in Mexico were to send an open letter to President García demanding the "cancellation of the international accords—like the FTA [Free Trade Agreement, TLC in Spanish]—that bring violence to the life of the Peruvian indigenous peoples.” The decrees the indigenous people oppose are part of a package intended to bring Peru into compliance with an FTA with the US that went into effect this year. On June 8 the London-based nonprofit Survival International called for petroleum companies to suspend their operations in the Amazon region until the situation is resolved. Peruvian organizations are planning a march in Lima on June 11 in solidarity with the indigenous protesters. (Adital 6/8/09)
Meanwhile, the Peruvian government may be using the events as a pretext for cracking down on opposition legislators in the Congress, which is dominated by García’s social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP). On June 6 Elizabeth León, vice president of the Congress’s Ethics Commission, said the commission would investigate whether there were grounds to take action against Congress members who had supported Alberto Pizango Chota, the Aidesep president. Pizango reportedly went into hiding after the June killings. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 6/7/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Rainforest’s Cry: Amazon Uprising and Opposing Perspectives of Development in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1888/1/
Peru: protesters seize Camisea pipeline valves, pledge to resist army
http://ww4report.com/node/7400
Peru: 25 dead as National Police attack Amazon road blockade
http://ww4report.com/node/7406
50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1895/1/
Peru: dozens decamp in jungle jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7398
Peru: Amazon uprising spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7411
Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations
http://ww4report.com/node/7405
Colombia: ex-senator sentenced in Uribe bribery scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/7404
Colombian para operative sentenced in Texas
http://ww4report.com/node/7403
Colombia to train Baja California state police
http://ww4report.com/node/7407
Colombia’s Fascist Attack on Academic Freedom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1887/1/
Colombians Build Support for a Constitutional Referendum for Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1885/1/
Álvaro Uribe, Otra Vez? Colombia's Re-election Debate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1889/68/
El Salvador Inaugurates its First Leftist Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1894/68/
Interview: Members of University Front of Roque Dalton from the National University of El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1891/1/
The Struggle Against Impunity in Guatemala Continues: 31st Anniversary of the Panzós Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1893/68/
Guatemala's "Twitter Revolution"
https://nacla.org/node/5874
Obama's Choice: Human Rights First or Plan Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5866
OAS Opens Doors to Cuba Without Conditions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1892/68/
Father Gérard Jean-Juste: The People's Priest (1946-2009)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1890/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources: http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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 #992, June 7, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
In one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history, tens of thousands of people marched in front of the Capitol building in San Juan on June 5 to protest plans by Gov. Luis Fortuño of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off about 30,000 government workers and to privatize some public services. Estimates of participation ranged from 50,000 to 100,000. Many public employees attended despite veiled threats of reprisals if they were absent from work on June 5; supervisors had been drawing up lists of people who planned to take the day off.
Fortuño, who was elected by a wide margin last November [see Update #967], faces a growing movement against his economic policies. The Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, brought out an estimated 30,000 workers to protest the government’s policies during this year’s May 1 march for International Workers’ Day [see Update #988]. For the June 5 mobilization the FASyL was joined by a broad range of groups, including student and women’s organizations, environmental and religious groups, and the main opposition parties. Participants included Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD); Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP); actors René Monclova and Ineabelle Colón; and Denise Quiñones, Miss Universe 2001. The coalition’s spokesperson was Methodist bishop Juan Vera, while the Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a press release in solidarity with laid-off workers.
The organizers called the protest a “National Assembly of the People”; the demonstration became a mass meeting which adopted a declaration including demands from the various constituent groups. The protesters said they would continue the struggle with educational events and Assemblies of the People in each of the island’s 78 municipalities.
Fortuño says Puerto Rico is facing a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely because of the US economic crisis, and that this can only be reduced through layoffs and cutbacks. The layoffs started with an announcement in late May by Carlos García, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB, BGF in Spanish), that 10,400 employees would be let go. (Univision 6/5/09 from AP; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 6/5/09, __, __; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/6/09 from EFE)
*2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
Thousands of Guatemalan campesinos blocked roads at seven or more sites on June 4 in a nationwide protest organized by the Committee for Campesino Development (Codeca) to demand that the government carry out agrarian reform, provide agricultural products for about 25,000 campesinos, buy land for cultivation and forgive debts that some campesinos incurred by taking out bank loans to buy land. Codeca spokesperson Mauro Bay said the campesinos had been making these requests of President Alvaro Colom’s government since Feb. 5, 2008 but had received no response. Presidential spokesperson Fernando Barillas said the government had offered to meet with Codeca leaders about the demands but Codeca had turned down the offer.
Campesinos blocked roads in at least seven departments: Mazatenango and Retalhuleu in the south, Suchitepéquez in the southwest, Totonicapán and Quetzaltenango in the west, and Alta Verapaz and Petén in the north. Some 500 campesinos blocked a bridge in El Zarco, Retalhuleu. A caravan of motorcyclists tried to break through, but campesinos with clubs blocked them; agents from the National Civil Police (PNC) were then called in. About 3,000 farmers from three communities in Suchitepéquez blocked the Pacific highway at a place known as Cocales. In Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, 800 local people cut off the road with rocks and boards, creating a 6 km line of vehicles and infuriating motorists. In Quetzaltenango, residents of five villages in Colomba municipality closed off a highway leading to the Mexico border, and many passengers walked kilometers to transfer to other buses.
Five Codeca leaders met with Agricultural Affairs Secretary Juan Alfredo de León in Guatemala City during the day. In the afternoon they agreed to suspend the actions and continue the dialogue on June 16. (Prensa Latina 6/4/09; ADN (Spain) 6/4/09 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/4/09, 6/5/09)
*3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
On June 5 Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), condemned what it called “the slaughter ordered by the government of President Alan García,” referring to the deaths of at least 20 police agents and indigenous protesters earlier that day when police tried to break up a demonstration blocking a road in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas. The CGTP called for Congress to repeal the decrees on drilling, mining and land rights that Amazonian indigenous groups had been protesting since Apr. 9. The labor group had held a one-day national strike on May 26 to support the demands of the Amazonian indigenous group leading the protests, the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) [see Update #991]. (CGTP press release 6/5/09)
A June 5 statement by the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) said “56 days of peaceful indigenous struggle and of supposed dialogues and negotiations…ended in the usual bullets, the same bullets as in more than 500 years of oppression.” The group, including organizations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, called for indigenous people to hold sit-ins in front of Peruvian embassies and for United Nations (UN) agencies and international organizations like Amnesty International (AI) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to “send missions immediately to Peru to stop this violence and to see that indigenous rights are respected.” (CAOI statement 6/5/09 via Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales)
Colombian human rights and grassroots organizations planned a demonstration at the Peruvian embassy in Bogotá for the afternoon of June 8. Indigenous and other organizations in Mexico were to send an open letter to President García demanding the "cancellation of the international accords—like the FTA [Free Trade Agreement, TLC in Spanish]—that bring violence to the life of the Peruvian indigenous peoples.” The decrees the indigenous people oppose are part of a package intended to bring Peru into compliance with an FTA with the US that went into effect this year. On June 8 the London-based nonprofit Survival International called for petroleum companies to suspend their operations in the Amazon region until the situation is resolved. Peruvian organizations are planning a march in Lima on June 11 in solidarity with the indigenous protesters. (Adital 6/8/09)
Meanwhile, the Peruvian government may be using the events as a pretext for cracking down on opposition legislators in the Congress, which is dominated by García’s social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP). On June 6 Elizabeth León, vice president of the Congress’s Ethics Commission, said the commission would investigate whether there were grounds to take action against Congress members who had supported Alberto Pizango Chota, the Aidesep president. Pizango reportedly went into hiding after the June killings. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 6/7/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Rainforest’s Cry: Amazon Uprising and Opposing Perspectives of Development in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1888/1/
Peru: protesters seize Camisea pipeline valves, pledge to resist army
http://ww4report.com/node/7400
Peru: 25 dead as National Police attack Amazon road blockade
http://ww4report.com/node/7406
50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1895/1/
Peru: dozens decamp in jungle jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7398
Peru: Amazon uprising spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7411
Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations
http://ww4report.com/node/7405
Colombia: ex-senator sentenced in Uribe bribery scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/7404
Colombian para operative sentenced in Texas
http://ww4report.com/node/7403
Colombia to train Baja California state police
http://ww4report.com/node/7407
Colombia’s Fascist Attack on Academic Freedom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1887/1/
Colombians Build Support for a Constitutional Referendum for Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1885/1/
Álvaro Uribe, Otra Vez? Colombia's Re-election Debate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1889/68/
El Salvador Inaugurates its First Leftist Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1894/68/
Interview: Members of University Front of Roque Dalton from the National University of El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1891/1/
The Struggle Against Impunity in Guatemala Continues: 31st Anniversary of the Panzós Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1893/68/
Guatemala's "Twitter Revolution"
https://nacla.org/node/5874
Obama's Choice: Human Rights First or Plan Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5866
OAS Opens Doors to Cuba Without Conditions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1892/68/
Father Gérard Jean-Juste: The People's Priest (1946-2009)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1890/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources: http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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, June 2, 2009
WNU #991: Peruvian Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #991, May 31, 2009
1. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, 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. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), held a one-day nationwide strike on May 27 in support of indigenous people who have been protesting since Apr. 9 in the country’s northeastern Amazon region against a package of laws they say will open up their lands to mining and drilling without consultation with local communities [see Update #986, which tentatively gave Apr. 13 as the day the protests started]. The CGTP strike came on the second day of a May 26-27 strike called by the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep), an indigenous organization which has led the protests in the Amazon region.
On May 27 the CGTP held a march in Lima of some 5,000 workers, mostly from construction, mining and agriculture, from the Dos de Mayo plaza to the Congress building to support the indigenous demands and to push for wage and pension increases and an end to government efforts to criminalize protests. The slogans included: “The people united will never be defeated” and “Let the rich pay for the crisis, not the people.” There were no incidents in the march, which was guarded by 1,500 police agents. But in Iquitos, the capital of Loreto region and Maynas province in the Amazon region, police fired rubber bullets at a CGTP demonstration as protesters burned tires in the Plaza de Armas. From 11 to 16 people were wounded, according to different reports, and about 20 were arrested. The city was largely shut down; schools were closed and transportation was restricted. CGTP members also held strikes and marches in other cities, including the southern cities of Puno and Ayacucho.
Indigenous groups from outside the Amazon region observed the strike calls, as did a number of local organizations. In Cusco, members of the Machiguenga indigenous group blocked the train to the Machu Picchu archeological site starting on May 26; about 300 Machiguenga protested peacefully in Aguas Calientes, near the site, a major tourist attraction. Members of the Subregional Federation of Campesino and Urban Rondas blocked the Fernando Belaunde highway at the town of Chamaya in Jaén province in the northern department of Cajamarca on May 27. [Rondas started as campesino self-defense groups that the military used in the counterinsurgency against the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, “Shining Path”) rebels in the 1980s, but the groups later became independent of the government.] (ADN (Spain) 5/28/09 from EFE; Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 5/27/09; La República (Peru) 5/28/09)
The laws Aidesep has been protesting were part of a package of more than 100 decrees that President Alan García signed in 2008 to bring Peru into compliance with a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with the US; the agreement went into effect earlier this year. Decrees affecting campesino and indigenous land rights provoked massive mobilizations during the summer of 2008 [see Update #954], and two decrees were repealed in August. This May the constitutional commission of the Congress ruled that one of the remaining decrees is unconstitutional, and Congress was scheduled to vote on repealing it at the end of May. But García continues to defend the package. "The Amazonian lands belong to the entire nation, not to a small group that lives there,” he said at a public event on May 16.
Since the protests started on Apr. 9 some 10,000 indigenous people, many of them armed with bows and arrows, have carried out actions that included blockades of major roads and waterways and the occupation of an airport. The protesters have closed down a pipeline belonging to the state-owned oil company Petróleos del Perú, SA (Petroperu); it normally carries 40,000 barrels a day. The privately owned Pluspetrol Perú has had to shut down its Block 1-AB field, which was producing 17,000 barrels a day last month. On May 9 the government declared a state of emergency in four regions, granting the army greater powers to repress the protests. The government also charged Aidesep president Alberto Pizango Chota with conspiring against the state. (Environment News Service 5/26/09; Bloomberg 5/26/09)
The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples, which was being held in Puno, concluded on May 31 with Pizango calling for another national strike on June 3. "If we have to die, let them kill us; we’d rather die struggling so that our children can live with dignity,” he told the delegates, who chanted: “Pizango, brother, the summit is with you.” The delegates announced that they would organize encampments during the first week of July in front of Peruvian embassies in their own countries. (ADN 6/1/09)
*2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
On May 20 about 100 residents of seven rural communities in Cunduacán municipality in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco blocked access to the Madrefil-1 oil well to demand compensation for what they say is damage to their communities. Drilling on the well, which belongs to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the government’s giant oil monopoly, started at the beginning of the year. The campesinos say the work has already killed their crops and livestock and damaged their homes. “We asked the PEMEX engineers to take us into account, but they didn’t pay any attention,” one protester told the media.
On May 30 PEMEX officials said the blockade was creating the danger of an accident at the facility. Fifteen workers remained there; the campesinos reportedly wouldn’t let them leave. According to the officials, the real reasons for the blockade were electoral. PEMEX said state legislators and candidates for Tabasco’s Oct. 18 municipal and legislative elections had been meeting with the protesters. But the residents said they wouldn’t lift the blockade until PEMEX directors took action on their demands. (ADN 5/30/09 from EFE; El Financiero (Mexico) 5/29/09)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba
Chile: Ex-Soldier Arrested for Víctor Jara Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1880/1/
Argentine Factory in the Hands of the Workers: FASINPAT a Step Closer to Permanent Worker Control
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1875/1/
Uruguay: El Monarca Neighbors Build Their Own Town
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1881/68/
Bogus al-Qaeda bust in Brazil
http://ww4report.com/node/7372
Cochabamba (Bolivia): From War to Water Management
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1883/68/
Ecuador: Correa's Re-Election Poses More Challenges for Social Movements
https://nacla.org/node/5848
The Dark Side of Plan Colombia
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/ballve/single
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1884/68/
Costa Rica: Indigenous People Sidelined in Plans for Dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1878/68/
Mexico: peasant ecologist arrested in Chihuahua
http://ww4report.com/node/7374
Michoacán: 27 mayors and pubic officials arrested in federal sweep
http://ww4report.com/node/7375
A Rainbow Flag Over Habana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1879/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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 #991, May 31, 2009
1. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, 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. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), held a one-day nationwide strike on May 27 in support of indigenous people who have been protesting since Apr. 9 in the country’s northeastern Amazon region against a package of laws they say will open up their lands to mining and drilling without consultation with local communities [see Update #986, which tentatively gave Apr. 13 as the day the protests started]. The CGTP strike came on the second day of a May 26-27 strike called by the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep), an indigenous organization which has led the protests in the Amazon region.
On May 27 the CGTP held a march in Lima of some 5,000 workers, mostly from construction, mining and agriculture, from the Dos de Mayo plaza to the Congress building to support the indigenous demands and to push for wage and pension increases and an end to government efforts to criminalize protests. The slogans included: “The people united will never be defeated” and “Let the rich pay for the crisis, not the people.” There were no incidents in the march, which was guarded by 1,500 police agents. But in Iquitos, the capital of Loreto region and Maynas province in the Amazon region, police fired rubber bullets at a CGTP demonstration as protesters burned tires in the Plaza de Armas. From 11 to 16 people were wounded, according to different reports, and about 20 were arrested. The city was largely shut down; schools were closed and transportation was restricted. CGTP members also held strikes and marches in other cities, including the southern cities of Puno and Ayacucho.
Indigenous groups from outside the Amazon region observed the strike calls, as did a number of local organizations. In Cusco, members of the Machiguenga indigenous group blocked the train to the Machu Picchu archeological site starting on May 26; about 300 Machiguenga protested peacefully in Aguas Calientes, near the site, a major tourist attraction. Members of the Subregional Federation of Campesino and Urban Rondas blocked the Fernando Belaunde highway at the town of Chamaya in Jaén province in the northern department of Cajamarca on May 27. [Rondas started as campesino self-defense groups that the military used in the counterinsurgency against the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, “Shining Path”) rebels in the 1980s, but the groups later became independent of the government.] (ADN (Spain) 5/28/09 from EFE; Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 5/27/09; La República (Peru) 5/28/09)
The laws Aidesep has been protesting were part of a package of more than 100 decrees that President Alan García signed in 2008 to bring Peru into compliance with a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with the US; the agreement went into effect earlier this year. Decrees affecting campesino and indigenous land rights provoked massive mobilizations during the summer of 2008 [see Update #954], and two decrees were repealed in August. This May the constitutional commission of the Congress ruled that one of the remaining decrees is unconstitutional, and Congress was scheduled to vote on repealing it at the end of May. But García continues to defend the package. "The Amazonian lands belong to the entire nation, not to a small group that lives there,” he said at a public event on May 16.
Since the protests started on Apr. 9 some 10,000 indigenous people, many of them armed with bows and arrows, have carried out actions that included blockades of major roads and waterways and the occupation of an airport. The protesters have closed down a pipeline belonging to the state-owned oil company Petróleos del Perú, SA (Petroperu); it normally carries 40,000 barrels a day. The privately owned Pluspetrol Perú has had to shut down its Block 1-AB field, which was producing 17,000 barrels a day last month. On May 9 the government declared a state of emergency in four regions, granting the army greater powers to repress the protests. The government also charged Aidesep president Alberto Pizango Chota with conspiring against the state. (Environment News Service 5/26/09; Bloomberg 5/26/09)
The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples, which was being held in Puno, concluded on May 31 with Pizango calling for another national strike on June 3. "If we have to die, let them kill us; we’d rather die struggling so that our children can live with dignity,” he told the delegates, who chanted: “Pizango, brother, the summit is with you.” The delegates announced that they would organize encampments during the first week of July in front of Peruvian embassies in their own countries. (ADN 6/1/09)
*2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
On May 20 about 100 residents of seven rural communities in Cunduacán municipality in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco blocked access to the Madrefil-1 oil well to demand compensation for what they say is damage to their communities. Drilling on the well, which belongs to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the government’s giant oil monopoly, started at the beginning of the year. The campesinos say the work has already killed their crops and livestock and damaged their homes. “We asked the PEMEX engineers to take us into account, but they didn’t pay any attention,” one protester told the media.
On May 30 PEMEX officials said the blockade was creating the danger of an accident at the facility. Fifteen workers remained there; the campesinos reportedly wouldn’t let them leave. According to the officials, the real reasons for the blockade were electoral. PEMEX said state legislators and candidates for Tabasco’s Oct. 18 municipal and legislative elections had been meeting with the protesters. But the residents said they wouldn’t lift the blockade until PEMEX directors took action on their demands. (ADN 5/30/09 from EFE; El Financiero (Mexico) 5/29/09)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba
Chile: Ex-Soldier Arrested for Víctor Jara Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1880/1/
Argentine Factory in the Hands of the Workers: FASINPAT a Step Closer to Permanent Worker Control
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1875/1/
Uruguay: El Monarca Neighbors Build Their Own Town
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1881/68/
Bogus al-Qaeda bust in Brazil
http://ww4report.com/node/7372
Cochabamba (Bolivia): From War to Water Management
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1883/68/
Ecuador: Correa's Re-Election Poses More Challenges for Social Movements
https://nacla.org/node/5848
The Dark Side of Plan Colombia
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/ballve/single
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1884/68/
Costa Rica: Indigenous People Sidelined in Plans for Dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1878/68/
Mexico: peasant ecologist arrested in Chihuahua
http://ww4report.com/node/7374
Michoacán: 27 mayors and pubic officials arrested in federal sweep
http://ww4report.com/node/7375
A Rainbow Flag Over Habana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1879/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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, May 25, 2009
WNU #990: Colombian Banana Workers End Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #990, May 24, 2009
1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
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: Banana Workers End Strike
On May 20 some 17,500 banana workers in Colombia’s northwestern Urabá region ended a strike they began on May 8 over pay and benefits. The workers won an 8% wage hike for the first year of the two-year contract and a cost-of-living adjustment for the next year; this is based on the Consumer Price Index (IPC in Spanish), which is expected to rise by 5% or less this year. The strikers also won benefits including funds for housing, recreation and culture, a bonus, and pay for the days lost to the strike. The banana workers were seeking a 9.2% wage increase the first year and the IPC adjustment plus 2% for the second year, along with other benefits and the creation of a fund to pay reparations to relatives of the victims of violence in Urabá. The owners had originally sought a five-year contract. Gilberto Torres, a spokesperson for the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (SINTRAINAGRO), said the union’s members “received the agreement very well.”
The owners lost about $30 million during the 12-day strike; normally they would have shipped some 3.7 million cases during the period. Colombia is the world’s third largest banana exporter, after Ecuador and Costa Rica, with most exports going to Europe and the US. About 75% of Urabá’s economy depends on the industry, which employs some 19,500 workers at 296 plantations.
SINTRAINAGRO officials say more than 800 farmworkers have been killed in Urabá over the past 13 years, mostly by rightwing paramilitaries hired by growers to stop labor organizing. During the job action the union charged that the owners tried to bring in strikebreakers even though the strike was recognized by the Social Protection Ministry. Union officials also said strikers had received threatening messages. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 5/18/09; El Espectador (Colombia) 5/20/09; Reuters 5/20/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
*2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) reported on May 19. Miguel Carpio, an economist at Banco Federal CA in Caracas, projected a zero growth rate for the year. Finance Minister Ali Rodríguez attributed the situation to the global economic downturn, which has cut the price of Venezuelan oil from an average of $87 per barrel last year to an average $42 per barrel so far in 2009; oil accounts for more than 90% of the country’s exports. The last time the GDP failed to grow was in 2003 during a shutdown of the oil sector by the political opposition to President Hugo Chávez Frías. The economy grew by 18.6% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005 and 2006, 8.4% in 2007, and 4.8% in 2008, according to the BCV. In March the government announced a 6.7% reduction in the national budget. (Bloomberg 5/19/09; Venezuelanalysis 5/21/09)
As growth stalls, Chávez’s leftist government seems to be tightening its control over the economy. On May 22 the government announced a deal to pay the Spanish banking multinational Banco Santander $1.05 billion for the nationalization of its local subsidiary, Banco de Venezuela. "We are working in all areas related to economic development," Vice President Ramón Carrizalez explained. Plans for the nationalization were announced in July, but negotiations dragged on for months over the purchase price. (AP 5/22/09 via Forbes) On May 21 President Chávez announced plans to nationalize several steel and iron companies. This was the beginning of "a process of nationalization to create an industrial complex," he said in a televised address. "Venezuelan workers are going to give a lesson to the world on how the working class has been resuscitated to make a revolution." (AFP 5/21/09)
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is seeking up to $4.3 billion in loans from Brazil’s state development bank, according to the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Some of the loans would be used to pay for work by Brazilian companies in Venezuela. The companies include Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht SA, Brazil's largest construction group, which is expanding the Caracas subway system. The loans may be announced when Chavez visits Brazil on May 26. (Reuters 5/22/09)
*3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
On May 20 the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before. The next day Salomon Presburger, president of the Concamin business organization, told a Mexico City press conference that the country had already lost 300,000 jobs in 2009 and would probably lose a total of 600,000 during the year, half of them from the industrial sector, in which he expected a 12-13% contraction. He predicted that the numbers would be even worse when statistics come in on the effect of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”), which has caused at least 74 deaths to date, has reduced tourism and led many companies to shut down for a week in late April and early May [see Update #988].
Presburger noted Mexico’s close economic ties with the US, now suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. "The collapse of orders coming from the US and the sudden weakening of domestic demand, associated with the fall in household consumption and business investment, explains the accelerated decline of the industrial sector," he said. He compared the current crisis to the devastating recession that followed the financial collapse of December 1994. (Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
“[I]n 2009 we have lost what we gained over many years,” José Ángel Gurría Treviño, a finance secretary during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000), said in a press conference in Madrid on May 22, “so that this isn’t a cycle, it’s a disaster. This isn’t an evolution; it’s a demolition. And yes, we calculated it badly.” But he insisted that “we who created this problem…are the ones who have to fix it.” Gurría is now general secretary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes 30 industrialized countries with a “free market” orientation; Mexico is the only Latin American member. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/23/09)
On May 20, the US-based Moody's Investors Service called Mexico the "most vulnerable" among countries in the region. (Bloomberg 5/20/09)
*4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
On May 21 Assistant US Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the administration of US president Barack Obama won’t seek the approval of Congress for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Panama until the president has established a new "framework" for trade. "It's clear that trade agreements in the last few years have been much too divisive," Eissenstat said. "We want to make sure that Panama doesn't contribute to that divisiveness." This was a reversal from the administration’s plan in March to push for early approval of the pact; the change followed a statement by John Sweeney, president of the main US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, opposing the Panama FTA.
The Panama agreement was considered the least controversial and easiest to pass of three FTAs negotiated by the administration of former president George W. Bush (2001-2009) but still awaiting approval from Congress; the other two pacts are with Colombia and South Korea. The Panama accord is backed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc., which is seeking to supply machinery for a planned expansion of the Panama Canal. Trade between Panama and the US was $5.5 billion in 2008. (Bloomberg 5/21/09)
The FTA is a foreign policy priority both for outgoing Panamanian president Martin Torrijos of the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and for the conservative president-elect, Ricardo Martinelli. Analysts in Panama think that to win US approval the Panamanian government will have to meet US demands on unionization, child labor, environmental issues and banking secrecy laws. (Prensa Latina 5/22/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
Colombian sought in Buenos Aires Jewish center attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7354
Bolivia's ex-prez goes on trial in absentia on "genocide" charges
http://ww4report.com/node/7336
Bolivian Senate to hold impeachment trial for chief justice
http://ww4report.com/node/7356
Abraham’s Last Rap: Bolivian Hip-Hop Hero Dies in El Alto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1874/1/
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
Bolivia Declassified: USAID Responds to Freedom of Information Act Request
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1866/1/
Israel: Venezuela, Bolivia supply Iran with uranium
http://ww4report.com/node/7363
Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Mining, Red Lakes, and Piles of Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1872/68/
Ecuador's Future for Canadian Transnationals: An Exchange of Indigenous Perspectives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1871/1/
Obama Seeks $46 Million for Military Base in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1870/68/
Colombia scores blow against Valle Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/7338
Colombia's senate approves referendum on extending presidential term limits
http://ww4report.com/node/7337
Lawsuit Accuses Dole of Funding Death Squads (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1867/68/
Colombia: pyramid victims kidnap nine
http://ww4report.com/node/7360
Colombia: ELN appeals to FARC to end "fratricidal war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7359
Colombia: scandal-tainted Freddy Padilla is new defense chief
http://ww4report.com/node/7358
Venezuela: Chávez, media mogul trade accusations following police raid
http://ww4report.com/node/7355
Attorney's slaying polarizes Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/7339
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: shake-up in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7353
Mexico: crackdown in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak sparks protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7335
Megaprojects and Militarization: A Perfect Storm in Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5830
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1869/68/
Building a Transnational Peasant Movement
https://nacla.org/node/5831
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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 #990, May 24, 2009
1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
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: Banana Workers End Strike
On May 20 some 17,500 banana workers in Colombia’s northwestern Urabá region ended a strike they began on May 8 over pay and benefits. The workers won an 8% wage hike for the first year of the two-year contract and a cost-of-living adjustment for the next year; this is based on the Consumer Price Index (IPC in Spanish), which is expected to rise by 5% or less this year. The strikers also won benefits including funds for housing, recreation and culture, a bonus, and pay for the days lost to the strike. The banana workers were seeking a 9.2% wage increase the first year and the IPC adjustment plus 2% for the second year, along with other benefits and the creation of a fund to pay reparations to relatives of the victims of violence in Urabá. The owners had originally sought a five-year contract. Gilberto Torres, a spokesperson for the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (SINTRAINAGRO), said the union’s members “received the agreement very well.”
The owners lost about $30 million during the 12-day strike; normally they would have shipped some 3.7 million cases during the period. Colombia is the world’s third largest banana exporter, after Ecuador and Costa Rica, with most exports going to Europe and the US. About 75% of Urabá’s economy depends on the industry, which employs some 19,500 workers at 296 plantations.
SINTRAINAGRO officials say more than 800 farmworkers have been killed in Urabá over the past 13 years, mostly by rightwing paramilitaries hired by growers to stop labor organizing. During the job action the union charged that the owners tried to bring in strikebreakers even though the strike was recognized by the Social Protection Ministry. Union officials also said strikers had received threatening messages. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 5/18/09; El Espectador (Colombia) 5/20/09; Reuters 5/20/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
*2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) reported on May 19. Miguel Carpio, an economist at Banco Federal CA in Caracas, projected a zero growth rate for the year. Finance Minister Ali Rodríguez attributed the situation to the global economic downturn, which has cut the price of Venezuelan oil from an average of $87 per barrel last year to an average $42 per barrel so far in 2009; oil accounts for more than 90% of the country’s exports. The last time the GDP failed to grow was in 2003 during a shutdown of the oil sector by the political opposition to President Hugo Chávez Frías. The economy grew by 18.6% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005 and 2006, 8.4% in 2007, and 4.8% in 2008, according to the BCV. In March the government announced a 6.7% reduction in the national budget. (Bloomberg 5/19/09; Venezuelanalysis 5/21/09)
As growth stalls, Chávez’s leftist government seems to be tightening its control over the economy. On May 22 the government announced a deal to pay the Spanish banking multinational Banco Santander $1.05 billion for the nationalization of its local subsidiary, Banco de Venezuela. "We are working in all areas related to economic development," Vice President Ramón Carrizalez explained. Plans for the nationalization were announced in July, but negotiations dragged on for months over the purchase price. (AP 5/22/09 via Forbes) On May 21 President Chávez announced plans to nationalize several steel and iron companies. This was the beginning of "a process of nationalization to create an industrial complex," he said in a televised address. "Venezuelan workers are going to give a lesson to the world on how the working class has been resuscitated to make a revolution." (AFP 5/21/09)
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is seeking up to $4.3 billion in loans from Brazil’s state development bank, according to the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Some of the loans would be used to pay for work by Brazilian companies in Venezuela. The companies include Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht SA, Brazil's largest construction group, which is expanding the Caracas subway system. The loans may be announced when Chavez visits Brazil on May 26. (Reuters 5/22/09)
*3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
On May 20 the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before. The next day Salomon Presburger, president of the Concamin business organization, told a Mexico City press conference that the country had already lost 300,000 jobs in 2009 and would probably lose a total of 600,000 during the year, half of them from the industrial sector, in which he expected a 12-13% contraction. He predicted that the numbers would be even worse when statistics come in on the effect of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”), which has caused at least 74 deaths to date, has reduced tourism and led many companies to shut down for a week in late April and early May [see Update #988].
Presburger noted Mexico’s close economic ties with the US, now suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. "The collapse of orders coming from the US and the sudden weakening of domestic demand, associated with the fall in household consumption and business investment, explains the accelerated decline of the industrial sector," he said. He compared the current crisis to the devastating recession that followed the financial collapse of December 1994. (Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
“[I]n 2009 we have lost what we gained over many years,” José Ángel Gurría Treviño, a finance secretary during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000), said in a press conference in Madrid on May 22, “so that this isn’t a cycle, it’s a disaster. This isn’t an evolution; it’s a demolition. And yes, we calculated it badly.” But he insisted that “we who created this problem…are the ones who have to fix it.” Gurría is now general secretary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes 30 industrialized countries with a “free market” orientation; Mexico is the only Latin American member. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/23/09)
On May 20, the US-based Moody's Investors Service called Mexico the "most vulnerable" among countries in the region. (Bloomberg 5/20/09)
*4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
On May 21 Assistant US Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the administration of US president Barack Obama won’t seek the approval of Congress for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Panama until the president has established a new "framework" for trade. "It's clear that trade agreements in the last few years have been much too divisive," Eissenstat said. "We want to make sure that Panama doesn't contribute to that divisiveness." This was a reversal from the administration’s plan in March to push for early approval of the pact; the change followed a statement by John Sweeney, president of the main US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, opposing the Panama FTA.
The Panama agreement was considered the least controversial and easiest to pass of three FTAs negotiated by the administration of former president George W. Bush (2001-2009) but still awaiting approval from Congress; the other two pacts are with Colombia and South Korea. The Panama accord is backed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc., which is seeking to supply machinery for a planned expansion of the Panama Canal. Trade between Panama and the US was $5.5 billion in 2008. (Bloomberg 5/21/09)
The FTA is a foreign policy priority both for outgoing Panamanian president Martin Torrijos of the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and for the conservative president-elect, Ricardo Martinelli. Analysts in Panama think that to win US approval the Panamanian government will have to meet US demands on unionization, child labor, environmental issues and banking secrecy laws. (Prensa Latina 5/22/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
Colombian sought in Buenos Aires Jewish center attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7354
Bolivia's ex-prez goes on trial in absentia on "genocide" charges
http://ww4report.com/node/7336
Bolivian Senate to hold impeachment trial for chief justice
http://ww4report.com/node/7356
Abraham’s Last Rap: Bolivian Hip-Hop Hero Dies in El Alto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1874/1/
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
Bolivia Declassified: USAID Responds to Freedom of Information Act Request
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1866/1/
Israel: Venezuela, Bolivia supply Iran with uranium
http://ww4report.com/node/7363
Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Mining, Red Lakes, and Piles of Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1872/68/
Ecuador's Future for Canadian Transnationals: An Exchange of Indigenous Perspectives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1871/1/
Obama Seeks $46 Million for Military Base in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1870/68/
Colombia scores blow against Valle Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/7338
Colombia's senate approves referendum on extending presidential term limits
http://ww4report.com/node/7337
Lawsuit Accuses Dole of Funding Death Squads (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1867/68/
Colombia: pyramid victims kidnap nine
http://ww4report.com/node/7360
Colombia: ELN appeals to FARC to end "fratricidal war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7359
Colombia: scandal-tainted Freddy Padilla is new defense chief
http://ww4report.com/node/7358
Venezuela: Chávez, media mogul trade accusations following police raid
http://ww4report.com/node/7355
Attorney's slaying polarizes Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/7339
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: shake-up in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7353
Mexico: crackdown in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak sparks protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7335
Megaprojects and Militarization: A Perfect Storm in Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5830
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1869/68/
Building a Transnational Peasant Movement
https://nacla.org/node/5831
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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, May 18, 2009
Links but No Update for May 17, 2009
[We are unable to send out an Update this week because of travel. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Paraguay: Soy: A Hunger for Land
https://nacla.org/node/5798
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
USAID's Silent Invasion in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1865/1/
Bolivia: Plan 3000: Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6093
Peru: Canadian oil company signs deal to explore uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7312
Swinging from the Right: Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1856/1/
Colombia: In Radio Diversia “After the Burglary...Came the Threats” http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1863/68/
Assassinations Continue in Colombia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1857/68/
Beyond the Media Hysteria on Hugo Chávez
https://nacla.org/node/5809
Venezuela: Chávez takes hardline pasta policy
http://ww4report.com/node/7321
Campaign Against School of the Americas Lobbies El Salvador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1858/68/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Carlos Alarcón http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1861/1/
Landmark Developments in Guatemalan Human Rights
https://nacla.org/node/5818
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: Swine Flu Reveals Flaws in Global Public Health System
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6108
Obama and the Future of Cuban-U.S. Relations
http://www.nacla.org/node/5812
Compañero Obama? Obama Mends Fences with Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1855/1/
Paraguay: Soy: A Hunger for Land
https://nacla.org/node/5798
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
USAID's Silent Invasion in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1865/1/
Bolivia: Plan 3000: Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6093
Peru: Canadian oil company signs deal to explore uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7312
Swinging from the Right: Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1856/1/
Colombia: In Radio Diversia “After the Burglary...Came the Threats” http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1863/68/
Assassinations Continue in Colombia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1857/68/
Beyond the Media Hysteria on Hugo Chávez
https://nacla.org/node/5809
Venezuela: Chávez takes hardline pasta policy
http://ww4report.com/node/7321
Campaign Against School of the Americas Lobbies El Salvador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1858/68/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Carlos Alarcón http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1861/1/
Landmark Developments in Guatemalan Human Rights
https://nacla.org/node/5818
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: Swine Flu Reveals Flaws in Global Public Health System
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6108
Obama and the Future of Cuban-U.S. Relations
http://www.nacla.org/node/5812
Compañero Obama? Obama Mends Fences with Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1855/1/
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
WNU #989: Haitians Protest Lynching in DR
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #989, May 10, 2009
1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, 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. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
Dozens of Haitian activists held a sit-in in front of the Dominican embassy in Pétionville, an eastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, on the morning of May 8 to protest the lynching of Haitian national Carlos Nérilus in Santo Domingo on May 2. The activists denounced both the failure of Dominican authorities to protect Haitian nationals and what they said was the “laissez-faire” policy of the Haitian government; they demanded the immediate recall of Fritz Cinéas, Haiti’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic. The sit-in was organized by the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH) and the National Coordinating Committee of Nongovernmental Actors (CONANE). A Dominican embassy official, Pastor Vásquez, met with a delegation of five activists accompanied by journalists; Ambassador Rubén Silié was away from the embassy.
Two more groups of protesters, mostly students, arrived later in the morning, bringing the crowd to a total of about 150. The newcomers tore down the sign in front of the embassy and wrote “Dominican criminals, Dominican murderers” on the walls. The Associated Press wire service reported that they also threw rocks and broke a window. The youths then proceeded to the nearby Dominican consulate, where police agents prevented them from tearing down the Dominican flag; later they paralyzed traffic in Pétionville. Meanwhile, the human rights groups led a peaceful march to Haitian prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis’ office, where they tried to deliver a document. In contrast to the Dominican embassy, the prime minister’s office wouldn’t receive a delegation of activists if journalists were included. The protesters refused to accept the condition and marched on to the National Palace to deliver a message to President René Préval. (AlterPresse 5/8/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP; GARR press release 5/4/09)
Nérilus was murdered on 12th Street in Santo Domingo’s Buenos Aires neighborhood on the afternoon of May 2. A man reportedly tortured Nérilus and then cut off his head with an axe while an angry crowd looked on; some people filmed the incident with their cellphones. There is no evidence that the local police attempted to intervene. The killing was said to be in revenge for the decapitation of a Dominican business owner, Pascual de León Lara, allegedly by a Haitian, the day before in another Santo Domingo neighborhood, but it not clear whether Nérilus and his killer had a direct connection to De León Lara’s murder. Dominican authorities later arrested a suspect, Confesor Reyes, and on May 8 a Santo Domingo Province judge, Elizabeth Esperanza Rodríguez Espinal, ordered a three-month detention of Reyes while the case is being investigated. According to one report, Reyes has also been identified as Rusbert de León Lara, Pascual de León Lara’s brother. (Radio Kiskeya 5/3/09; Listín Diario 5/4/09, 5/9/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP)
In other news, after months of delays the Haitian Senate voted unanimously on May 5 to approve a measure raising the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from its current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure earlier in the year [see Update #984]. To become law, the raise still needs to be approved by President Préval and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur. Business owners strongly opposed the new minimum wage, and it is not clear what measures are planned to enforce it. (AlterPresse 5/6/09)
*2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) ruled on May 6 that the Honduran government shared responsibility for the murder of environmental activist Blanca Jeannette Kawas Fernández at her home in Tela on Feb. 6, 1995. Kawas Fernández, the president of the Foundation for the Protection of the Natural Resources of Lancetilla, Punta Sal and Texiguat (Prolansate), had accused timber companies of illegal exploitation of the Punta Sal peninsula and of plans for its illegal appropriation, along with damage to the National Park and other protected sites. She had also opposed several economic development plans in the region.
In its ruling, which was published on May 8, the CIDH found that although the murder was carried out on behalf of “private interests,” it was “facilitated” by government agents; the court found that at least one government agent had participated in the killing, which was followed by other acts of violence and intimidation against environmental activists. The CIDH ordered the government to carry out a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the work of defenders of the environment and the contributions they make to the defense of human rights. According to the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), an alliance of Latin American human rights groups, this is the first time the CIDH has ruled on the killing of an environmental activist and the first time it has recognized “an undeniable relation between the protection of the environment and the implementation of other human rights." (Adital 5/8/09; Univision 5/8/09 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
The Movement of People Harmed by Dams (MAB) and the local branch of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) held a vigil the evening of May 7 at the Mártires de Abril Plaza in Belém, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, to demand the release of 18 people arrested on Apr. 26 when the state’s militarized police broke up a sit-in near the Tucuruí dam. The prisoners each face at least 11 charges; if convicted they could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. The vigil, which was supported by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), campesino unions and the regional fishers’ movement, was part of what organizers called the “Campaign Against the Criminalization of Social Movements.” The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church notes that 17 people have been killed in the Tucuruí region over the past three years in struggles over land use.
Some 350-400 people had set up an encampment on Apr. 24 in a work area for the locks along the Tocantins River at the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, about 380 km southwest of Belém. They were protesting violence in the countryside and demanding agricultural resources, infrastructural work and the development of fishing to benefit some 900 families in the area. On Apr. 25 the protesters called for talks with the state and federal government and the Eletronorte company. But on the morning of Apr. 26 more than 100 state militarized police, including a group of 55 sent from Belém, moved in on the encampment. “They arrived beating some people,” said Daiane Carlos Hohn of the MAB’s national directorate. Press reports said there was some resistance from protesters armed with homemade bombs and metal and wooden clubs but that no one was seriously injured. (Adital 4/27/09, 5/7/09; O Globo (Brazil) 4/26/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Uruguayans Call for a National Vote on Impunity Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1844/1/
Paraguay: ranchers seek license to destroy uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7290
The Fun House Mirror: Distortions and Omissions in the News on Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/5786
Bolivia: Plan 3000 - Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1849/68/
Venezuela: Chávez seizes oil service companies
http://ww4report.com/node/7295
Venezuela's Opposition: Back Into the Frying Pan
https://nacla.org/node/5777
Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA court
http://ww4report.com/node/7288
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Oswaldo Natarén
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1851/1/
Oaxaca: Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1854/1/
Mexican Civil Society and NGOs Speak Out Against US Militarization
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/05/mexican-civil-society-speaks-out.html
Outbreak of Deadly New Swine Flu Strain, Warning to Rethink Agricultural Trade Model
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6102
Advice for Obama from South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1850/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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 #989, May 10, 2009
1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, 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. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
Dozens of Haitian activists held a sit-in in front of the Dominican embassy in Pétionville, an eastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, on the morning of May 8 to protest the lynching of Haitian national Carlos Nérilus in Santo Domingo on May 2. The activists denounced both the failure of Dominican authorities to protect Haitian nationals and what they said was the “laissez-faire” policy of the Haitian government; they demanded the immediate recall of Fritz Cinéas, Haiti’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic. The sit-in was organized by the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH) and the National Coordinating Committee of Nongovernmental Actors (CONANE). A Dominican embassy official, Pastor Vásquez, met with a delegation of five activists accompanied by journalists; Ambassador Rubén Silié was away from the embassy.
Two more groups of protesters, mostly students, arrived later in the morning, bringing the crowd to a total of about 150. The newcomers tore down the sign in front of the embassy and wrote “Dominican criminals, Dominican murderers” on the walls. The Associated Press wire service reported that they also threw rocks and broke a window. The youths then proceeded to the nearby Dominican consulate, where police agents prevented them from tearing down the Dominican flag; later they paralyzed traffic in Pétionville. Meanwhile, the human rights groups led a peaceful march to Haitian prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis’ office, where they tried to deliver a document. In contrast to the Dominican embassy, the prime minister’s office wouldn’t receive a delegation of activists if journalists were included. The protesters refused to accept the condition and marched on to the National Palace to deliver a message to President René Préval. (AlterPresse 5/8/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP; GARR press release 5/4/09)
Nérilus was murdered on 12th Street in Santo Domingo’s Buenos Aires neighborhood on the afternoon of May 2. A man reportedly tortured Nérilus and then cut off his head with an axe while an angry crowd looked on; some people filmed the incident with their cellphones. There is no evidence that the local police attempted to intervene. The killing was said to be in revenge for the decapitation of a Dominican business owner, Pascual de León Lara, allegedly by a Haitian, the day before in another Santo Domingo neighborhood, but it not clear whether Nérilus and his killer had a direct connection to De León Lara’s murder. Dominican authorities later arrested a suspect, Confesor Reyes, and on May 8 a Santo Domingo Province judge, Elizabeth Esperanza Rodríguez Espinal, ordered a three-month detention of Reyes while the case is being investigated. According to one report, Reyes has also been identified as Rusbert de León Lara, Pascual de León Lara’s brother. (Radio Kiskeya 5/3/09; Listín Diario 5/4/09, 5/9/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP)
In other news, after months of delays the Haitian Senate voted unanimously on May 5 to approve a measure raising the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from its current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure earlier in the year [see Update #984]. To become law, the raise still needs to be approved by President Préval and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur. Business owners strongly opposed the new minimum wage, and it is not clear what measures are planned to enforce it. (AlterPresse 5/6/09)
*2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) ruled on May 6 that the Honduran government shared responsibility for the murder of environmental activist Blanca Jeannette Kawas Fernández at her home in Tela on Feb. 6, 1995. Kawas Fernández, the president of the Foundation for the Protection of the Natural Resources of Lancetilla, Punta Sal and Texiguat (Prolansate), had accused timber companies of illegal exploitation of the Punta Sal peninsula and of plans for its illegal appropriation, along with damage to the National Park and other protected sites. She had also opposed several economic development plans in the region.
In its ruling, which was published on May 8, the CIDH found that although the murder was carried out on behalf of “private interests,” it was “facilitated” by government agents; the court found that at least one government agent had participated in the killing, which was followed by other acts of violence and intimidation against environmental activists. The CIDH ordered the government to carry out a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the work of defenders of the environment and the contributions they make to the defense of human rights. According to the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), an alliance of Latin American human rights groups, this is the first time the CIDH has ruled on the killing of an environmental activist and the first time it has recognized “an undeniable relation between the protection of the environment and the implementation of other human rights." (Adital 5/8/09; Univision 5/8/09 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
The Movement of People Harmed by Dams (MAB) and the local branch of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) held a vigil the evening of May 7 at the Mártires de Abril Plaza in Belém, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, to demand the release of 18 people arrested on Apr. 26 when the state’s militarized police broke up a sit-in near the Tucuruí dam. The prisoners each face at least 11 charges; if convicted they could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. The vigil, which was supported by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), campesino unions and the regional fishers’ movement, was part of what organizers called the “Campaign Against the Criminalization of Social Movements.” The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church notes that 17 people have been killed in the Tucuruí region over the past three years in struggles over land use.
Some 350-400 people had set up an encampment on Apr. 24 in a work area for the locks along the Tocantins River at the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, about 380 km southwest of Belém. They were protesting violence in the countryside and demanding agricultural resources, infrastructural work and the development of fishing to benefit some 900 families in the area. On Apr. 25 the protesters called for talks with the state and federal government and the Eletronorte company. But on the morning of Apr. 26 more than 100 state militarized police, including a group of 55 sent from Belém, moved in on the encampment. “They arrived beating some people,” said Daiane Carlos Hohn of the MAB’s national directorate. Press reports said there was some resistance from protesters armed with homemade bombs and metal and wooden clubs but that no one was seriously injured. (Adital 4/27/09, 5/7/09; O Globo (Brazil) 4/26/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Uruguayans Call for a National Vote on Impunity Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1844/1/
Paraguay: ranchers seek license to destroy uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7290
The Fun House Mirror: Distortions and Omissions in the News on Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/5786
Bolivia: Plan 3000 - Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1849/68/
Venezuela: Chávez seizes oil service companies
http://ww4report.com/node/7295
Venezuela's Opposition: Back Into the Frying Pan
https://nacla.org/node/5777
Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA court
http://ww4report.com/node/7288
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Oswaldo Natarén
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1851/1/
Oaxaca: Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1854/1/
Mexican Civil Society and NGOs Speak Out Against US Militarization
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/05/mexican-civil-society-speaks-out.html
Outbreak of Deadly New Swine Flu Strain, Warning to Rethink Agricultural Trade Model
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6102
Advice for Obama from South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1850/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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, May 5, 2009
WNU #988: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #988, May 3, 2009
1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, 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. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.
About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s largest labor confederation. CUT president Arturo Martínez demanded “a new law that distributes the wealth,” a right to strike without the threat of firings and replacement workers, and an end to the practice of letting firms lay workers off “because of the company’s needs.” After the main demonstration had ended, small groups of people wearing masks attacked the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Dozens of people were arrested. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 5/2/09 from AP)
Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in downtown Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). Their supporters in the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) face serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government,” said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). “What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."
Argentina experienced massive privatizations and corruption under the neoliberal policies of president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999), which were followed by a financial collapse in 2001. Economic growth returned under Kirchner and Fernández but halted with the onset of the global crisis in 2008. Moyano has reportedly persuaded Kirchner to include union officials on the PJ ticket in June. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/30/09 from EFE)
In Brazil thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the Bolivian subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP in a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz’s Plaza de Armas. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni and Pando. Morales--who had previously nationalized oil and telecommunications companies--also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees. (AFP 5/1/09; La Tribuna (Honduras) 5/1/09 from AFP)
Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador’s main cities carrying signs with slogans such as “Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis,” and “Reject the government’s labor policy.” At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. “But we criticize others,” Bedoya said, “like the layoffs of the compañeros at Petroecuador” (Empresa Estatal Petróleos del Ecuador, the state-owned oil company).
In Colombia, unions and retirees’ organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Alvaro Uribe’s bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here,” Unitary Workers Central (CUT) president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogotá, calling the government’s neoliberal economic model a failure.
Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez held a massive march in Caracas, which also witnessed confrontations between police agents and opposition unionists at a separate march which the police dispersed with tear gas and water cannons.
Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This was the fourth year in a row that the three main labor federations marched together despite their political differences.
Thousands of Cubans took part in the traditional government-sponsored march, headed by President Raúl Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government, established by the 1959 Revolution. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
Mexico’s three main labor federations--the centrist Congress of Labor (CT), the independent National Workers Union (UNT) and the more radical Mexican Union Front (FSM)--called off their planned May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”). Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos ordered a suspension of all non-essential services from May 1 to May 5; the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) said its members didn’t have to pay wages to workers during the forced layoffs. (MRzine 5/1/09)
More than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of May Day activities in Mexico City. The largest march was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla. Some 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups participated in a UNT march to the city’s zócalo (main plaza). “Face masks aren’t enough to silence the conscience of the people” and “More harmful than the influenza—the government without shame” were among the chants. The largest contingent was made up of dissidents from sections 23 and 51 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Teachers were also a major force in a march of about 3,000 workers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southeastern state of Chiapas and in a protest by 1,000 workers in Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos, where teachers fought the government’s Alliance for Quality Education (ACE) program last fall [see Update #968]. Smaller marches were held in other states, including Oaxaca, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/09)
Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, causing panic and minor injuries. The marchers—organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage [see Update #984]--regrouped later in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main plaza, where the government of President René Préval was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: “solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production.” “It’s not normal for us to be unable to demonstrate peacefully and freely on May 1,” said a member of the organizing committee of the collective, which is made up of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle") and other groups. (AlterPresse 5/1/09, __)
In the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year [see Update #982]. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island’s leading labor organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), led by Elie Domota; the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG), led by Jean-Marie Nomertin; and the more radical Central of United Workers (CTU). But the march showed signs of tensions in the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), the coalition that led the general strike: the CTU’s Alex Lollia denounced the LKP as a “petit bourgeois movement.” (Le Monde (France) 5/2/09)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest what unionists said was a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuño to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and by “dismantling” the state through “the privatization of the country’s essential public services.” According to the police, 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan, during which Rafael Feliciano, leader of the militant Teachers’ Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), shouted “murderer” at Police Superintendent José Figueroa Sancha. (Feliciano said later that Figueroa was involved in the killing of independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005.) Gov. Fortuño, of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), said he was studying alternatives for the workers to be laid off by the law he has proposed; he claimed that 40 states in the US have laid off public employees because of the crisis without giving any thought to situation of the workers. (TeleSUR 5/1/09; El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) 5/1/09).
*2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
Millionaire supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli of the conservative Democratic Change (CD) party easily won Panama’s presidential election on May 3. With 80% of the ballots counted at around 10 pm, Martinelli had 60.62% of the votes, against 36.97% for Balbina Herrera of the governing center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under current president Martín Torrijos, Panama has had economic growth rates approaching double digits, but growth has slowed with the global crisis. Media analysts note that Martinelli’s victory goes against the recent trend in Latin America for voters to replace conservative governments with left or center-left governments. The PRD had been losing support from the left; at Panama’s May 1 celebrations, labor and activist organizations urged the thousands of participants to abstain from the voting or leave their ballots blank. Herrera was also hurt by her ties to former dictator Manual Noriega. (Reuters 5/3/09; La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
Argentina: Water is Worth More Than Gold! 300 Organizations Collectively Say "No To Open-Pit Mining"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Argentine May Day Massacre-100 Years Ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1843/68/
Paraguay: Protests and Rubber Bullets Greet Return of Dictatorship Criminal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1842/1/
Webs of intrigue tangle Bolivia conspiracy case
http://ww4report.com/node/7262
Oil, neo-Nazi connections claimed in Bolivian conspiracy
http://ww4report.com/node/7262#comment-317129
Peruvian Indigenous Peoples Mobilize Across the Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1833/68/
Correa Triumphs in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1838/68/
Colombia: Paramilitary Chief Says He Helped Finance Uribe’s Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1834/68/
The US-Colombia FTA and National Insecurity: A Call for Ethical Foreign Policy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1835/1/
Chávez refuses cooperation against FARC guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7277
Debrief: New Report on Venezuela's Re-Election Referendum
https://nacla.org/node/5741
Curaçao: Hezbollah connection in narco bust?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Nicaraguan workers' case against Dole dismissed
http://ww4report.com/node/3827#comment-317110
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1839/1/
El Salvador’s LGBT Movement Continues the Fight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1832/1/
Mexico’s Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/04/mexicos-swine-flu-and-globalization-of.html
May Day: Juárez workers defy flu curfew
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7279
Rights group urges Mexico to hold soldiers accountable for abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7266
Juárez femicide cases go before Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://ww4report.com/node/7264
The Political Opportunism of Drug War "Spillover"
https://nacla.org/node/5745
The Bigger Picture of the Cuban Embargo and Travel Ban
https://nacla.org/node/5769
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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 #988, May 3, 2009
1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, 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. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.
About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s largest labor confederation. CUT president Arturo Martínez demanded “a new law that distributes the wealth,” a right to strike without the threat of firings and replacement workers, and an end to the practice of letting firms lay workers off “because of the company’s needs.” After the main demonstration had ended, small groups of people wearing masks attacked the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Dozens of people were arrested. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 5/2/09 from AP)
Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in downtown Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). Their supporters in the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) face serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government,” said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). “What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."
Argentina experienced massive privatizations and corruption under the neoliberal policies of president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999), which were followed by a financial collapse in 2001. Economic growth returned under Kirchner and Fernández but halted with the onset of the global crisis in 2008. Moyano has reportedly persuaded Kirchner to include union officials on the PJ ticket in June. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/30/09 from EFE)
In Brazil thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the Bolivian subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP in a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz’s Plaza de Armas. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni and Pando. Morales--who had previously nationalized oil and telecommunications companies--also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees. (AFP 5/1/09; La Tribuna (Honduras) 5/1/09 from AFP)
Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador’s main cities carrying signs with slogans such as “Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis,” and “Reject the government’s labor policy.” At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. “But we criticize others,” Bedoya said, “like the layoffs of the compañeros at Petroecuador” (Empresa Estatal Petróleos del Ecuador, the state-owned oil company).
In Colombia, unions and retirees’ organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Alvaro Uribe’s bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here,” Unitary Workers Central (CUT) president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogotá, calling the government’s neoliberal economic model a failure.
Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez held a massive march in Caracas, which also witnessed confrontations between police agents and opposition unionists at a separate march which the police dispersed with tear gas and water cannons.
Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This was the fourth year in a row that the three main labor federations marched together despite their political differences.
Thousands of Cubans took part in the traditional government-sponsored march, headed by President Raúl Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government, established by the 1959 Revolution. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
Mexico’s three main labor federations--the centrist Congress of Labor (CT), the independent National Workers Union (UNT) and the more radical Mexican Union Front (FSM)--called off their planned May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”). Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos ordered a suspension of all non-essential services from May 1 to May 5; the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) said its members didn’t have to pay wages to workers during the forced layoffs. (MRzine 5/1/09)
More than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of May Day activities in Mexico City. The largest march was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla. Some 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups participated in a UNT march to the city’s zócalo (main plaza). “Face masks aren’t enough to silence the conscience of the people” and “More harmful than the influenza—the government without shame” were among the chants. The largest contingent was made up of dissidents from sections 23 and 51 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Teachers were also a major force in a march of about 3,000 workers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southeastern state of Chiapas and in a protest by 1,000 workers in Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos, where teachers fought the government’s Alliance for Quality Education (ACE) program last fall [see Update #968]. Smaller marches were held in other states, including Oaxaca, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/09)
Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, causing panic and minor injuries. The marchers—organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage [see Update #984]--regrouped later in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main plaza, where the government of President René Préval was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: “solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production.” “It’s not normal for us to be unable to demonstrate peacefully and freely on May 1,” said a member of the organizing committee of the collective, which is made up of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle") and other groups. (AlterPresse 5/1/09, __)
In the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year [see Update #982]. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island’s leading labor organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), led by Elie Domota; the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG), led by Jean-Marie Nomertin; and the more radical Central of United Workers (CTU). But the march showed signs of tensions in the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), the coalition that led the general strike: the CTU’s Alex Lollia denounced the LKP as a “petit bourgeois movement.” (Le Monde (France) 5/2/09)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest what unionists said was a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuño to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and by “dismantling” the state through “the privatization of the country’s essential public services.” According to the police, 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan, during which Rafael Feliciano, leader of the militant Teachers’ Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), shouted “murderer” at Police Superintendent José Figueroa Sancha. (Feliciano said later that Figueroa was involved in the killing of independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005.) Gov. Fortuño, of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), said he was studying alternatives for the workers to be laid off by the law he has proposed; he claimed that 40 states in the US have laid off public employees because of the crisis without giving any thought to situation of the workers. (TeleSUR 5/1/09; El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) 5/1/09).
*2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
Millionaire supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli of the conservative Democratic Change (CD) party easily won Panama’s presidential election on May 3. With 80% of the ballots counted at around 10 pm, Martinelli had 60.62% of the votes, against 36.97% for Balbina Herrera of the governing center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under current president Martín Torrijos, Panama has had economic growth rates approaching double digits, but growth has slowed with the global crisis. Media analysts note that Martinelli’s victory goes against the recent trend in Latin America for voters to replace conservative governments with left or center-left governments. The PRD had been losing support from the left; at Panama’s May 1 celebrations, labor and activist organizations urged the thousands of participants to abstain from the voting or leave their ballots blank. Herrera was also hurt by her ties to former dictator Manual Noriega. (Reuters 5/3/09; La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
Argentina: Water is Worth More Than Gold! 300 Organizations Collectively Say "No To Open-Pit Mining"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Argentine May Day Massacre-100 Years Ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1843/68/
Paraguay: Protests and Rubber Bullets Greet Return of Dictatorship Criminal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1842/1/
Webs of intrigue tangle Bolivia conspiracy case
http://ww4report.com/node/7262
Oil, neo-Nazi connections claimed in Bolivian conspiracy
http://ww4report.com/node/7262#comment-317129
Peruvian Indigenous Peoples Mobilize Across the Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1833/68/
Correa Triumphs in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1838/68/
Colombia: Paramilitary Chief Says He Helped Finance Uribe’s Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1834/68/
The US-Colombia FTA and National Insecurity: A Call for Ethical Foreign Policy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1835/1/
Chávez refuses cooperation against FARC guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7277
Debrief: New Report on Venezuela's Re-Election Referendum
https://nacla.org/node/5741
Curaçao: Hezbollah connection in narco bust?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Nicaraguan workers' case against Dole dismissed
http://ww4report.com/node/3827#comment-317110
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1839/1/
El Salvador’s LGBT Movement Continues the Fight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1832/1/
Mexico’s Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/04/mexicos-swine-flu-and-globalization-of.html
May Day: Juárez workers defy flu curfew
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7279
Rights group urges Mexico to hold soldiers accountable for abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7266
Juárez femicide cases go before Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://ww4report.com/node/7264
The Political Opportunism of Drug War "Spillover"
https://nacla.org/node/5745
The Bigger Picture of the Cuban Embargo and Travel Ban
https://nacla.org/node/5769
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. 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/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
