Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1002, August 30, 2009
1. Honduras: Economy Could “Quickly Buckle”
2. Honduras: Business Sector Gets Nervous
3. Honduras: Resistance Debates Next Steps
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Environment, US
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. Honduras: Economy Could “Quickly Buckle”
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) announced on Aug. 26 that it was freezing credits to Honduras as a result of a coup that removed Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power two months earlier, on June 28. The move is provisional, since the banks' governors are still considering whether to join the many multilateral agencies and foreign governments that have suspended financing for aid projects until Zelaya is returned to office. The BCIE has provided about $971 million in financing for Honduras over the last five years. (Associated Press 8/27/09)
The Honduran economy, with an annual gross domestic product (GDP) of about $14.1 billion, was already shrinking before the coup. According to the Banco Central de Honduras (BCH), economic activity declined by 3% during the first six months of the year as a result of the world recession; the economy had grown by 3.5% during the same period in 2008. Exports dropped 13% from the first six months of 2008, to $1.37 billion, while remittances from Hondurans living abroad fell by 10%, to $1.19 billion. The recession especially affected the maquiladora sector—the tax-exempt plants that assemble products chiefly for export, employing about 140,000 people out of a population of 7.6 million. Textile and apparel production, the main activity in the maquilas, fell by 17.9% compared to the same period last year.
The decline in international aid and commerce after the coup--combined with investor uncertainty and strikes against the de facto government by the labor movement—has added to the country’s economic problems. As of Aug. 28, the BCH reported that liquid reserves of international currency were at $2.064 billion, reportedly down by about $400 million since the coup. Alcides Hernández, director of the economics program at the National Autonomous University (UNAH) in Tegucigalpa, told the Bloomberg news services that the political crisis was probably costing the country about $20 million a day in lost trade, aid, tourism and investment.
Edwin Araque, the president of the BCH in Zelaya’s government, told the Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna, which supported the coup, that the economic problems are created by Honduras’ isolation from the international community. “This won’t be resolved with economic policies,” he said. “It will be resolved with a political solution.” Araque was removed from office by the administration of de facto president Roberto Micheletti; he was one of five officials from Zelaya’s government that a Honduran court charged with corruption on Aug. 12. But the BCH president appointed by the de facto regime, Sandra Midence, largely agreed with Araque. “If this political situation keeps up into next year, we’ll have problems,” she told the Bloomberg news service. “It’s intensifying the economic crisis.”
“I don’t know how long the Micheletti government can resist international pressure,” UNAH economist Hernández said. “If they start blocking trade too, a country as poor as ours would quickly buckle.” (Bloomberg 8/7/09; La Tribuna 8/20/09; La Prensa (Honduras) 8/13/09, 8/27/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 8/28/09)
*2. Honduras: Business Sector Gets Nervous
On Aug. 25 the US State Department announced that it had temporarily stopped issuing visas to Hondurans in an effort to pressure the de facto Honduran government to allow President Zelaya’s return to office; there will be exceptions for emergencies and for people who are immigrating to the US. On Aug. 26 US deputy assistant secretary for Andean, Brazilian and Southern Cone affairs Christopher McMullen indicated that the US might apply additional sanctions. More than half of Honduras’ trade is with the US.
Honduran business leaders, who generally backed the coup, started worrying about economic damage from the political crisis as early as July 5 [see Update #997]. The visa suspension has increased their concern. “This visa thing has a very big negative effect, especially because it affects the purchase of raw materials, which are necessary for the production processes of small and medium industry,” Enrique Núñez, president of the National Association of the Medium and Small Industry of Honduras (ANMPIH), told the Agence France Presse news service. He called for a political solution to the crisis.
There are fears that that the US may even suspend Honduras’ participation in the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), which especially benefits the maquiladora sector. Jorge Canahuati Larach, a major figure in the industry, told AFP: "The best thing for the country is for us to find a middle point between the two positions” of the coup supporters and the coup opponents.
Adolfo Facussé, president of the National Association of Industries of Honduras (ANDI), dismissed the threat of a suspension of DR-CAFTA. "[W]e’re ready to resist,” he said, “because it’s better to eat tortillas and beans for year than to return to the situation we were in before, under the influence of Mr. Chávez”—Venezuela’s leftist president Hugo Chávez FrÍas, an ally of Zelaya. But an Aug. 27 editorial in El Tiempo—a major daily based in San Pedro Sula, the center of maquiladora production in the country—took the threat of further US sanctions very seriously, warning Micheletti that “it’s not possible that the entire world could be wrong, including the great majority of Hondurans, and that only a sector of the economic and political elite, allied with the military command, is the arbiter of what’s right.” (AFP 8/27/09; El Tiempo 8/27/09)
El Tiempo’s owner, Jaime Rosenthal Oliva, is himself a member of the “economic and political elite” and a good example of the interconnections between politics, business and the media in Honduras. One of the country’s richest people, Rosenthal has fought to keep unions out of his maquiladoras, and his Promotur tourism company has been accused of trying to seize land belonging to communities of the Garífuna ethnic group. He is a powerful politician in the Liberal Party (PL), and his son, Yani Rosenthal Hidalgo, was presidency minister under President Zelaya in 2007. [See Updates #485, 491, 531, 858.]
In addition to his maquiladora connection, Jorge Canahuati is the majority owner of two of Honduras’ largest newspapers, La Prensa and El Heraldo. Also in the Canahuati family are Honduran Maquiladora Association head Jesús Canahuati and his brother Mario Canahuati, a former ambassador to the US who ran for vice president in 2005 for the National Party (PN). (NACLA Report on the Americas January-February 2009; NACLA website 8/3/09) ANDI president Adoflo Facussé is a cousin of former president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002), owner of La Tribuna, another of the country’s main newspapers. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 8/6/09 from AP)
*3. Honduras: Resistance Debates Next Steps
Before the June 28 coup, some in the Honduran left and grassroots movements had looked to the scheduled Nov. 29 general elections as a chance to break the monopoly on power held for decades by the Liberal Party (PL) and National Party (PN). Currently the two parties control 95% of electoral posts and government positions; of the 15 Supreme Court justices, eight are from the PL and seven from the PN. But the social movement was divided: union leader Carlos Humberto Reyes was registered as independent presidential candidate, while legislative deputy César Ham was running as the candidate of the small leftist Democratic Unification (UD) party.
Now the opposition also has to confront the possibility that the elections will be held under the de facto government, which is considered illegitimate by both the international community and the domestic opposition. But the UD has been strengthened by the defection of some politicians from the PL—both the PL and the PN supported the coup, even though Zelaya was a PL member. A number of former PL politicians are now registered as UD candidates for legislative or municipal positions, and UD leaders are hopeful that the party could win a strong representation in the National Congress. “We have to participate,” Ham has said. “Otherwise what will happen to us is what happened to the reactionary right wing in Venezuela, which didn’t run in the elections…and left Hugo Chávez alone in the National Assembly.”
But Juan Almendares, former rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), says “the two traditional parties are the masters of the electoral machinery… It is difficult for the left to win, even if international observers come.” According to Almendares, both parties have a history of fraud and Zelaya’s narrow win over PN candidate Porfirio Pepe Lobo in 2005 may have been fraudulent, since at that time the business community and the US embassy preferred Zelaya.
Much of the grassroots movement is threatening to boycott the election. On Aug. 28 the National Front Against the Coup d’Etat in Honduras (FNGE), the main grassroots coalition, announced that it wouldn’t recognize the campaign or the elections “if the constitutional order is not restored” and called on the UD and independent candidates to declare their positions on this. But Carlos Eduardo Reina, a PL leader close to Zelaya, noted that an electoral is boycott is difficult to manage. “Not even the [leftist rebel] Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation [FMLN], armed in the mountains, was able to carry out a boycott of elections” during El Salvador’s civil war of the 1980s, he said. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/29/09; FNGE statement 8/28/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Environment, US
"Buddies" Ease Transgenders' Hospital Visits in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2080/68/
Change on the Pampas: Industrialized Farming Comes to Argentina
https://nacla.org/node/6079
Consequences of the "Chilean Miracle": The Salmon Farms and the Privatization of the Sea
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6377?utm_source
Bolivia: Morales Leads Still Undefined Bolivian Presidential Race
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2078/68/
Bolivia: Too Many Obligations, Too Few Rights for Aymara Women
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2072/68
What is Behind the Bolivia-Islam Connection?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2073/1/
Peru's García accuses Bolivia of secret pact with Chile in maritime dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/7718
Peru: Amazon natives issue ultimatum to mining company
http://ww4report.com/node/7729
Peru: village revolts against copper company
http://ww4report.com/node/7728
Peru: controversy over "dirty war" truth commission
http://ww4report.com/node/7727
Peru: "narco-sendero" attack leaves six dead
http://ww4report.com/node/7726
Montesinos gets ten years on rights abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7715#comment-317583
Peru demands Interpol arrest exiled indigenous leaders
http://ww4report.com/node/7725
Peru: demands grow for Amazon massacre truth commission
http://ww4report.com/node/7724
Arequipa, Peru: peasant cooperatives march for land and water
http://ww4report.com/node/7730
Colombia: Awá indigenous people massacred —again
http://ww4report.com/node/7723
South America: U.S. Military Bases in Colombia and the Dispute over Resources
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6367?utm_source
Honduran resistance goes it alone
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4149
Toppling a Coup, Part VI: Electoral, Armed, or Something Else
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3384/toppling-coup-part-vi-electoral-armed-or-something-else
The Learning Curve of the Teachers vs. the Honduras Coup
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3381/learning-curve-teachers-vs-honduras-coup
Coup Catalyzes Honduran Women's Movement
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6369?utm_source
Honduran Constitutional Assembly Would Be a Step Toward the Emancipation of Women
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6392?utm_source
U.S. Continues to Provide Honduran Regime With Millennium Challenge Corporation Aid Money
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2077/68/
Honduran Crisis Necessitates New Sanctions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2081/1/
Spain Steps Down: Universal Jurisdiction and the Guatemalan Genocide Cases
https://nacla.org/node/6078
Troubled Waters in the Mexico-Canada Relationship
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6372?utm_source
CIP Americas Program Criticizes State Department Report on Human Rights Under the Merida Initiative
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6385?utm_source
Biodiversity Report from Americas Program of CIP—August 2009
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6336?utm_source
US Escalates War Build-Up Against Latin American Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2067/68/
Reclaiming a Continent: Latin American Experiments in Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2070/1/
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/
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
WNU #1001: More Strikes Hit Haitian Maquilas
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1001, August 23, 2009
1. Haiti: More Strikes Hit Maquilas
2. Honduras: Resistance Continues Despite Repression
3. Dominican Republic: Medical Strike Suspended
4. Trade: Labor Federations Blast NAFTA
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Puerto Rico
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: More Strikes Hit Maquilas
A series of wildcat strikes that shut down an industrial park on Port-au-Prince’s northern outskirts for at least two days in early August continued into the week of Aug. 10 as thousands of Haitian workers, students and activists demonstrated for a law to increase the country’s minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). President René Préval has blocked the 200 gourde increase, arguing it would hurt the country’s maquiladora sector--the tax-exempt plants that assemble products chiefly for export—and cause the loss of thousands of jobs [see Update #1000].
Early on the morning of Aug. 10 assembly plant workers at the industrial park managed by the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) near the Port-au-Prince airport started their fourth major demonstration since Aug. 3. In an apparent effort to defuse the protest, a security agent arrested two activists--Patrick Joseph, a member of a community organization in Duvivier, near the capital’s Cité Soleil neighborhood, and Guerchang Bastia, a third-year sociology student at the State University of Haiti (UEH). UEH students and grassroots activists have been holding militant demonstrations in favor of the 200 gourde minimum wage since June; Joseph, reached by cell phone after his arrest, told the Haiti Press Network internet service that he and Bastia were targeted because they were the most active at the demonstration in the Sonapi complex.
The police took Bastia and Joseph to the Delmas 33 police station in northeast Port-au-Prince. Thousands of assembly workers responded to the arrests by marching out of the industrial park to Delmas 33, creating a traffic jam and hurling rocks at the police station. Police dispersed the crowd by firing tear gas and shooting in the air. Protesters then gathered in groups along the road, blocking it with garbage cans and throwing rocks at some cars. A vehicle operated by the police riot squad was damaged, along with a car carrying the US embassy’s chargé d’affaires, Thomas Tighe. A spokesperson for the embassy said Tighe’s presence was coincidental and he was not a target of the protesters. The crowd also threw rocks at vehicles of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a force of more than 8,000 soldiers and police agents that has occupied the country since 2004.
Meanwhile, university students protested at Christophe Avenue in the center of the city, setting fire to two vehicles, one of which belonged to the Port-au-Prince court system. “If the students aren’t freed,” one student said, referring to Bastia and Joseph, “it won’t just be the assembly plants that are closed down but all the country’s institutions.” (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/10/09, 8/11/09; Haiti Press Network 8/10/09, __; AlterPresse 8/10/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 8/10/09)
Protesters took to the streets again on Aug. 11, marching from the industrial park to the National Palace in the center of Port-au-Prince and then to Christophe Avenue. The police reportedly dispersed this demonstration with tear gas and arrested five protesters, although witnesses said the marchers themselves had stopped two people who tried to throw stones at the police. Local media reported that the Aug. 11 demonstration was smaller than the previous protests, with just hundreds of people. However, the Port-au-Prince assembly sector continued to be closed down on Aug. 11 and 12--this time by factory owners, who said they would use the two days to make security arrangements. (Radio Métropole 8/11/09; HPN 8/11/09; AlterPresse 8/11/09)
Management said the Sonapi industrial park resumed normal operations on Aug. 13, but reporters waiting outside the complex couldn’t determine how many workers were present; there were reports that many workers left at the beginning of the afternoon because the bosses decided to close early. There were armed police agents and at least three riot police vehicles just outside the complex. A heavy police presence at the industrial park on Aug. 17 apparently stopped an effort to start a new demonstration at the beginning of the next workweek. (AlterPresse 8/13/09, 8/17/09)
Bastia and Joseph were finally released from custody on Aug. 18, although three activists arrested on Aug. 12--Edouard Edwidge, Alfred Valsaint and Hérode César—were still being held. Also on Aug. 18, the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti’s Parliament voted 38-36 by secret ballot, with three abstentions, to raise the minimum wage to 125 gourdes, which apparently would be increased later to 150 gourdes ($3.73), far below the 200 gourdes demanded by the protesters. The legislation still requires approval by the Senate and President Préval. (AlterPresse 8/18/09, __; InterPress Service 8/19/09)
Although the minimum wage protests have received little attention outside Haiti, there were at least two small demonstrations in the US on Aug. 19 in support of the 200 gourde minimum. A number of Haitians and Haitian Americans rallied outside the Haitian consulate in Miami, and more than a dozen Haitian Americans and other labor and fair trade activists picketed the consulate in New York City. (HPN 8/20/09; Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee announcement 8/10/09; NYC eyewitness report 8/19/09)
*2. Honduras: Resistance Continues Despite Repression
On Aug. 22 a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued what it called “preliminary observations” on the human rights situation in Honduras since a June 28 coup removed president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office [see Update #995]. The delegation, headed by Luz Patricia Mejía Guerrero, said that from its visit it had “confirmed the existence of a pattern of disproportionate use of public force, arbitrary detentions, and the control of information aimed at limiting political participation by a sector of the citizenry.”
Supporting the findings of Honduran human rights monitors, the CIDH delegation cited testimony about the killings of at least four people and injuries to dozens of others; sexual violations of women during the repression of demonstrations, including the rape of a woman by four police agents in San Pedro Sula; the arbitrary detention of 3,500-4,000 people during demonstrations; and harassment of the media. Carlos López Contreras, foreign minister in the de facto government established by the coup, dismissed the report as “a form of pressure by the OAS on the government of Honduras so that it will accept a proposal for mediation” presented by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. The report was released just two days before the scheduled Aug. 24 arrival of an OAS delegation including seven foreign ministers for talks with the de facto government. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/23/09 from AFP, Notimex, PL; CIDH press release 8/21/09; AFP 8/23/09)
The people behind the coup are now calling for repression because they are desperate, Juan Barahona, head of the leftist Unitary Federation of Honduran Workers (FUTH), said at a demonstration in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 19. The 54 days of grassroots resistance had broken the morale of the coup's supporters, he told the protesters, who chanted: “Forward, forward, the struggle is constant.” However, the labor movement has backed away from an open-ended strike the main union confederations started on Aug. 6 to demand President Zelaya’s restoration to office [see Update #1000]. The teachers union, one of the most militant, sent its members back to the classroom for three days starting on Aug. 17. The teachers were to resume their strike Aug. 20-21, when other unions planned a two-day general strike. Unions were also planning strikes to coincide with the Aug. 24 visit of the delegation of OAS foreign ministers.
Meanwhile, the local organization of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”), the international campesino movement, continued an occupation of the National Agrarian Institute (INA) that it began weeks before. (Prensa Latina 8/20/09, 8/23/09; Honduras Laboral 8/17/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; Pueblo en Linea (China) 8/21/09; Adital 8/20/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Medical Strike Suspended
On Aug. 13 leaders of the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) and the National Union of Nursing Services (UNASED) announced the suspension of a strike they started on July 29 over salaries [see Update #1000]. The unionists said the suspension was based on what they considered an agreement that Public Health Secretary Bautista Rojas Gómez would drop his efforts to remove seven health professionals—including Rufino Senén Caba Plasencia, president of the CMD’s National District (Santo Domingo) branch—for alleged involvement in a violent incident during the strike. The job action was the latest development in an 18-month struggle around a demand for a monthly minimum wage of 58,400 pesos ($1,624) for medical professionals.
CMD president Waldo Ariel Suero said the unions were proceeding with a discussion with the government because of their confidence in Catholic educator Monsignor Agripino Núñez Collado, who was named the coordinator of the dialogue. But the first talks, on Aug. 13, ended after four hours with no accord, as Secretart Rojas Gómez refused to back away from his intention to remove five doctors and two nurses accused of assaulting the director of the Francisco Moscoso Puello Hospital. (La Raza (Chicago) 8/13/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (New York) ; La Nacion Dominicana 8/13/09)
*4. Trade: Labor Federations Blast NAFTA
The heads of three major Canadian, Mexican and US labor federations responded to the Aug. 10 “Tres Amigos” summit--a meeting of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and US president Barack Obama in Mexico City--with a joint statement criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a 15-year-old agreement on trade between the three countries. The statement was signed by Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) president Kenneth Georgetti; Francisco Hernández Juárez, president of the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s second-largest union federation; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation.
“NAFTA did not create more net trade-related jobs,” the statement said, “and those that it did were very often less stable, with lower wages and fewer benefits. Instead, increased trade largely benefited the corporate elite in all three countries. Income inequality has also grown in the region.” The union leaders noted that the “failure of the North American economies post-NAFTA to create the decent jobs necessary to absorb displaced workers and new entrants has forced many into a desperate search to find employment elsewhere.” Employers in Canada and the US have used their “access to a large and poorly regulated workforce of undocumented and temporary migrant workers” from Mexico to “undermine…all workers by failing to afford the basic labor rights and protections to everyone.”
The statement called for greater labor rights in all three countries and for expanded economic development, including “a substantial transfer of investment funds to generate job growth” in Mexico. (Mexican Labor News & Analysis Vol. 14, #7, August 2009; AFL-CIO Now Blog 8/14/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Puerto Rico
Chile: Mapuche Activist's Death Heats Up Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2056/68/
Chile: Mapuche youth killed by police in land occupation
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7709
Brazil Conspired with U.S. to Overthrow Allende
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2060/68
Peru: Montesinos faces 30 years on narco charges
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7715
Peru overtakes Colombia as top cocaine exporter: report
http://ww4report.com/node/7716
Peru's National Police to get "license to kill"?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7712
Press freedom under attack in Peru
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7711
Peru: indigenous leaders demand "truth commission" on Amazon massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7717
Colombia: The Embera Struggle to Save a Sacred Mountain
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2061/1/
Uribe's "New" Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2063/1/
Media In Venezuela: Facts and Fiction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2059/1/
Honduras: Xiomara Castro de Zelaya calls for continued protest; rights abuses documented
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7714
Zelaya: Obama against coup —but "not the chief of the empire"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7713
Honduras: coup regime admits deporting Zelaya was "error" —but repression goes on
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7708
“The Only Crime” in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2057/1/
Coup Catalyzes Honduran Women's Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2066/68/
Fund-Raising Appeal: Support Pro-Democracy Movement in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2062/68/
Honduras: Repression Continues to Escalate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2058/68/
Latin America Scholars Urge Human Rights Watch to Speak Up on Honduras Coup
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/latin-america-scholars-ur_b_265282.html
Environmental Politics in Paradise: Resistance to the Selling of Vieques
https://nacla.org/node/6074
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative 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/
Issue #1001, August 23, 2009
1. Haiti: More Strikes Hit Maquilas
2. Honduras: Resistance Continues Despite Repression
3. Dominican Republic: Medical Strike Suspended
4. Trade: Labor Federations Blast NAFTA
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Puerto Rico
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: More Strikes Hit Maquilas
A series of wildcat strikes that shut down an industrial park on Port-au-Prince’s northern outskirts for at least two days in early August continued into the week of Aug. 10 as thousands of Haitian workers, students and activists demonstrated for a law to increase the country’s minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). President René Préval has blocked the 200 gourde increase, arguing it would hurt the country’s maquiladora sector--the tax-exempt plants that assemble products chiefly for export—and cause the loss of thousands of jobs [see Update #1000].
Early on the morning of Aug. 10 assembly plant workers at the industrial park managed by the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) near the Port-au-Prince airport started their fourth major demonstration since Aug. 3. In an apparent effort to defuse the protest, a security agent arrested two activists--Patrick Joseph, a member of a community organization in Duvivier, near the capital’s Cité Soleil neighborhood, and Guerchang Bastia, a third-year sociology student at the State University of Haiti (UEH). UEH students and grassroots activists have been holding militant demonstrations in favor of the 200 gourde minimum wage since June; Joseph, reached by cell phone after his arrest, told the Haiti Press Network internet service that he and Bastia were targeted because they were the most active at the demonstration in the Sonapi complex.
The police took Bastia and Joseph to the Delmas 33 police station in northeast Port-au-Prince. Thousands of assembly workers responded to the arrests by marching out of the industrial park to Delmas 33, creating a traffic jam and hurling rocks at the police station. Police dispersed the crowd by firing tear gas and shooting in the air. Protesters then gathered in groups along the road, blocking it with garbage cans and throwing rocks at some cars. A vehicle operated by the police riot squad was damaged, along with a car carrying the US embassy’s chargé d’affaires, Thomas Tighe. A spokesperson for the embassy said Tighe’s presence was coincidental and he was not a target of the protesters. The crowd also threw rocks at vehicles of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a force of more than 8,000 soldiers and police agents that has occupied the country since 2004.
Meanwhile, university students protested at Christophe Avenue in the center of the city, setting fire to two vehicles, one of which belonged to the Port-au-Prince court system. “If the students aren’t freed,” one student said, referring to Bastia and Joseph, “it won’t just be the assembly plants that are closed down but all the country’s institutions.” (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/10/09, 8/11/09; Haiti Press Network 8/10/09, __; AlterPresse 8/10/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 8/10/09)
Protesters took to the streets again on Aug. 11, marching from the industrial park to the National Palace in the center of Port-au-Prince and then to Christophe Avenue. The police reportedly dispersed this demonstration with tear gas and arrested five protesters, although witnesses said the marchers themselves had stopped two people who tried to throw stones at the police. Local media reported that the Aug. 11 demonstration was smaller than the previous protests, with just hundreds of people. However, the Port-au-Prince assembly sector continued to be closed down on Aug. 11 and 12--this time by factory owners, who said they would use the two days to make security arrangements. (Radio Métropole 8/11/09; HPN 8/11/09; AlterPresse 8/11/09)
Management said the Sonapi industrial park resumed normal operations on Aug. 13, but reporters waiting outside the complex couldn’t determine how many workers were present; there were reports that many workers left at the beginning of the afternoon because the bosses decided to close early. There were armed police agents and at least three riot police vehicles just outside the complex. A heavy police presence at the industrial park on Aug. 17 apparently stopped an effort to start a new demonstration at the beginning of the next workweek. (AlterPresse 8/13/09, 8/17/09)
Bastia and Joseph were finally released from custody on Aug. 18, although three activists arrested on Aug. 12--Edouard Edwidge, Alfred Valsaint and Hérode César—were still being held. Also on Aug. 18, the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti’s Parliament voted 38-36 by secret ballot, with three abstentions, to raise the minimum wage to 125 gourdes, which apparently would be increased later to 150 gourdes ($3.73), far below the 200 gourdes demanded by the protesters. The legislation still requires approval by the Senate and President Préval. (AlterPresse 8/18/09, __; InterPress Service 8/19/09)
Although the minimum wage protests have received little attention outside Haiti, there were at least two small demonstrations in the US on Aug. 19 in support of the 200 gourde minimum. A number of Haitians and Haitian Americans rallied outside the Haitian consulate in Miami, and more than a dozen Haitian Americans and other labor and fair trade activists picketed the consulate in New York City. (HPN 8/20/09; Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee announcement 8/10/09; NYC eyewitness report 8/19/09)
*2. Honduras: Resistance Continues Despite Repression
On Aug. 22 a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued what it called “preliminary observations” on the human rights situation in Honduras since a June 28 coup removed president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office [see Update #995]. The delegation, headed by Luz Patricia Mejía Guerrero, said that from its visit it had “confirmed the existence of a pattern of disproportionate use of public force, arbitrary detentions, and the control of information aimed at limiting political participation by a sector of the citizenry.”
Supporting the findings of Honduran human rights monitors, the CIDH delegation cited testimony about the killings of at least four people and injuries to dozens of others; sexual violations of women during the repression of demonstrations, including the rape of a woman by four police agents in San Pedro Sula; the arbitrary detention of 3,500-4,000 people during demonstrations; and harassment of the media. Carlos López Contreras, foreign minister in the de facto government established by the coup, dismissed the report as “a form of pressure by the OAS on the government of Honduras so that it will accept a proposal for mediation” presented by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. The report was released just two days before the scheduled Aug. 24 arrival of an OAS delegation including seven foreign ministers for talks with the de facto government. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/23/09 from AFP, Notimex, PL; CIDH press release 8/21/09; AFP 8/23/09)
The people behind the coup are now calling for repression because they are desperate, Juan Barahona, head of the leftist Unitary Federation of Honduran Workers (FUTH), said at a demonstration in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 19. The 54 days of grassroots resistance had broken the morale of the coup's supporters, he told the protesters, who chanted: “Forward, forward, the struggle is constant.” However, the labor movement has backed away from an open-ended strike the main union confederations started on Aug. 6 to demand President Zelaya’s restoration to office [see Update #1000]. The teachers union, one of the most militant, sent its members back to the classroom for three days starting on Aug. 17. The teachers were to resume their strike Aug. 20-21, when other unions planned a two-day general strike. Unions were also planning strikes to coincide with the Aug. 24 visit of the delegation of OAS foreign ministers.
Meanwhile, the local organization of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”), the international campesino movement, continued an occupation of the National Agrarian Institute (INA) that it began weeks before. (Prensa Latina 8/20/09, 8/23/09; Honduras Laboral 8/17/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; Pueblo en Linea (China) 8/21/09; Adital 8/20/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Medical Strike Suspended
On Aug. 13 leaders of the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) and the National Union of Nursing Services (UNASED) announced the suspension of a strike they started on July 29 over salaries [see Update #1000]. The unionists said the suspension was based on what they considered an agreement that Public Health Secretary Bautista Rojas Gómez would drop his efforts to remove seven health professionals—including Rufino Senén Caba Plasencia, president of the CMD’s National District (Santo Domingo) branch—for alleged involvement in a violent incident during the strike. The job action was the latest development in an 18-month struggle around a demand for a monthly minimum wage of 58,400 pesos ($1,624) for medical professionals.
CMD president Waldo Ariel Suero said the unions were proceeding with a discussion with the government because of their confidence in Catholic educator Monsignor Agripino Núñez Collado, who was named the coordinator of the dialogue. But the first talks, on Aug. 13, ended after four hours with no accord, as Secretart Rojas Gómez refused to back away from his intention to remove five doctors and two nurses accused of assaulting the director of the Francisco Moscoso Puello Hospital. (La Raza (Chicago) 8/13/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (New York) ; La Nacion Dominicana 8/13/09)
*4. Trade: Labor Federations Blast NAFTA
The heads of three major Canadian, Mexican and US labor federations responded to the Aug. 10 “Tres Amigos” summit--a meeting of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and US president Barack Obama in Mexico City--with a joint statement criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a 15-year-old agreement on trade between the three countries. The statement was signed by Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) president Kenneth Georgetti; Francisco Hernández Juárez, president of the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s second-largest union federation; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation.
“NAFTA did not create more net trade-related jobs,” the statement said, “and those that it did were very often less stable, with lower wages and fewer benefits. Instead, increased trade largely benefited the corporate elite in all three countries. Income inequality has also grown in the region.” The union leaders noted that the “failure of the North American economies post-NAFTA to create the decent jobs necessary to absorb displaced workers and new entrants has forced many into a desperate search to find employment elsewhere.” Employers in Canada and the US have used their “access to a large and poorly regulated workforce of undocumented and temporary migrant workers” from Mexico to “undermine…all workers by failing to afford the basic labor rights and protections to everyone.”
The statement called for greater labor rights in all three countries and for expanded economic development, including “a substantial transfer of investment funds to generate job growth” in Mexico. (Mexican Labor News & Analysis Vol. 14, #7, August 2009; AFL-CIO Now Blog 8/14/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Puerto Rico
Chile: Mapuche Activist's Death Heats Up Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2056/68/
Chile: Mapuche youth killed by police in land occupation
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7709
Brazil Conspired with U.S. to Overthrow Allende
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2060/68
Peru: Montesinos faces 30 years on narco charges
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7715
Peru overtakes Colombia as top cocaine exporter: report
http://ww4report.com/node/7716
Peru's National Police to get "license to kill"?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7712
Press freedom under attack in Peru
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7711
Peru: indigenous leaders demand "truth commission" on Amazon massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7717
Colombia: The Embera Struggle to Save a Sacred Mountain
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2061/1/
Uribe's "New" Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2063/1/
Media In Venezuela: Facts and Fiction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2059/1/
Honduras: Xiomara Castro de Zelaya calls for continued protest; rights abuses documented
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7714
Zelaya: Obama against coup —but "not the chief of the empire"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7713
Honduras: coup regime admits deporting Zelaya was "error" —but repression goes on
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7708
“The Only Crime” in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2057/1/
Coup Catalyzes Honduran Women's Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2066/68/
Fund-Raising Appeal: Support Pro-Democracy Movement in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2062/68/
Honduras: Repression Continues to Escalate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2058/68/
Latin America Scholars Urge Human Rights Watch to Speak Up on Honduras Coup
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/latin-america-scholars-ur_b_265282.html
Environmental Politics in Paradise: Resistance to the Selling of Vieques
https://nacla.org/node/6074
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative 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, August 17, 2009
Links but No Update for August 16, 2009
[We are unable to send out an Update this week. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Perspectives and Challenges in Mercosur: An Interview with Carlos Alvarez of Mercosur
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6324
Argentine Factory Wins Legal Battle: FASINPAT Zanon Belongs to the People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2052/1/
The Condemned of Buenos Aires
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6341
The Other Chile: Following Victor Jara's Songs
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6332
Chile: Mapuche Activist's Death Heats Up Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2056/68/
Bolivia Prescribes Solidarity: Health Care Reform under Evo Morales
https://nacla.org/node/6070
Peru: police use tear gas against Pisco road blockades
http://ww4report.com/node/7702
"Swine flu" hits indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/7695
Peru: aerial photos reveal loggers inside uncontacted tribes' territory
http://ww4report.com/node/7696
Obama's Choice: New Documents Show United States Seeks Colombian Bases for Training and Operations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6351
Colombia: U.S. Bases Stoke the Flames of Regional Conflict
https://nacla.org/node/6058
Colombia: Spying on Human Rights Defenders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2055/68/
Invasive Illegal Intelligence Gathering Threatens Colombian Union and Human Rights Leaders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2046/68/
Video Report: Gold, Impunity and Violence in Cabañas, El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2050/68/
Another Anti-mining Activist Shot in Cabañas El Salvador, Hitman Tied to Pacific Rim is Detained
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2049/1/
Military Forces Sow Terror and Fear in Honduras
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6354
Honduras: Obama Administration Restating Its Position? http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2051/68/
Action Alert: Attack Against Offices of Vía Campesina in Honduras http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2047/68/
Honduras: The Frontline in the Battle for Democracy http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2043/1/
“The Only Crime” in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2057/1/
Demand Fair Reporting on Honduras
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/jfp140809.html
Honduras: repression continues; Obama acquiescing in coup?
http://ww4report.com/node/7697
International PEN Protests Sentencing of Guatemalan Publisher
https://nacla.org/node/6065
Mexico: sentences overturned in Acteal massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7703
Mexico's Human Rights Record Comes Under Fire in U.S. Congress
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6336
Lack of Leadership at the North American Leaders Summit
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/the-deficit-of-leadership-at-the-north-american-leaders-summit
Rethinking Hazardous Waste under NAFTA
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6335
Perspectives and Challenges in Mercosur: An Interview with Carlos Alvarez of Mercosur
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6324
Argentine Factory Wins Legal Battle: FASINPAT Zanon Belongs to the People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2052/1/
The Condemned of Buenos Aires
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6341
The Other Chile: Following Victor Jara's Songs
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6332
Chile: Mapuche Activist's Death Heats Up Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2056/68/
Bolivia Prescribes Solidarity: Health Care Reform under Evo Morales
https://nacla.org/node/6070
Peru: police use tear gas against Pisco road blockades
http://ww4report.com/node/7702
"Swine flu" hits indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/7695
Peru: aerial photos reveal loggers inside uncontacted tribes' territory
http://ww4report.com/node/7696
Obama's Choice: New Documents Show United States Seeks Colombian Bases for Training and Operations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6351
Colombia: U.S. Bases Stoke the Flames of Regional Conflict
https://nacla.org/node/6058
Colombia: Spying on Human Rights Defenders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2055/68/
Invasive Illegal Intelligence Gathering Threatens Colombian Union and Human Rights Leaders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2046/68/
Video Report: Gold, Impunity and Violence in Cabañas, El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2050/68/
Another Anti-mining Activist Shot in Cabañas El Salvador, Hitman Tied to Pacific Rim is Detained
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2049/1/
Military Forces Sow Terror and Fear in Honduras
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6354
Honduras: Obama Administration Restating Its Position? http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2051/68/
Action Alert: Attack Against Offices of Vía Campesina in Honduras http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2047/68/
Honduras: The Frontline in the Battle for Democracy http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2043/1/
“The Only Crime” in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2057/1/
Demand Fair Reporting on Honduras
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/jfp140809.html
Honduras: repression continues; Obama acquiescing in coup?
http://ww4report.com/node/7697
International PEN Protests Sentencing of Guatemalan Publisher
https://nacla.org/node/6065
Mexico: sentences overturned in Acteal massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7703
Mexico's Human Rights Record Comes Under Fire in U.S. Congress
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6336
Lack of Leadership at the North American Leaders Summit
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/the-deficit-of-leadership-at-the-north-american-leaders-summit
Rethinking Hazardous Waste under NAFTA
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6335
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
WNU #1000: Honduran Unions Start Open-Ended Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1000, August 9, 2009
1. Honduras: Unions Start Open-Ended Strike
2. Haiti: Maquila Workers March for Wage Hike
3. Dominican Republic: Medical Workers Extend Strike
4. Cuba: US Activists Defy Embargo
5. Links to alternative sources on: Swine Flu, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, US
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. Honduras: Unions Start Open-Ended Strike
On Aug. 6 the three main Honduran labor federations held a march in Tegucigalpa marking the start of an open-ended general strike against the de facto government formed when a June 28 coup removed president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office [see Update #995]. The strike was timed to coincide with eight coordinated marches by grassroots organizations that began on Aug. 5 with the goal of bringing tens of thousands of coup opponents from around the country to Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the second largest city, on Aug. 11. A delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) is scheduled to visit Honduras that day for discussions with de facto officials and others.
The three union groups—the Unitary Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the General Workers Central (CGT) and the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH)--issued a joint communiqué on Aug. 6 with the strike’s four demands: “the reestablishment of the democratic institutional order,” Zelaya’s return to office, the formation of a Constituent National Assembly to write a new Constitution, and an “end to the repression against the Honduran people.” The strikers also demanded that “all the governments of the world, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and USAID [the US Agency for International Development] withdraw all official support and freeze loans and projects for this coup government.” The unions specifically called on the US government to “cancel the bank accounts and visas of all those persons involved in the coup, to freeze planned aid, and to withdraw diplomatic representation.”
The unions ended the Aug. 6 march with a rally outside the US embassy. “Forty days after the coup d’état, no one’s surrendering here,” chanted the crowd, estimated at 2,000 by the Spanish wire service EFE and at 10,000 by the Brazilian activist news service Adital.
The march included the 19 members of a solidarity delegation visiting Honduras from Aug. 5 to Aug. 8. The delegation, with unionists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Spain, was organized by international labor federations and the Union Confederation of Workers of the Americas (CSA), a year-old Brazil-based organization that says it has 65 national affiliates in 29 countries, representing more than 50 million workers in the hemisphere.
A number of US unions have also expressed solidarity with the Honduran labor movement. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, the United Steelworkers (USW) and the two electrical workers unions sent a joint letter on Aug. 5 urging US Congress members to support House Resolution 630, which calls on the administration of US president Barack Obama to maintain pressure on the coup leaders.
As of Aug. 7 the de facto government was dismissing the general strike as only partial. In fact, teachers, healthcare workers, employees of the National Electrical Energy Enterprise and two unions of university students were on all on strike. Strike supporters said few businesses were open and schools were closed around the country. In Francisco Morazán department, which includes Tegucigalpa, the de facto government itself suspended classes, claiming fears that a swine flu epidemic would spread—although the Health Ministry didn’t consider the epidemic serious enough to suspend an upcoming soccer match. Soldiers guarded some hospitals in the capital to keep striking medical workers from occupying them. The Mexican daily La Jornada reported that restaurants were empty in Tegucigalpa in the evenings, even though the authorities ended a curfew they maintained for much of the previous month. All four of the country’s airports were closed, because 95 technicians had joined the strike.
On Aug. 7 the taxi drivers unions decided to side with the strikers. Drivers said that in any case they’d had so little business since the coup that they couldn’t make enough in fares to pay the rent for the cabs. The majority of the country’s 19,000 drivers don’t own the vehicles they use. (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales 8/6/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; Adital 8/6/09; MRZine 8/8/09; Univision 8/7/09 from EFE; Honduras Laboral 8/7/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; LJ 8/8/09)
*2. Haiti: Maquila Workers March for Wage Hike
The Chamber of Deputies of Haiti’s Parliament voted 55-6 late on the evening of Aug. 4 to increase the country’s minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 150 gourdes ($3.73). Three deputies abstained, and about 20 walked out before the vote, apparently protesting what they considered irregularities in the secret balloting.
Parliament passed an increase to 200 gourdes ($4.97) on May 5, but President René Préval refused to promulgate the new law, which affects about 250,000 workers out of a population of some 9 million. University students held militant demonstrations in the streets of Port-au-Prince through much of June to demand that the president act on the law. Préval claimed an increase to 200 gourdes would hurt the tax-exempt plants that assemble products chiefly for export—known in Spanish-speaking countries as maquiladoras--and would lead to the loss of thousands of industrial jobs [see Update #996].
The hike to 200 gourdes seems to have strong support among the assembly workers themselves. The factory complex managed by the National Industrial Parks Corporation (Sonapi) on Port-au-Prince’s northern outskirts was shut down on Aug. 4 and Aug. 5 in an unprecedented wildcat strike as workers marched from the plants to demonstrate for the 200 gourde minimum.
According to Sonapi director general Jean Kesner Delmas, “outsiders” began distributing leaflets in the industrial park the afternoon of Aug. 3 calling on workers to walk out the next day, when Parliament was expected to vote on the measure. Thousands of workers gathered at the industrial park early on Aug. 4 and then left for a march to the Parliament building, which was guarded by a large number of police agents. According to the Associated Press wire service, there were about 2,000 protesters and police agents fired tear gas to disperse them. AP also reported that some protesters threw rocks at the agents and ripped down flags of United Nations member countries near the building; the nearly 9,000 soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) have frequently been used to put down protests since the mission was deployed in June 2004.
The Aug 4 demonstration ended before the Chamber of Deputies session started, but thousands of workers came back on Aug. 5 for a new protest after they learned that legislators had voted for a smaller increase. Sonapi factory owners decided to close their plants that day for “planning,” they said, but they insisted normal production would resume on Aug. 6. (AP 8/4/09; AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/5/09, 8/6/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 8/5/09)
Violence broke out between protesters and Nepalese soldiers from the MINUSTAH force on Aug. 5 in Lascahobas, in the Plateau Central department near the Dominican border. Residents protesting a two-month electrical outage had erected some 13 barricades from branches, tree trunks, rock and junked cars, according to MINUSTAH, and threw rocks at the soldiers when they tried to remove the barriers. Residents said the soldiers fired into the crowd, wounding several and killing a man and a little girl. Port-au-Prince’s Radio Métropole reported that National Police officer Senat Emmanuel said seven people were wounded and two of them had died. Other officials denied that there were any deaths. MINUSTAH spokesperson Lt. Col. Fernando Pereira said people inside the crowd had fired on the soldiers, who responded by firing in the air. (AP 8/6/09; AlterPresse 8/6/09; Radio Métropole 8/7/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Medical Workers Extend Strike
Leaders of the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) and the National Union of Nursing Services (UNASED) announced on Aug. 7 that Dominican medical workers would continue a strike they started on July 29 for at least another five days, until 6 am on Aug. 13.
The strike is the latest development in an 18-month struggle around a demand for a monthly minimum wage of 58,400 pesos ($1,624) for medical professionals. The CMD, which represents doctors, began the fight in February 2008 and were joined by the nurses. The two unions have organized a series of general strikes, hunger strikes, picket lines and building occupations [see Update #986]. The current strike began after a surprise sit-in at the Labor Secretariat by 30 union leaders and members; police agents arrested them in the early morning of July 29.
On Aug. 6 Public Health Secretary Bautista Rojas Gómez announced that he had reinforced the public health system by placing soldiers and police agents in hospitals and by contracting hundreds of medical professionals to substitute for the strikers. “From now on, we’re going to take drastic measures,” he said. Rojas suggested that the strike was a political move by the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). CMD president Waldo Ariel Suero said on Aug. 7 that this was just an attempt to divide the strikes and that it showed “Rojas’ state of desperation.” UNASED representative Rafaela Figuereo said the solution was “in the hands of the government.” (La Raza (Chicago) 8/7/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (New York) ; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 8/9/09 from ED-LP; Listin Diario (Dominican Republic 8/8/09)
*4. Cuba: US Activists Defy Embargo
Two groups that regularly protest the US ban on most travel to Cuba by making unauthorized trips to the island returned to the US without incident on Aug. 3 after their latest visits, the first since US president Barack Obama took office. About 140 members of the Venceremos Brigade walked from Canada into the US at Buffalo wearing orange T-shirts and chanting for an end to US sanctions, while some 130 members of the US/Cuba Friendshipment Caravan returned to the US at the Hidalgo International Bridge from Reynosa, Mexico. US Customs and Border Protection agents gave the travelers no trouble even though they said they had been in Cuba.
The Venceremos Brigade has been organizing trips to Cuba since 1969, while the New York-based Pastors for Peace organization has sponsored a total of 20 caravans carrying material aid for Cuba. This year’s Friendshipment collected 115 tons of humanitarian aid and drove it to a port in Mexico for shipment to Cuba by sea; the caravan members then flew to Cuba for a nine-day visit. Both groups are pushing for President Obama to lift sanctions the US started imposing on Cuba shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. "We are really determined to be ambassadors to the new administration for a new policy," Pastors for Peace associate director Ellen Bernstein told the Associated Press. (Associated Press 8/4/09; Pastors for Peace press release 8/2/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Swine Flu, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, US
South America's Swine Flu Winter
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6316
Evo Morales defends anti-imperialist allies
http://ww4report.com/node/7652
Bolivia: indigenous peoples move towards autonomy
http://ww4report.com/node/7651
Evo Morales to protest Colombian plan for US bases at Quito summit
http://ww4report.com/node/7665
Bolivia: vanishing glacier threatens La Paz water supply
http://ww4report.com/node/7655
Peru pledges new Amazon oil auctions —despite indigenous protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7656
Peru: Sendero hits back against Plan VRAE
http://ww4report.com/node/7653
Amnesty Urges Peru's Government to Suspend Laws and Oil Concessions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2033/68/
Abuses in Peru's Escalating Fight Against Rebels
https://nacla.org/node/6027
Peru and Ecuador: A Common Enemy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2021/1/
Colombia: Women Lead Opposition to Gold Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2032/68/
Venezuela and Colombia at brink of war—again?
http://ww4report.com/node/7670
Street Art in Revolutionary Venezuela
https://nacla.org/node/6031
Why the U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2035/1/
Pacific Rim Silent in Wake of Violence Against Anti-mining Protesters in Cabañas, El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2037/1/
El Salvador: The Mysterious Death of Marcelo Rivera
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2041/1/
Honduras: "People Are In The Streets Every Day".
http://www.alternet.org/world/141837/honduras:_%22people_are_in_the_streets_every_day%22/?page=entire
Honduras: generals plead case on TV; deadly repression grows
http://ww4report.com/node/7669
Honduras political crisis unleashes media wars
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4097
International Observation Mission for the Human Rights Situation in Honduras Preliminary Report
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2040/68/
U.S. appears to soften support for Honduras's Zelaya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2039/68/
Video Report - Honduras: Where does Washington stand?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2038/68/
Honduras: Regime Says 'Yes' to Talks but Squelches Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2036/68/
Honduras: Two More Dead, Zelaya Takes Case to International Criminal Court
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2030/68/
The Honduran Coup: Fiction and Fact
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2018/1/
Honduras and Washington: Semantics and Contradictions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2027/1/
On Eve of Summit, Mexico’s Human Rights Record Comes Under Fire in U.S. Congress
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/mexico%e2%80%99s-human-rights-record-comes-under-fire-in-u-s-congress/
Mexican bishops blast federal foray on Michoacán mass
http://ww4report.com/node/7664
Mexico: narco-violence reaches new high
http://ww4report.com/node/7650
Hyping the New Media Buzzword: ‘Spillover’ on the Border
https://nacla.org/node/6045
Plan Mexico's Prisoner
https://nacla.org/node/6056
Mexico: Leahy blocks State Department rights report on Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/7663
US Activists Challenge Obama on Cuba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2031/68/
Obama and Latin America: The First Six Months
https://nacla.org/node/6017
Obama Stays the Course in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2017/1/
The Obama Style and Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2028/1/
Dissecting Utopia: New Book Assesses Latin American Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2014/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative 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/
Issue #1000, August 9, 2009
1. Honduras: Unions Start Open-Ended Strike
2. Haiti: Maquila Workers March for Wage Hike
3. Dominican Republic: Medical Workers Extend Strike
4. Cuba: US Activists Defy Embargo
5. Links to alternative sources on: Swine Flu, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, US
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. Honduras: Unions Start Open-Ended Strike
On Aug. 6 the three main Honduran labor federations held a march in Tegucigalpa marking the start of an open-ended general strike against the de facto government formed when a June 28 coup removed president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office [see Update #995]. The strike was timed to coincide with eight coordinated marches by grassroots organizations that began on Aug. 5 with the goal of bringing tens of thousands of coup opponents from around the country to Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the second largest city, on Aug. 11. A delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) is scheduled to visit Honduras that day for discussions with de facto officials and others.
The three union groups—the Unitary Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the General Workers Central (CGT) and the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH)--issued a joint communiqué on Aug. 6 with the strike’s four demands: “the reestablishment of the democratic institutional order,” Zelaya’s return to office, the formation of a Constituent National Assembly to write a new Constitution, and an “end to the repression against the Honduran people.” The strikers also demanded that “all the governments of the world, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and USAID [the US Agency for International Development] withdraw all official support and freeze loans and projects for this coup government.” The unions specifically called on the US government to “cancel the bank accounts and visas of all those persons involved in the coup, to freeze planned aid, and to withdraw diplomatic representation.”
The unions ended the Aug. 6 march with a rally outside the US embassy. “Forty days after the coup d’état, no one’s surrendering here,” chanted the crowd, estimated at 2,000 by the Spanish wire service EFE and at 10,000 by the Brazilian activist news service Adital.
The march included the 19 members of a solidarity delegation visiting Honduras from Aug. 5 to Aug. 8. The delegation, with unionists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Spain, was organized by international labor federations and the Union Confederation of Workers of the Americas (CSA), a year-old Brazil-based organization that says it has 65 national affiliates in 29 countries, representing more than 50 million workers in the hemisphere.
A number of US unions have also expressed solidarity with the Honduran labor movement. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, the United Steelworkers (USW) and the two electrical workers unions sent a joint letter on Aug. 5 urging US Congress members to support House Resolution 630, which calls on the administration of US president Barack Obama to maintain pressure on the coup leaders.
As of Aug. 7 the de facto government was dismissing the general strike as only partial. In fact, teachers, healthcare workers, employees of the National Electrical Energy Enterprise and two unions of university students were on all on strike. Strike supporters said few businesses were open and schools were closed around the country. In Francisco Morazán department, which includes Tegucigalpa, the de facto government itself suspended classes, claiming fears that a swine flu epidemic would spread—although the Health Ministry didn’t consider the epidemic serious enough to suspend an upcoming soccer match. Soldiers guarded some hospitals in the capital to keep striking medical workers from occupying them. The Mexican daily La Jornada reported that restaurants were empty in Tegucigalpa in the evenings, even though the authorities ended a curfew they maintained for much of the previous month. All four of the country’s airports were closed, because 95 technicians had joined the strike.
On Aug. 7 the taxi drivers unions decided to side with the strikers. Drivers said that in any case they’d had so little business since the coup that they couldn’t make enough in fares to pay the rent for the cabs. The majority of the country’s 19,000 drivers don’t own the vehicles they use. (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales 8/6/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; Adital 8/6/09; MRZine 8/8/09; Univision 8/7/09 from EFE; Honduras Laboral 8/7/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina en Honduras; LJ 8/8/09)
*2. Haiti: Maquila Workers March for Wage Hike
The Chamber of Deputies of Haiti’s Parliament voted 55-6 late on the evening of Aug. 4 to increase the country’s minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 150 gourdes ($3.73). Three deputies abstained, and about 20 walked out before the vote, apparently protesting what they considered irregularities in the secret balloting.
Parliament passed an increase to 200 gourdes ($4.97) on May 5, but President René Préval refused to promulgate the new law, which affects about 250,000 workers out of a population of some 9 million. University students held militant demonstrations in the streets of Port-au-Prince through much of June to demand that the president act on the law. Préval claimed an increase to 200 gourdes would hurt the tax-exempt plants that assemble products chiefly for export—known in Spanish-speaking countries as maquiladoras--and would lead to the loss of thousands of industrial jobs [see Update #996].
The hike to 200 gourdes seems to have strong support among the assembly workers themselves. The factory complex managed by the National Industrial Parks Corporation (Sonapi) on Port-au-Prince’s northern outskirts was shut down on Aug. 4 and Aug. 5 in an unprecedented wildcat strike as workers marched from the plants to demonstrate for the 200 gourde minimum.
According to Sonapi director general Jean Kesner Delmas, “outsiders” began distributing leaflets in the industrial park the afternoon of Aug. 3 calling on workers to walk out the next day, when Parliament was expected to vote on the measure. Thousands of workers gathered at the industrial park early on Aug. 4 and then left for a march to the Parliament building, which was guarded by a large number of police agents. According to the Associated Press wire service, there were about 2,000 protesters and police agents fired tear gas to disperse them. AP also reported that some protesters threw rocks at the agents and ripped down flags of United Nations member countries near the building; the nearly 9,000 soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) have frequently been used to put down protests since the mission was deployed in June 2004.
The Aug 4 demonstration ended before the Chamber of Deputies session started, but thousands of workers came back on Aug. 5 for a new protest after they learned that legislators had voted for a smaller increase. Sonapi factory owners decided to close their plants that day for “planning,” they said, but they insisted normal production would resume on Aug. 6. (AP 8/4/09; AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/5/09, 8/6/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 8/5/09)
Violence broke out between protesters and Nepalese soldiers from the MINUSTAH force on Aug. 5 in Lascahobas, in the Plateau Central department near the Dominican border. Residents protesting a two-month electrical outage had erected some 13 barricades from branches, tree trunks, rock and junked cars, according to MINUSTAH, and threw rocks at the soldiers when they tried to remove the barriers. Residents said the soldiers fired into the crowd, wounding several and killing a man and a little girl. Port-au-Prince’s Radio Métropole reported that National Police officer Senat Emmanuel said seven people were wounded and two of them had died. Other officials denied that there were any deaths. MINUSTAH spokesperson Lt. Col. Fernando Pereira said people inside the crowd had fired on the soldiers, who responded by firing in the air. (AP 8/6/09; AlterPresse 8/6/09; Radio Métropole 8/7/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Medical Workers Extend Strike
Leaders of the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) and the National Union of Nursing Services (UNASED) announced on Aug. 7 that Dominican medical workers would continue a strike they started on July 29 for at least another five days, until 6 am on Aug. 13.
The strike is the latest development in an 18-month struggle around a demand for a monthly minimum wage of 58,400 pesos ($1,624) for medical professionals. The CMD, which represents doctors, began the fight in February 2008 and were joined by the nurses. The two unions have organized a series of general strikes, hunger strikes, picket lines and building occupations [see Update #986]. The current strike began after a surprise sit-in at the Labor Secretariat by 30 union leaders and members; police agents arrested them in the early morning of July 29.
On Aug. 6 Public Health Secretary Bautista Rojas Gómez announced that he had reinforced the public health system by placing soldiers and police agents in hospitals and by contracting hundreds of medical professionals to substitute for the strikers. “From now on, we’re going to take drastic measures,” he said. Rojas suggested that the strike was a political move by the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). CMD president Waldo Ariel Suero said on Aug. 7 that this was just an attempt to divide the strikes and that it showed “Rojas’ state of desperation.” UNASED representative Rafaela Figuereo said the solution was “in the hands of the government.” (La Raza (Chicago) 8/7/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (New York) ; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 8/9/09 from ED-LP; Listin Diario (Dominican Republic 8/8/09)
*4. Cuba: US Activists Defy Embargo
Two groups that regularly protest the US ban on most travel to Cuba by making unauthorized trips to the island returned to the US without incident on Aug. 3 after their latest visits, the first since US president Barack Obama took office. About 140 members of the Venceremos Brigade walked from Canada into the US at Buffalo wearing orange T-shirts and chanting for an end to US sanctions, while some 130 members of the US/Cuba Friendshipment Caravan returned to the US at the Hidalgo International Bridge from Reynosa, Mexico. US Customs and Border Protection agents gave the travelers no trouble even though they said they had been in Cuba.
The Venceremos Brigade has been organizing trips to Cuba since 1969, while the New York-based Pastors for Peace organization has sponsored a total of 20 caravans carrying material aid for Cuba. This year’s Friendshipment collected 115 tons of humanitarian aid and drove it to a port in Mexico for shipment to Cuba by sea; the caravan members then flew to Cuba for a nine-day visit. Both groups are pushing for President Obama to lift sanctions the US started imposing on Cuba shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. "We are really determined to be ambassadors to the new administration for a new policy," Pastors for Peace associate director Ellen Bernstein told the Associated Press. (Associated Press 8/4/09; Pastors for Peace press release 8/2/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Swine Flu, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, US
South America's Swine Flu Winter
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6316
Evo Morales defends anti-imperialist allies
http://ww4report.com/node/7652
Bolivia: indigenous peoples move towards autonomy
http://ww4report.com/node/7651
Evo Morales to protest Colombian plan for US bases at Quito summit
http://ww4report.com/node/7665
Bolivia: vanishing glacier threatens La Paz water supply
http://ww4report.com/node/7655
Peru pledges new Amazon oil auctions —despite indigenous protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7656
Peru: Sendero hits back against Plan VRAE
http://ww4report.com/node/7653
Amnesty Urges Peru's Government to Suspend Laws and Oil Concessions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2033/68/
Abuses in Peru's Escalating Fight Against Rebels
https://nacla.org/node/6027
Peru and Ecuador: A Common Enemy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2021/1/
Colombia: Women Lead Opposition to Gold Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2032/68/
Venezuela and Colombia at brink of war—again?
http://ww4report.com/node/7670
Street Art in Revolutionary Venezuela
https://nacla.org/node/6031
Why the U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2035/1/
Pacific Rim Silent in Wake of Violence Against Anti-mining Protesters in Cabañas, El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2037/1/
El Salvador: The Mysterious Death of Marcelo Rivera
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2041/1/
Honduras: "People Are In The Streets Every Day".
http://www.alternet.org/world/141837/honduras:_%22people_are_in_the_streets_every_day%22/?page=entire
Honduras: generals plead case on TV; deadly repression grows
http://ww4report.com/node/7669
Honduras political crisis unleashes media wars
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4097
International Observation Mission for the Human Rights Situation in Honduras Preliminary Report
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2040/68/
U.S. appears to soften support for Honduras's Zelaya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2039/68/
Video Report - Honduras: Where does Washington stand?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2038/68/
Honduras: Regime Says 'Yes' to Talks but Squelches Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2036/68/
Honduras: Two More Dead, Zelaya Takes Case to International Criminal Court
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2030/68/
The Honduran Coup: Fiction and Fact
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2018/1/
Honduras and Washington: Semantics and Contradictions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2027/1/
On Eve of Summit, Mexico’s Human Rights Record Comes Under Fire in U.S. Congress
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/mexico%e2%80%99s-human-rights-record-comes-under-fire-in-u-s-congress/
Mexican bishops blast federal foray on Michoacán mass
http://ww4report.com/node/7664
Mexico: narco-violence reaches new high
http://ww4report.com/node/7650
Hyping the New Media Buzzword: ‘Spillover’ on the Border
https://nacla.org/node/6045
Plan Mexico's Prisoner
https://nacla.org/node/6056
Mexico: Leahy blocks State Department rights report on Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/7663
US Activists Challenge Obama on Cuba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2031/68/
Obama and Latin America: The First Six Months
https://nacla.org/node/6017
Obama Stays the Course in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2017/1/
The Obama Style and Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2028/1/
Dissecting Utopia: New Book Assesses Latin American Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2014/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative 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/
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
WNU #999: Honduran Protester Murdered, Leader Detained
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #999, July 26, 2009
1. Honduras: Protester Murdered, Leader Detained
2. Honduras: Rights Group Reports 1,155 Violations
3. Honduras: Army Blocks Thousands of Protesters
4. Guatemala: Thousands March Against Cement Plant
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US
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/
Note: The Update will not appear next week; the next Update, #1,000, will be dated August 9, 2009.
*1. Honduras: Protester Murdered, Leader Detained
Hundreds of people attended the burial of murdered Honduran bricklayer Pedro Magdiel Muñoz Salvador on July 26 in the El Durazno cemetery, about 5km north of Tegucigalpa. “Blood of martyrs, seed of freedom,” chanted the mourners, who said the police had killed Muñoz for his role in a July 24 demonstration near the border with Nicaragua, where protesters had been trying to join up with deposed Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. During the burial ceremony, mourners seized two police agents from the General Directorate of Investigation, beat them and set their vehicle on fire. According to witnesses, campesino leader Rafael Alegría rescued the agents from the crowd. Alegría, who heads the local branch of the international group Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”), has been a spokesperson for the grassroots movement resisting the military coup that removed Zelaya from office on June 28.
Muñoz, a 23-year-old Tegucigalpa resident, was found dead with signs of prolonged torture on the morning of July 25 near a police post in Alauca municipality, about 12km from the Las Manos border post in the southern department of El Paraíso. On the afternoon of July 24, hundreds of protesters had confronted soldiers and police in nearby El Paraíso municipality in an attempt to reach Zelaya, who was trying to enter Honduras at Las Manos from the Nicaraguan side. Witnesses said Muñoz was active in building a large, smoky bonfire near the soldiers who were blocking the protesters.
A police official acknowledged that agents arrested Muñoz that afternoon but said the arrest was for smoking marijuana, not for protesting. The police said they released him at 6:30 am on July 25, but a medical examiner said in the presence of witnesses--including representatives of the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), an independent human rights organization—that Muñoz had died several hours before that. (Qué (Spain) 7/26/09 from unidentified wire services; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/26/09 from AFP; Honduras Laboral (7/26/09) from Frente de Resistencia Popular de Honduras)
Muñoz’s murder appears to be part of a pattern of increased repression against opponents of the coup starting July 24.
On the night of July 24, unidentified people fired on a car near Tegucigalpa’s Toncontín international airport, wounding Juan Carlos Trochez, who was hospitalized with wounds in the chest and the lower body. He had been returning to the capital after participating in an anti-coup demonstration in the western department of Santa Bárbara with his older brother, César Darío Trochez. Their father is Rodrigo Trochez, a legislative deputy from Santa Bárbara for the center-right Liberal Party, whose membership includes both President Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti, a leader of the coup. Deputy Trochez is one of the minority of Liberal legislators who opposed the coup; he had been in Washington since July 19 with six other deputies to talk to US officials and Congress members. He told the Italian wire service ANSA that he thought the attack was a reprisal for protesting against the de facto regime. (ANSA 7/25/09)
Campesino leader Rafael Alegría was detained along with driver Gustavo Adolfo Suazo and the Austrian writer Leo Gabriel in Las Manos around 1 pm on July 25. The police refused to say where Alegría had been taken, but the independent Spanish journalist José Carlos Gallaga located him with about 45 other detained protesters—including 18 women and 11 minors—in El Paraíso in departmental police station number 7. The police assaulted Gallaga, but finally released the protesters at around 6 pm. (Honduras Laboral (7/26/09) from Común Noticias)
On July 26, shortly before the burial of Pedro Muñoz, a small bomb exploded in a bathroom in the Tegucigalpa offices of the Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS). There was material damage but no injuries. The union has been a meeting place for the resistance, and the explosion came at the end of a strategy meeting. (Qué (Spain) 7/26/09 from unidentified wire services; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/26/09 from AFP)
Correction: The original version of this item had a typo in the name of the man found murdered in El Paraíso department in southern Honduras on July 25. Our sources give his name as "Pedro Magdiel Muñoz Salvador." We were incorrect in saying his body was found in El Paraíso municipality; it was in nearby Alauca municipality.
*2. Honduras: Rights Group Reports 1,155 Violations
A mission of delegates from international human rights organizations released a preliminary report on July 23 in Tegucigalpa charging “serious and systematic violations” of rights in Honduras following the June 28 military coup. The mission’s 15 members included representatives from the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), and the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ).
The report listed five killings that appeared to be politically motivated: the death of an unidentified man whose body was found in Tegucigalpa on July 3 in a t-shirt supporting the “fourth ballot box” (a reference to a proposed poll on a constitutional reform that precipitated the coup); the shooting death of protester Isis Obed Murillo Mencias by soldiers during a July 5 demonstration at the Toncontín airport; and the murders of journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega and two activists from the leftist Democratic Unification Party (PUD), Ramón García and labor leader Roger Iván Bados [see Update #997]. The report also listed one apparent homophobic murder. Vicky Hernández Castillo (Sonny Emelson Hernández Castillo) was shot and strangled San Pedro Sula during the nightly curfew the de facto regime imposed after the coup.
The Honduran human rights group COFADEH listed 1,155 human rights violations since June 28, of which 1,046 were illegal detentions, mainly for violating the curfew or for participating in protests. Oscar Raúl Matute, governance secretary in the de facto government, denied the human rights groups’ accusations on July 23. “You can travel freely around the country,” he said. “There are no persecutions; there are no political prisoners.” (La Jornada 7/24/09 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; Upside Down World 7/23/09; Equipo Nizkor 7/24/09)
*3. Honduras: Army Blocks Thousands of Protesters
According to both resistance organizers and international wire services, thousands of Hondurans headed to the border with Nicaragua when they learned that President Zelaya would try to reenter there at the Las Manos border post in El Paraíso department on July 24. The military responded by deploying a large number of troops to stop the movement toward the border. The de facto regime also imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the department.
Witnesses reported 14 to 20 military roadblocks along the 100km route from Tegucigalpa to Las Manos. Protesters were also detained when they tried to come from Choluteca and Olancho departments. Two teams of investigators from COFADEH headed by the group’s general coordinator, Bertha Oliva, were stopped at Arenales, 7km from Danlí, El Paraíso. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the president’s wife, was also stopped there for several hours, along with the couple’s daughters and the president’s mother, Hortensia Rosales. Protesters who managed to get through some roadblocks found themselves trapped by others; they were unable to go forward or back, and had to sleep outdoors. The military also blocked food shipments and medical supplies. A number of protesters were sick from exposure, while others were suffering from the effects of tear gas or beatings by the police.
The Reuters wire service reported that by July 26 many protesters were discouraged and were trying to head for home. “We’re tired and there’s no food,” protester César Castro told Reuters. “We’re going to withdraw to Tegucigalpa, where most of the people are,” Lilian Ordoñez, a school teacher, explained. "We have to change our strategy.” (Minga Informativo de Moviemientos Sociales 7/25/09 from Vía Campesina, 7/25/09 from Común Noticias; Prensa Latina 7/26/09; La Jornada 7/26/09 from Reuters)
But others were circumventing military roadblocks by cutting across the countryside. Four resistance leaders--Salvador Zúñiga and Berta Cáceres from the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and Miriam Miranda and Alfredo López from the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH)--set out with a group of about 230 protesters to reach the Las Manos border post through the mountains during the weekend of July 25. Supporters lost cellular contact with the four at about 6 am on July 26 and reported them missing, but they were contacted in the evening and said they were still trying to get to Las Manos.
According to the Mexican daily La Jornada, in the 1980s the rugged terrain at the border around Las Manos was the site of encampments by some 20,000 US-backed contra fighters seeking to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist government of the time. The de facto Honduran government’s foreign minister, Carlos López Contreras, was foreign minister then too, from 1986 to 1990; one of his jobs was denying that the contras were operating in Honduran territory, which led many to call him “Carlos López Contras.” In his current position as foreign minister, he has been demanding that foreign governments “respect [Honduran] sovereignty.” (LJ 7/26/09 from Notimex, 7/27/09 from correspondent)
*4. Guatemala: Thousands March Against Cement Plant
Thousands of indigenous and campesino Guatemalans marched the 35km from the town of San Juan Sacatepéquez to Guatemala City on July 13-14 as part of a continuing struggle against the construction of the Cementos Progreso cement plant about 15km from the town. Organizers said more than 10,000 residents marched in the protest, which also demanded the release of imprisoned campesino leaders and was supported by a number of social organizations, including Vía Campesina and the National Coordinating Committee of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA).
Clashes over the plant began in December 2007, when 12 police agents were injured and 17 campesinos were arrested. One campesino was killed during a protest on June 23, 2008, and 43 were arrested. San Juan Sacatepéquez residents say the plant will damage the environment and deprive the community of water. Environment Minister Luis Ferrate insists the $690 million plant will comply with environmental impact recommendations. After arriving in the capital, a delegation of protesters met with President Álvaro Colom and Congress President Roberto Alejos. Community representative Juan Saban said the president agreed to appoint a group to make a thorough review of the issues with the plant.
In other demonstrations, hundreds of people blocked roads in San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Petén, Sololá and Quetzaltenango departments on July 14 to protest mining concessions. (Latin American Herald Tribune 7/14/09 from EFE (English); EFE 7/14/09 (Spanish); Adital 7/15/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US
Argentina: Turning Around - An Interview with Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2007/1/
Independent Candidate Challenges Chilean Political Establishment
https://nacla.org/node/6010
Ecuador signs oil deal with China
http://ww4report.com/node/7619
Damming Magdalena: Emgesa Threatens Colombian Communities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2008/1/
Colombia: indigenous march against violence in Cauca
http://ww4report.com/node/7625
Colombia: FARC assassinate indigenous people in Antioquia
http://ww4report.com/node/7624
Colombia: "emergent" paramilitaries "disappear" campesino in Meta
http://ww4report.com/node/7623
Chávez protests Colombian plan to host US bases
http://ww4report.com/node/7620
Nicaragua: Memories of the 1979 Final Offensive
https://nacla.org/node/6005
Take Action Against the Coup in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2011/68/
Honduras: Mass resistance to military coup grows
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2006/68/
Honduras: military control of Caribbean zone behind conflict?
http://ww4report.com/node/7627
Honduras: Zelaya establishes border camp; another protester killed
http://ww4report.com/node/7626
Honduras: Micheletti appoints death squad veteran
http://ww4report.com/node/7622
Honduras: showdown at border as Zelaya attempts to return
http://ww4report.com/node/7621
Honduras: talks break down again; Otto Reich denies involvement
http://ww4report.com/node/7617
Surreal Honduras: Putting the Narrative Together in the Local Press
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2010/1/
A Military Coup is Violence; A President's Return is Restoration of Constitutional Order
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/07/military-coup-is-violence-presidents.html
Twenty-first Century Coups d'Etat
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6278
No Going Back: Why the Coup in Honduras Won't—and Shouldn't—Succeed
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6260
The Honduran Battle for Washington
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4029
Zelaya Just One of Millions
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=408
Guatemala: Mines Bring No Benefits to Local People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2012/68/
Honduran Coup Tests Mexico's Refugee Policy and Resolve
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6245
Obama and Latin America: The First Six Months
https://nacla.org/node/6017
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/
Issue #999, July 26, 2009
1. Honduras: Protester Murdered, Leader Detained
2. Honduras: Rights Group Reports 1,155 Violations
3. Honduras: Army Blocks Thousands of Protesters
4. Guatemala: Thousands March Against Cement Plant
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US
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/
Note: The Update will not appear next week; the next Update, #1,000, will be dated August 9, 2009.
*1. Honduras: Protester Murdered, Leader Detained
Hundreds of people attended the burial of murdered Honduran bricklayer Pedro Magdiel Muñoz Salvador on July 26 in the El Durazno cemetery, about 5km north of Tegucigalpa. “Blood of martyrs, seed of freedom,” chanted the mourners, who said the police had killed Muñoz for his role in a July 24 demonstration near the border with Nicaragua, where protesters had been trying to join up with deposed Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. During the burial ceremony, mourners seized two police agents from the General Directorate of Investigation, beat them and set their vehicle on fire. According to witnesses, campesino leader Rafael Alegría rescued the agents from the crowd. Alegría, who heads the local branch of the international group Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”), has been a spokesperson for the grassroots movement resisting the military coup that removed Zelaya from office on June 28.
Muñoz, a 23-year-old Tegucigalpa resident, was found dead with signs of prolonged torture on the morning of July 25 near a police post in Alauca municipality, about 12km from the Las Manos border post in the southern department of El Paraíso. On the afternoon of July 24, hundreds of protesters had confronted soldiers and police in nearby El Paraíso municipality in an attempt to reach Zelaya, who was trying to enter Honduras at Las Manos from the Nicaraguan side. Witnesses said Muñoz was active in building a large, smoky bonfire near the soldiers who were blocking the protesters.
A police official acknowledged that agents arrested Muñoz that afternoon but said the arrest was for smoking marijuana, not for protesting. The police said they released him at 6:30 am on July 25, but a medical examiner said in the presence of witnesses--including representatives of the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), an independent human rights organization—that Muñoz had died several hours before that. (Qué (Spain) 7/26/09 from unidentified wire services; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/26/09 from AFP; Honduras Laboral (7/26/09) from Frente de Resistencia Popular de Honduras)
Muñoz’s murder appears to be part of a pattern of increased repression against opponents of the coup starting July 24.
On the night of July 24, unidentified people fired on a car near Tegucigalpa’s Toncontín international airport, wounding Juan Carlos Trochez, who was hospitalized with wounds in the chest and the lower body. He had been returning to the capital after participating in an anti-coup demonstration in the western department of Santa Bárbara with his older brother, César Darío Trochez. Their father is Rodrigo Trochez, a legislative deputy from Santa Bárbara for the center-right Liberal Party, whose membership includes both President Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti, a leader of the coup. Deputy Trochez is one of the minority of Liberal legislators who opposed the coup; he had been in Washington since July 19 with six other deputies to talk to US officials and Congress members. He told the Italian wire service ANSA that he thought the attack was a reprisal for protesting against the de facto regime. (ANSA 7/25/09)
Campesino leader Rafael Alegría was detained along with driver Gustavo Adolfo Suazo and the Austrian writer Leo Gabriel in Las Manos around 1 pm on July 25. The police refused to say where Alegría had been taken, but the independent Spanish journalist José Carlos Gallaga located him with about 45 other detained protesters—including 18 women and 11 minors—in El Paraíso in departmental police station number 7. The police assaulted Gallaga, but finally released the protesters at around 6 pm. (Honduras Laboral (7/26/09) from Común Noticias)
On July 26, shortly before the burial of Pedro Muñoz, a small bomb exploded in a bathroom in the Tegucigalpa offices of the Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS). There was material damage but no injuries. The union has been a meeting place for the resistance, and the explosion came at the end of a strategy meeting. (Qué (Spain) 7/26/09 from unidentified wire services; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/26/09 from AFP)
Correction: The original version of this item had a typo in the name of the man found murdered in El Paraíso department in southern Honduras on July 25. Our sources give his name as "Pedro Magdiel Muñoz Salvador." We were incorrect in saying his body was found in El Paraíso municipality; it was in nearby Alauca municipality.
*2. Honduras: Rights Group Reports 1,155 Violations
A mission of delegates from international human rights organizations released a preliminary report on July 23 in Tegucigalpa charging “serious and systematic violations” of rights in Honduras following the June 28 military coup. The mission’s 15 members included representatives from the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), and the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ).
The report listed five killings that appeared to be politically motivated: the death of an unidentified man whose body was found in Tegucigalpa on July 3 in a t-shirt supporting the “fourth ballot box” (a reference to a proposed poll on a constitutional reform that precipitated the coup); the shooting death of protester Isis Obed Murillo Mencias by soldiers during a July 5 demonstration at the Toncontín airport; and the murders of journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega and two activists from the leftist Democratic Unification Party (PUD), Ramón García and labor leader Roger Iván Bados [see Update #997]. The report also listed one apparent homophobic murder. Vicky Hernández Castillo (Sonny Emelson Hernández Castillo) was shot and strangled San Pedro Sula during the nightly curfew the de facto regime imposed after the coup.
The Honduran human rights group COFADEH listed 1,155 human rights violations since June 28, of which 1,046 were illegal detentions, mainly for violating the curfew or for participating in protests. Oscar Raúl Matute, governance secretary in the de facto government, denied the human rights groups’ accusations on July 23. “You can travel freely around the country,” he said. “There are no persecutions; there are no political prisoners.” (La Jornada 7/24/09 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; Upside Down World 7/23/09; Equipo Nizkor 7/24/09)
*3. Honduras: Army Blocks Thousands of Protesters
According to both resistance organizers and international wire services, thousands of Hondurans headed to the border with Nicaragua when they learned that President Zelaya would try to reenter there at the Las Manos border post in El Paraíso department on July 24. The military responded by deploying a large number of troops to stop the movement toward the border. The de facto regime also imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the department.
Witnesses reported 14 to 20 military roadblocks along the 100km route from Tegucigalpa to Las Manos. Protesters were also detained when they tried to come from Choluteca and Olancho departments. Two teams of investigators from COFADEH headed by the group’s general coordinator, Bertha Oliva, were stopped at Arenales, 7km from Danlí, El Paraíso. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the president’s wife, was also stopped there for several hours, along with the couple’s daughters and the president’s mother, Hortensia Rosales. Protesters who managed to get through some roadblocks found themselves trapped by others; they were unable to go forward or back, and had to sleep outdoors. The military also blocked food shipments and medical supplies. A number of protesters were sick from exposure, while others were suffering from the effects of tear gas or beatings by the police.
The Reuters wire service reported that by July 26 many protesters were discouraged and were trying to head for home. “We’re tired and there’s no food,” protester César Castro told Reuters. “We’re going to withdraw to Tegucigalpa, where most of the people are,” Lilian Ordoñez, a school teacher, explained. "We have to change our strategy.” (Minga Informativo de Moviemientos Sociales 7/25/09 from Vía Campesina, 7/25/09 from Común Noticias; Prensa Latina 7/26/09; La Jornada 7/26/09 from Reuters)
But others were circumventing military roadblocks by cutting across the countryside. Four resistance leaders--Salvador Zúñiga and Berta Cáceres from the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and Miriam Miranda and Alfredo López from the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH)--set out with a group of about 230 protesters to reach the Las Manos border post through the mountains during the weekend of July 25. Supporters lost cellular contact with the four at about 6 am on July 26 and reported them missing, but they were contacted in the evening and said they were still trying to get to Las Manos.
According to the Mexican daily La Jornada, in the 1980s the rugged terrain at the border around Las Manos was the site of encampments by some 20,000 US-backed contra fighters seeking to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist government of the time. The de facto Honduran government’s foreign minister, Carlos López Contreras, was foreign minister then too, from 1986 to 1990; one of his jobs was denying that the contras were operating in Honduran territory, which led many to call him “Carlos López Contras.” In his current position as foreign minister, he has been demanding that foreign governments “respect [Honduran] sovereignty.” (LJ 7/26/09 from Notimex, 7/27/09 from correspondent)
*4. Guatemala: Thousands March Against Cement Plant
Thousands of indigenous and campesino Guatemalans marched the 35km from the town of San Juan Sacatepéquez to Guatemala City on July 13-14 as part of a continuing struggle against the construction of the Cementos Progreso cement plant about 15km from the town. Organizers said more than 10,000 residents marched in the protest, which also demanded the release of imprisoned campesino leaders and was supported by a number of social organizations, including Vía Campesina and the National Coordinating Committee of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA).
Clashes over the plant began in December 2007, when 12 police agents were injured and 17 campesinos were arrested. One campesino was killed during a protest on June 23, 2008, and 43 were arrested. San Juan Sacatepéquez residents say the plant will damage the environment and deprive the community of water. Environment Minister Luis Ferrate insists the $690 million plant will comply with environmental impact recommendations. After arriving in the capital, a delegation of protesters met with President Álvaro Colom and Congress President Roberto Alejos. Community representative Juan Saban said the president agreed to appoint a group to make a thorough review of the issues with the plant.
In other demonstrations, hundreds of people blocked roads in San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Petén, Sololá and Quetzaltenango departments on July 14 to protest mining concessions. (Latin American Herald Tribune 7/14/09 from EFE (English); EFE 7/14/09 (Spanish); Adital 7/15/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US
Argentina: Turning Around - An Interview with Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2007/1/
Independent Candidate Challenges Chilean Political Establishment
https://nacla.org/node/6010
Ecuador signs oil deal with China
http://ww4report.com/node/7619
Damming Magdalena: Emgesa Threatens Colombian Communities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2008/1/
Colombia: indigenous march against violence in Cauca
http://ww4report.com/node/7625
Colombia: FARC assassinate indigenous people in Antioquia
http://ww4report.com/node/7624
Colombia: "emergent" paramilitaries "disappear" campesino in Meta
http://ww4report.com/node/7623
Chávez protests Colombian plan to host US bases
http://ww4report.com/node/7620
Nicaragua: Memories of the 1979 Final Offensive
https://nacla.org/node/6005
Take Action Against the Coup in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2011/68/
Honduras: Mass resistance to military coup grows
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2006/68/
Honduras: military control of Caribbean zone behind conflict?
http://ww4report.com/node/7627
Honduras: Zelaya establishes border camp; another protester killed
http://ww4report.com/node/7626
Honduras: Micheletti appoints death squad veteran
http://ww4report.com/node/7622
Honduras: showdown at border as Zelaya attempts to return
http://ww4report.com/node/7621
Honduras: talks break down again; Otto Reich denies involvement
http://ww4report.com/node/7617
Surreal Honduras: Putting the Narrative Together in the Local Press
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2010/1/
A Military Coup is Violence; A President's Return is Restoration of Constitutional Order
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/07/military-coup-is-violence-presidents.html
Twenty-first Century Coups d'Etat
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6278
No Going Back: Why the Coup in Honduras Won't—and Shouldn't—Succeed
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6260
The Honduran Battle for Washington
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4029
Zelaya Just One of Millions
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=408
Guatemala: Mines Bring No Benefits to Local People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2012/68/
Honduran Coup Tests Mexico's Refugee Policy and Resolve
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6245
Obama and Latin America: The First Six Months
https://nacla.org/node/6017
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/
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
WNU #998: 2 Dominicans Killed in Blackout Protests
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #998, July 19, 2009
1. Dominican Republic: 2 Killed in Blackout Protests
2. Mexico: Nahuas Win Land Struggle
3. Mexico: International Unions Back Miners
4. Honduras: Dockworkers Call for Boycott
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Protests broke out in various parts of the Dominican Republic on the evening of July 16 over electricity shortages that had been plaguing the country for two weeks. Dozens of people took the streets in the Capotillo neighborhood in the north of the National District (which contains the capital, Santo Domingo). Agents of the National Police shot two people dead: Miguel Ángel Encarnación, a 13-year-old who worked shining shoes, and Carlos Francisco Peguero, a 24-year-old blacksmith. After the deaths, heavily armed police in bulletproof vests patrolled the neighborhood. Protests were also reported in other Santo Domingo neighborhoods.
Protests that started on July 16 in Hermanas Mirabal province in the north intensified on July 17. In the province’s Salcedo municipality a group of protesters set off a homemade bomb near a park; no injuries were reported. The police said police major Osiris González Hilario was hit by a bullet while he was trying to extinguish a tire protesters had set on fire. In Navarrete municipality in Santiago province, also in the north, dozens of people held vigils to protest the blackouts. José Espinal, who is a spokesperson for the Broad Front of Popular Struggle (FALPO), a coalition of grassroots organizations, said people in Navarrete were getting electricity just four to five hours a day, even though they had to pay high electric rates “religiously.” There were also protests in Pino and Santiago de la Cruz municipalities, in the area bordering Haiti, and in Pueblo Nuevo, Jaibón, Las 300 and Los Cambronales in the northwestern province of Valverde.
The police initially said unidentified people had caused the two deaths in Capotillo. Residents threw rocks at the National District’s chief prosecutor, Alejandro Moscoso Segarra, when he tried to talk to them on July 17. He came back the next day for a meeting with community leaders and Miguel Ángel Encarnación’s mother; he told them that one police agent had been detained in the shootings and that he needed witnesses from the community to help with the prosecution. (El Financiero (Mexico) 7/17/09 from Notimex; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 7/18/09 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; Listin Diario (Dominican Republic) 7/19/09)
Militant protests over blackouts, along with violent police repression, have occurred repeatedly in the Dominican Republic since the privatization of the power system in the 1990s; the companies buying into the system included the now-bankrupt US power giant Enron. [See Updates #404, 646, 752.]
*2. Mexico: Nahuas Win Land Struggle
On June 29 about 1,000 indigenous Nahuas from the communities of Santa María de Ostula, Coire and Pómaro in the central western Mexican state of Michoacán occupied La Canahuancera, a 700-hectare area near the Pacific coast. According to the Nahuas, men armed with pistols in the employ of local political bosses tried to stop the effort to take the land, and a campesino, Manuel Serrano, was hit by a bullet. The Ostula community police captured eight of the attackers; they released five of them later and turned three others over to state prosecutors on July 5. The Nahuas also set up a roadblock on the Manzanillo-Lázaro Cárdenas highway. The indigenous communities say they have titles to La Canahuancera dating back to 1802; they charge that a group of small landowners from the community of Placita, Aquila municipality, seized the land 45 years ago.
On July 17 Michoacán governance secretary Fidel Calderón Torreblanca and the Nahuas’ legal adviser, Carlos González García, reached an agreement in which the Placita landowners would cede 1,309 hectares of land to the Nahuas and would receive compensation from the state government. The parties ratified the accord on July 18 and also agreed to have the Mexican Navy patrol the area to prevent further violence.
The June 29 land occupation came two weeks after the central Pacific section of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI)--an umbrella organization established in 1996 to bring together all of Mexico’s indigenous groups [see Update #350]--met in Ostula for its 25th assembly. On June 13-14 the assembly, in which indigenous groups in nine states were represented, approved the “Ostula Manifesto,” a document asserting that indigenous groups have the right “to organize themselves and to carry out the defense of their lives, their security, their freedoms and basic rights, and their culture and territories.” The assembly based the right to self-defense on article 39 of the Mexican Constitution. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/7/09, ____, 7/18/07; La Jornada de Michoacán 7/18/09, 7/19/09)
Correction: The item originally said three attackers were turned over to state prosecutors on "June 5"; the correct date is July 5.
*3. Mexico: International Unions Back Miners
A delegation of union leaders and parliamentarians from 13 countries visited Mexico for five days during the week of July 8 to show support for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) in its three-year struggle against the Mexican government and the Grupo México transnational. Organized by the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), and the United Steelworkers (USW), the delegation included legislators from Australia, Canada and Peru, and union leaders from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the US.
The confrontation in the mines and steel mills, which started in 2006 when the government removed SNTMMSRM head Napoleón Gómez Urrutia for alleged corruption, has included a two-year strike at the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state and numerous clashes between workers and security forces [see Update #987]. Four union members have died in the struggle.
Jack Layton, the head of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) and the leader of the delegation, said the best hope for getting labor rights recognized in Mexico is for President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and his center-right National Action Party (PAN) to be swept from power. The SNTMMSRM, which celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding on July 11, has also received support from the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and from 27 members of the US Congress, who wrote to Calderón on July 7 that the situation raises “serious questions about labor practices in your country.” The delegation’s visit received minimal coverage in the Mexican and the US media. (Mexican Labor News and Analysis, July 2009 Vol. 14, #6; Frontera NorteSur (FNS) 7/11/09; Toronto Star 7/10/09)
*4. Honduras: Dockworkers Call for Boycott
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which represents 656 unions worldwide with 4.5 million members, issued a call on July 17 for its members to carry out protests against Honduran shipping. The federation said it was expressing opposion to a June 28 military coup which replaced Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with a de facto government. “We have to put real pressure on the Honduran military to allow the country to revert to democracy,” ITF general secretary David Cockroft said.
The federation said the call to action was likely to affect the loading and unloading of the 650 ships that fly the Honduran flag. This is a “flag of convenience,” according to the ITF--“a low-cost cosmetic ship registration by companies with no link to the country and no intention of employing its citizens onboard.”
On July 3 ITF-affiliated unions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua protested the coup with demonstrations at the borders with Honduras--in El Amatillo, El Salavdor; Izabal, Guatemala; and Los Tres Pasos de Frontera, Nicaragua. Transport workers from Venezuela and Mexico also participated. (ITF press releases 7/10/09, 7/17/09; Prensa Latina 7/17/09; TeleSUR 7/17/09)
In other news, Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest and 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, was in Tegucigalpa on July 16 to participate in protests blocking the highway to the north of the capital. Tamayo, a leader of the environmental movement in Olancho department whose life has been threatened repeatedly, went into hiding briefly on July 1 after escaping a military attack on a roadblock in the countryside [see Update #996]. At the Tegucigalpa protest he noted “the large number of women and men of advanced age. This means that they have a spirit of courage and have lost their fear. We’re coming to a stage where people are taking on the struggle personally as a people. This generates much more force and resistance, because the people are no longer trusting the media, the police, the business owners and the traditional politicians…. [O]nly the people defend the people.” (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales 7/16/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Peru's 'Cold War' Against Indigenous Peoples
https://nacla.org/node/5995
Peru: Fujimori admits bribery —but not "criminal responsibility"
http://ww4report.com/node/7594
Ecuador: CONFENIAE Condemns Decree 1780 and the Militarization of their Territories
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1992/68/
Plan Colombia: Exporting the Model
https://nacla.org/node/5983
Questions Brew in Colombia, As Coffee Farmers Face Record Shortfalls
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1985/1/
Behind the Headlines: Escobar’s Hippo and the Calibío Battalion
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1995/1/
US equals Colombia in cannabis production
http://ww4report.com/node/7605
Bogotá claims FARC link to Ecuador's Correa
http://ww4report.com/node/7600
Colombia nears deal with Washington for military base
http://ww4report.com/node/7596
Colombia extradites Betancourt captor
http://ww4report.com/node/7595
Venezuela: ex-defense minister charged in Caracazo
http://ww4report.com/node/7599
Debate Intensifies Over Venezuela’s Proposed Same Sex Civil Union Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2001/68/
Panama Does Not Intend to Suspend Dam Construction on Ngöbe Lands
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1991/68/
Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4025
Nicaragua: Ortega seeks constitutional reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7610
The FMLN Victory and Transnational Salvadoran Activism: Lessons for the Future
https://nacla.org/node/6000
El Salvador: body of missing activist found with signs of torture
http://ww4report.com/node/7601
Honduras: talks break down; Arias fears "civil war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7608
The Closing of the Southern Highway from Tegucigalpa: An Eye Witness Report
http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3691.html
Micheletti Tried to Change the Honduran Constitution 1985
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/micheletti-tried-change-honduran-constitution-1985
Honduras: Are We Going to Make Concessions to Those Who Perpetrate Coups?
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d776b383f91f6b0e48d47dfffecb7440
What's Next For Honduras?
https://nacla.org/node/5989
Honduras: The Criminal Right and the Obama Ultimatum
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/07/criminal-right-in-honduras-and-obama.html
Indigenous Leader Berta Cáceres: "If the people didn't support him, they wouldn't have had to carry out a coup"
http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2009/07/indigenous-leader-berta-caceres-if.html
U.S. Press Falsely Claims Honduran Plurality for Coup
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/258
The U.S. is Compromising Democracy in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1989/1/
Central America: Shades of Coups Past - And Yet to Come?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2000/1/
The Hired Gun of Roberto Micheletti: History of the Torturer Joya Améndola
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1993/68/
Honduras: more talk of "unity government" as protest actions continue
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7602
Honduras: protest actions continue; compromise in works?
http://ww4report.com/node/7597
Honduras: Micheletti seeks normalization; Zelaya invokes "right to insurrection"
http://ww4report.com/node/7592
Honduras: popular organizations resist coup in courts and streets
http://ww4report.com/node/7583
Anarchism, Marxism, and Zapatismo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1990/1/
"State of exception" in Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/7606
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/
Issue #998, July 19, 2009
1. Dominican Republic: 2 Killed in Blackout Protests
2. Mexico: Nahuas Win Land Struggle
3. Mexico: International Unions Back Miners
4. Honduras: Dockworkers Call for Boycott
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Dominican Republic: 2 Killed in Blackout ProtestsProtests broke out in various parts of the Dominican Republic on the evening of July 16 over electricity shortages that had been plaguing the country for two weeks. Dozens of people took the streets in the Capotillo neighborhood in the north of the National District (which contains the capital, Santo Domingo). Agents of the National Police shot two people dead: Miguel Ángel Encarnación, a 13-year-old who worked shining shoes, and Carlos Francisco Peguero, a 24-year-old blacksmith. After the deaths, heavily armed police in bulletproof vests patrolled the neighborhood. Protests were also reported in other Santo Domingo neighborhoods.
Protests that started on July 16 in Hermanas Mirabal province in the north intensified on July 17. In the province’s Salcedo municipality a group of protesters set off a homemade bomb near a park; no injuries were reported. The police said police major Osiris González Hilario was hit by a bullet while he was trying to extinguish a tire protesters had set on fire. In Navarrete municipality in Santiago province, also in the north, dozens of people held vigils to protest the blackouts. José Espinal, who is a spokesperson for the Broad Front of Popular Struggle (FALPO), a coalition of grassroots organizations, said people in Navarrete were getting electricity just four to five hours a day, even though they had to pay high electric rates “religiously.” There were also protests in Pino and Santiago de la Cruz municipalities, in the area bordering Haiti, and in Pueblo Nuevo, Jaibón, Las 300 and Los Cambronales in the northwestern province of Valverde.
The police initially said unidentified people had caused the two deaths in Capotillo. Residents threw rocks at the National District’s chief prosecutor, Alejandro Moscoso Segarra, when he tried to talk to them on July 17. He came back the next day for a meeting with community leaders and Miguel Ángel Encarnación’s mother; he told them that one police agent had been detained in the shootings and that he needed witnesses from the community to help with the prosecution. (El Financiero (Mexico) 7/17/09 from Notimex; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 7/18/09 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; Listin Diario (Dominican Republic) 7/19/09)
Militant protests over blackouts, along with violent police repression, have occurred repeatedly in the Dominican Republic since the privatization of the power system in the 1990s; the companies buying into the system included the now-bankrupt US power giant Enron. [See Updates #404, 646, 752.]
*2. Mexico: Nahuas Win Land Struggle
On June 29 about 1,000 indigenous Nahuas from the communities of Santa María de Ostula, Coire and Pómaro in the central western Mexican state of Michoacán occupied La Canahuancera, a 700-hectare area near the Pacific coast. According to the Nahuas, men armed with pistols in the employ of local political bosses tried to stop the effort to take the land, and a campesino, Manuel Serrano, was hit by a bullet. The Ostula community police captured eight of the attackers; they released five of them later and turned three others over to state prosecutors on July 5. The Nahuas also set up a roadblock on the Manzanillo-Lázaro Cárdenas highway. The indigenous communities say they have titles to La Canahuancera dating back to 1802; they charge that a group of small landowners from the community of Placita, Aquila municipality, seized the land 45 years ago.
On July 17 Michoacán governance secretary Fidel Calderón Torreblanca and the Nahuas’ legal adviser, Carlos González García, reached an agreement in which the Placita landowners would cede 1,309 hectares of land to the Nahuas and would receive compensation from the state government. The parties ratified the accord on July 18 and also agreed to have the Mexican Navy patrol the area to prevent further violence.
The June 29 land occupation came two weeks after the central Pacific section of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI)--an umbrella organization established in 1996 to bring together all of Mexico’s indigenous groups [see Update #350]--met in Ostula for its 25th assembly. On June 13-14 the assembly, in which indigenous groups in nine states were represented, approved the “Ostula Manifesto,” a document asserting that indigenous groups have the right “to organize themselves and to carry out the defense of their lives, their security, their freedoms and basic rights, and their culture and territories.” The assembly based the right to self-defense on article 39 of the Mexican Constitution. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/7/09, ____, 7/18/07; La Jornada de Michoacán 7/18/09, 7/19/09)
Correction: The item originally said three attackers were turned over to state prosecutors on "June 5"; the correct date is July 5.
*3. Mexico: International Unions Back Miners
A delegation of union leaders and parliamentarians from 13 countries visited Mexico for five days during the week of July 8 to show support for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) in its three-year struggle against the Mexican government and the Grupo México transnational. Organized by the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), and the United Steelworkers (USW), the delegation included legislators from Australia, Canada and Peru, and union leaders from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the US.
The confrontation in the mines and steel mills, which started in 2006 when the government removed SNTMMSRM head Napoleón Gómez Urrutia for alleged corruption, has included a two-year strike at the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state and numerous clashes between workers and security forces [see Update #987]. Four union members have died in the struggle.
Jack Layton, the head of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) and the leader of the delegation, said the best hope for getting labor rights recognized in Mexico is for President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and his center-right National Action Party (PAN) to be swept from power. The SNTMMSRM, which celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding on July 11, has also received support from the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and from 27 members of the US Congress, who wrote to Calderón on July 7 that the situation raises “serious questions about labor practices in your country.” The delegation’s visit received minimal coverage in the Mexican and the US media. (Mexican Labor News and Analysis, July 2009 Vol. 14, #6; Frontera NorteSur (FNS) 7/11/09; Toronto Star 7/10/09)
*4. Honduras: Dockworkers Call for Boycott
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which represents 656 unions worldwide with 4.5 million members, issued a call on July 17 for its members to carry out protests against Honduran shipping. The federation said it was expressing opposion to a June 28 military coup which replaced Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with a de facto government. “We have to put real pressure on the Honduran military to allow the country to revert to democracy,” ITF general secretary David Cockroft said.
The federation said the call to action was likely to affect the loading and unloading of the 650 ships that fly the Honduran flag. This is a “flag of convenience,” according to the ITF--“a low-cost cosmetic ship registration by companies with no link to the country and no intention of employing its citizens onboard.”
On July 3 ITF-affiliated unions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua protested the coup with demonstrations at the borders with Honduras--in El Amatillo, El Salavdor; Izabal, Guatemala; and Los Tres Pasos de Frontera, Nicaragua. Transport workers from Venezuela and Mexico also participated. (ITF press releases 7/10/09, 7/17/09; Prensa Latina 7/17/09; TeleSUR 7/17/09)
In other news, Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest and 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, was in Tegucigalpa on July 16 to participate in protests blocking the highway to the north of the capital. Tamayo, a leader of the environmental movement in Olancho department whose life has been threatened repeatedly, went into hiding briefly on July 1 after escaping a military attack on a roadblock in the countryside [see Update #996]. At the Tegucigalpa protest he noted “the large number of women and men of advanced age. This means that they have a spirit of courage and have lost their fear. We’re coming to a stage where people are taking on the struggle personally as a people. This generates much more force and resistance, because the people are no longer trusting the media, the police, the business owners and the traditional politicians…. [O]nly the people defend the people.” (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales 7/16/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Peru's 'Cold War' Against Indigenous Peoples
https://nacla.org/node/5995
Peru: Fujimori admits bribery —but not "criminal responsibility"
http://ww4report.com/node/7594
Ecuador: CONFENIAE Condemns Decree 1780 and the Militarization of their Territories
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1992/68/
Plan Colombia: Exporting the Model
https://nacla.org/node/5983
Questions Brew in Colombia, As Coffee Farmers Face Record Shortfalls
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1985/1/
Behind the Headlines: Escobar’s Hippo and the Calibío Battalion
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1995/1/
US equals Colombia in cannabis production
http://ww4report.com/node/7605
Bogotá claims FARC link to Ecuador's Correa
http://ww4report.com/node/7600
Colombia nears deal with Washington for military base
http://ww4report.com/node/7596
Colombia extradites Betancourt captor
http://ww4report.com/node/7595
Venezuela: ex-defense minister charged in Caracazo
http://ww4report.com/node/7599
Debate Intensifies Over Venezuela’s Proposed Same Sex Civil Union Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2001/68/
Panama Does Not Intend to Suspend Dam Construction on Ngöbe Lands
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1991/68/
Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4025
Nicaragua: Ortega seeks constitutional reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7610
The FMLN Victory and Transnational Salvadoran Activism: Lessons for the Future
https://nacla.org/node/6000
El Salvador: body of missing activist found with signs of torture
http://ww4report.com/node/7601
Honduras: talks break down; Arias fears "civil war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7608
The Closing of the Southern Highway from Tegucigalpa: An Eye Witness Report
http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3691.html
Micheletti Tried to Change the Honduran Constitution 1985
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/micheletti-tried-change-honduran-constitution-1985
Honduras: Are We Going to Make Concessions to Those Who Perpetrate Coups?
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d776b383f91f6b0e48d47dfffecb7440
What's Next For Honduras?
https://nacla.org/node/5989
Honduras: The Criminal Right and the Obama Ultimatum
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/07/criminal-right-in-honduras-and-obama.html
Indigenous Leader Berta Cáceres: "If the people didn't support him, they wouldn't have had to carry out a coup"
http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2009/07/indigenous-leader-berta-caceres-if.html
U.S. Press Falsely Claims Honduran Plurality for Coup
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/258
The U.S. is Compromising Democracy in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1989/1/
Central America: Shades of Coups Past - And Yet to Come?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2000/1/
The Hired Gun of Roberto Micheletti: History of the Torturer Joya Améndola
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1993/68/
Honduras: more talk of "unity government" as protest actions continue
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7602
Honduras: protest actions continue; compromise in works?
http://ww4report.com/node/7597
Honduras: Micheletti seeks normalization; Zelaya invokes "right to insurrection"
http://ww4report.com/node/7592
Honduras: popular organizations resist coup in courts and streets
http://ww4report.com/node/7583
Anarchism, Marxism, and Zapatismo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1990/1/
"State of exception" in Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/7606
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/
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