Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1016, December 13, 2009
1. Honduras: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns Advance
2. Colombia: Attorney and Labor Leader Threatened
3. Chile: Will Frei Murder Affect Runoff?
4. Haiti: US Indicts 5 in Téléco Bribe Case
5. Venezuela: Offer to Save Bronx Jobs Rebuffed
6. Trade: US Think Tank Admits NAFTA Failed Mexico
7. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua Honduras, Mexico, NAFTA, Human Rights Day
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: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns Advance
Students at North American campuses are demanding that their universities drop licensing agreements with the Oregon-based Nike, Inc sportswear manufacturer unless 1,800 workers for two Nike contractors in Honduras get legally mandated back pay and severance packages worth more than $2 million. Officials at Purdue University in Indiana announced on Dec. 2 that they were reviewing the situation, and on Dec. 7 University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor Biddy Martin said she was giving Nike four months to clear up problems with alleged labor abuses.
The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a Washington, DC-based monitoring group, reported in October that the Vision Tex and Hugger de Honduras maquiladoras—tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export—failed to pay their workers the compensation required by law when they closed in January [see Update #1005]. The contractors say they can’t pay, and Nike is questioning how much of its product came from the two plants. A similar student anti-sweatshop campaign forced Russell Athletic of Atlanta to agree on Nov. 17 to rehire 1,200 workers it laid off in January at its Jerzees de Honduras plant [see Update #1013]. (Purdue press release 12/3/09; The Capital Times (Madison, WI) 12/8/09)
Plant closings have become a major labor issue in Honduras. The country’s maquiladora sector lost 36,000 jobs from 2008 to 2009 because of the world economic crisis. At the same time, the situation for labor rights deteriorated after a June 28 military coup removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office. "We don’t have concrete data, but we’ve received reports of women who have had to work weekends to make up days missed because of arriving late due to the protests,” Women’s Rights Center director Yadira Minero told the Inter Press Service (IPS) wire service. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/24/09 from IPS)
On Dec. 10 Judge Ernesto Flores Bardales in El Progreso municipality, Yoro department (near San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras), ordered unconditional freedom for Bartolo Fuentes, a journalist and city council member that factory owners had charged with obstruction of justice and abuse of authority in another plant closing. On May 13 Fuentes and other reporters covered a sit-in at the Zip Porvenir free trade zone by some of the 400 workers laid off when the Star, SA maquiladora closed at the end of March. The workers were demanding their full severance pay and compensation for maternity leave and sick days.
The Chahin-Hawit family, which owns the free trade zone, charged that Fuentes was instigating the protest and that he abused his authority by agreeing to hold the workers’ severance checks in trust; the workers refused to endorse the checks because they felt they were entitled to more compensation. The company finally settled with the Star Workers Union (SITRASTAR) in July, paying a total of more than 1 million lempiras ($53,000) to some 134 former workers. The Star plant reportedly produced apparel for the Anvil, Nike and Adidas companies. (Honduras Laboral 12/10/09 from Comun-Noticias)
Fuentes was briefly detained on Sept. 15 when he tried to make a speech at El Progreso’s official Independence Day celebration. Mayor Alexander López had Fuentes’ mike shut off after he began to denounce the coup d’état. When the council member continued to speak to the cheering crowd, Police Commissioner Flores Mejia ordered police agents to arrest him. A video of the incident was widely circulated on the internet. (Honduras Laboral 9/15/09 from Comun-Noticias)
*2. Colombia: Attorney and Labor Leader Threatened
The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) reported on Dec. 10 that for the last several weeks Colombian human rights attorney Jorge Eliécer Molano-Rodríguez had “received worrisome visits to his apartment building by individuals who refused to give their names to the building watchman, and his companion has been stalked by strange men…. Molano’s legal work has involved him in some of Colombia’s most controversial cases, representing, among others, families of victims of the Palace of Justice murders; of the Feb. 21, 2005 massacre of members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó; and of the Army’s ‘false positives’ kidnapping and murder of civilian youths in San José de Guaviare, and in Bolivar and Cesar departments.”
CSN is asking for people in the US to write to members of Congress, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (secretary@state.gov and http://www.state.gov/), US ambassador Mr. William Brownfield (AmbassadorB@state.gov) and other officials to express concern and to urge them to communicate to Colombian officials the need to protect Molano. (CSN urgent action 12/10/09)
According to the National Directorate of Colombia's National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL), on Nov. 24 union president Luis Javier Correa Suárez received a threatening call on a mobile phone assigned to him by the Interior Ministry’s protection program. A man who identified himself as Arnold Jiménez told Correa: “You have until the 22nd to renounce, and there won’t be another phone call.” When Correa asked why, the man replied: “You know why, don’t play games, you know what I mean” and hung up. This came during a contract dispute with the Industria Nacional de Gaseosas S.A., a bottling company owned by Coca-Cola’s Colombia branch.
The union has called for international solidarity. The British-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign recommends sending protests to Colombia’s London embassy (elondres@cancilleria.gov.co and mail@colombianembassy.co.uk) and messages of support to the union (areainternacional@sinaltrainal.org), with copies to the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (info@colombiasolidarity.org.uk ). (LabourNet 12/11/09)
*3. Chile: Will Frei Murder Affect Runoff?
Rightwing billionaire Sebastián Piñera led the presidential race in Chile’s general elections on Dec. 13 with about 44% of the vote, followed by the candidate of the ruling center-left Concertation coalition, the Christian Democratic former president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), with about 30%. The two candidates will face each other in a runoff on Jan. 17, with both seeking votes from supporters of former Socialist deputy Marco Enríquez Ominami, who came in third with 20%; he has refused to endorse either of the frontrunners. Jorge Arrate of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh), in fourth place with 5% of the vote, threw his support to Frei after the voting on Dec. 13. (Agence France Presse 12/14/09)
Parties on the right won 16 of the 38 seats in the Senate and 58 of 120 seats in the Chamber of Deputies; this was the right’s strongest showing in the lower house since the end of the 1973-1990 military dictatorship headed by the late Gen. August Pinochet. Concertation candidates won 19 seats in the Senate and 54 in the Chamber of Deputies. Three PCCh candidates won seats in the Chamber; they will be the first Communist legislators since the military coup of 1973. (Milenio (Mexico) 12/14/09 from DPA; Prensa Latina 12/14/09)
On Dec. 7, less than a week before the elections, Appeals Court judge Alejandro Madrid charged three people with murder in the 1982 death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), the father of the Concertation candidate. The Frei family had long suspected that Frei Montalva, who had moved from supporting Pinochet to opposing the dictatorship, died from gradual poisoning rather than the natural causes cited in the official autopsy report. After a seven-year investigation, Judge Madrid concluded that low doses of mustard gas and thallium ultimately led to Frei Montalva’s death. The accused are a doctor with military connections, a former intelligence agent and Frei Montalva’s driver. Judge Madrid also accused three doctors of complicity in the murder or of helping in the coverup. If the judge’s conclusion is correct, this was the first murder of a president in Chile’s history.
“There is no doubt that Pinochet ordered this murder," Álvaro Varela, a lawyer for the Frei family, told the New York Times. The dictatorship was suspected of killing several opponents using special poisons developed by the chemist Eugenio Berríos, who was murdered in Uruguay in the 1990s; his body was found there in 1995 [see Update #664].
Asked if the timing of the charges was connected to the elections and Frei Ruiz-Tagle’s poor showing in the polls, Justice Minister Carlos Maldonado said that instead of questioning the charges, people “should be ashamed that 27 years have had to pass so that truth and justice could start to be done in this case.” (NYT 12/8/09; impre.com 12/9/09 from AP)
*4. Haiti: US Indicts 5 in Téléco Bribe Case
On Dec. 7 the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging two former Haitian officials, two former executives of an unnamed Florida telecommunications company and the president of Florida-based Telecom Consulting Services Corp with foreign bribery, wire fraud and money laundering. According to the indictment, the telecommunications company paid more than $800,000 to shell companies to be used for bribes to officials of Haiti's state-owned telecommunications company, Télécommunications d'Haiti (Haiti Téléco). Two other Florida executives pleaded guilty to related charges last spring. The rightwing Haitian daily Le Matin reported that the unnamed Florida company was Terra Telecommunications Corporation.
The US says the alleged bribery went on from November 2001 through March 2005—in other words, during much of the second term of left-populist president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), and during the first year of the conservative interim government installed after Aristide was forced from power in late February 2004. (Justice Department press release 12/7/09; Miami Herald 12/9/09; Le Matin 12/11/09)
There have been repeated accusations of corruption in Téléco. In July 2008, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined IDT, a New Jersey telecommunications company closed linked to the US Republican party, some $1.3 million for failing to file a contract for telephone service to Haiti in 2004; a former IDT manager charged that the company had negotiated an illegal deal with Téléco [see Update #956].
*5. Venezuela: Offer to Save Bronx Jobs Rebuffed
According to former employees of the Stella D’oro Biscuit Co. in New York City, CITGO, the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) oil monopoly, attempted to buy the company’s Bronx plant in early October to save the jobs of 136 unionized workers but the Connecticut-based private equity firm that owned the company ignored the offer. The facility was closed on Oct. 8.
The plant closing followed a bitter labor dispute that started in August 2008 over demands for cuts in wages and benefits by the private equity firm, Brynwood Partners. The workers went on strike, holding out for 11 months. The job action ended in July when the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to take back the strikers under the terms of their old contract and with back pay. Brynwood responded by selling Stella D’oro to snack food giant Lance, Inc., which quickly moved production to a non-union shop in Ohio.
Several of the workers and their supporters spoke with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on Sept. 23 when he was in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. A week later, CITGO executive Andreas Rangel came to New York to talk to the workers. According to Bronx community activist René Rojas, CITGO wanted to buy or rent the plant and reorganize it as a worker-run cooperative, possibly selling the cooperative’s cookies at CITGO’s 7,000 gas stations. But Brynwood failed to respond to CITGO’s phone calls and emails, the workers said.
While the government of Venezuela seemed interested in saving the plant, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg “didn’t even try to find a solution,” said local labor activist Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez. “It’s such a travesty.” (The Indypendent (New York) 11/20/09)
*6. Trade: US Think Tank Admits NAFTA Failed Mexico
On Dec. 9 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an influential Washington, DC-based think tank, released “Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA,” a study on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and related neoliberal economic policies on Mexico’s economy.
The study found that in the period since the agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexico’s annual per capital growth rate has been slow (1.6% in 1992-2007, compared to 3.5% in 1960-1979) and job growth has been weak, with net losses in agriculture and manufacturing (except for the export-oriented maquiladora sector). Contrary to the projections of neoliberal economists, NAFTA did not increase investment—foreign investment increases were more than offset by decreases in domestic investment. And less restricted trade with the US has made Mexico “excessively dependent on the United States as an export market, with more than 85% of Mexican exports going to the United States, up from 70% in 1990… For this reason, the current recession is hitting Mexico harder than any other country in Latin America.”
The study’s findings are not new—a joint statement by Canadian, Mexican and US labor federations made many of the same points in August [see Update #1001]. What is new is the fact that a prestigious US think tank discussed these issues, specifically challenging what the report notes is a widespread assumption in the US “that Mexico was the undeniable winner from NAFTA.” (Carnegie Endowment 12/7/09; New York Times blog 12/10/09)
*7. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua Honduras, Mexico, NAFTA, Human Rights Day
"Blonde Angel of Death" goes on trial in Argentina
http://ww4report.com/node/8055
With Victory, Morales and Social Movements Confront New Challenges in Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/6306
The Speed of Change: Bolivian President Morales Empowered by Re-Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2243/1/
Peru: Violence Targets Anti-mining Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2244/1/
Peru: peasants march for justice after slaying of mine opponents
http://ww4report.com/node/8054
Ecuador Uses WTO Rules to Make Medicines More Accessible
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2250/1/
US denies role in Colombian raid on Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/8056
Where Does US Military ‘Aid’ to Colombia Go?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2247/68/
Colombia investigates Chiquita officials
http://ww4report.com/node/8040
A Scandal Brews as Colombia Subsidizes Millionaire Farmers
https://nacla.org/node/6308
DEA: Venezuelan cocaine ops aided FARC
http://ww4report.com/node/8058
Report From a Fact-Finding Trip to Nicaragua: Anti-Poverty Programs Make a Difference
https://nacla.org/node/6313
"Honduran Elections": A Parody on Democracy
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6619
Honduras and a Divided Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6618
For Some Hondurans, Elections Change Little
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2252/68/
Honduran Youth Under Attack
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2249/68/
Democracy in Honduras: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2248/1/
On Presidents and Precedents: Implications of the Honduran Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2251/1/
Honduran Coup Regime Erects Superficial Reality Around Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2253/1/
Amnesty International cites Mexico on Lomas de Poleo land conflict
http://ww4report.com/node/8059
Inter-American Human Rights Court rebukes Mexico in Juárez femicide case
http://ww4report.com/node/8057
Mexican Electrical Workers Union Changes Strategy in Face of Calderon
Government's Intransigence
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz141209.html
Reforming North American Trade Policy: Lessons from NAFTA
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6611
Human Rights Day celebrations met with repression around the globe
http://ww4report.com/node/8048
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, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
WNU #1015: Honduran Resistance Plans New Strategies
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1015, December 6, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance Plans New Strategies
2. Honduras: Confusion Wins in Turnout Dispute
3. Mexico: Electrical Workers Continue Protests
4. Bolivia: Morales Headed for Election Sweep?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic
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: Resistance Plans New Strategies
At a meeting on Dec. 3 at the headquarters of the Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS) in Tegucigalpa, 300 members of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of Honduran grassroots organizations, agreed not to end a five-month struggle that they started on June 28 when the military removed President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales from office. “We’re going to continue the struggle, but only for the Constituent [Assembly], not for the restitution [of Zelaya],” general director Juan Barahona told the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service, referring to demands for a convention to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution. The Resistance Front also said it would institute a “pause” in its daily street demonstrations, although it was planning a march for Dec. 11.
The Honduran social movements’ proposal for changing the Constitution was one of the factors precipitating the coup; President Zelaya had called for a nonbinding referendum on June 28 asking if a vote on the Constituent Assembly should be included in the Nov. 29 general elections.
The Dec. 3 Resistance Front meeting came in response to a decision the outgoing National Congress made the day before not to restore Zelaya to office. The deputies had voted 111 to 14, with three deputies absent, to uphold Decree 141-2009 of June 28, in which they rubberstamped Zelaya’s removal from office and replaced him with de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain. This vote, along with US recognition for the de facto government’s Nov. 29 elections, seems to guarantee that the coup regime will remain in power until Jan. 27, when Zelaya’s term expires [See Update #1014]. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 12/4/09; TeleSUR 12/4/09 via Vos el Soberano; Adital (Brazil) 12/3/09)
Like the Honduran resistance, the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) rejected what it called a “return to ‘business as usual.’” “The crisis in Honduras does not end with the election results,” Javier Zúñiga, head of the AI delegation in Honduras, said in a Dec. 3 statement. “There are dozens of people in Honduras still suffering the effects of the abuses carried out in the past five months. Failure to punish those responsible and to fix the malfunctioning system would open the door for more abuses in the future.”
AI called on the “future government” elected on Nov. 29 to “[r]epeal all legislation, decrees and executive orders issued by the de facto authorities”; take law enforcement powers away from the military; “[e]nsure that all members of the security forces are held accountable for human rights abuses” under the de facto regime; and “[d]evelop a National Plan for the protection of human rights.” The organization urged activist to send letters supporting these demands by going to: http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/call-honduras-hold-security-forces-accountable-human-rights-abuses. (AI statement 12/3/09; EFE 12/4/09 via Vos el Soberano)
On Dec. 4 the Mexican daily La Jornada published an article charging that Honduran members of the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei were a major force in the June 28 coup. Liberal Party (PL) politician Mauricio Villeda and PL presidential candidate Elvin Santos’ wife, Becky de Santos, are reportedly in Opus Dei, along with business leaders like Antonio Tavel Otero, who owns two-thirds of the country’s cell phone operations. In the first days of the coup, Tavel withdrew all advertising from media that opposed the de facto government, notably Radio Globo.
One of the causes of the June coup, according to Zelaya adviser Nelson Avila, was the president’s veto in May of a law Congress passed to ban the “morning after” contraceptive pill. The coup wasn’t really to fight the influence of leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, journalist Manuel Torres told La Jornada: “The coup responds to very conservative tendencies which are seeking to go backwards, not only in civil and political rights, but also in social rights. It’s a platform against change.” (LJ 12/4/09 from correspondent)
*2. Honduras: Confusion Wins in Turnout Dispute
On Dec. 4 the French wire service AFP reported that with 57% of the votes from Honduras’ Nov. 29 general elections officially counted, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had revised its earlier turnout estimate down from 61.3% to about 49%. Two days later, on Dec. 6, the CNN cable news network reported that it had gotten figures from TSE spokesperson Roberto Reyes Pineda showing that participation was at 56.6%, with 2,609,754 people voting out of a total of 4,611,000 registered voters. The TSE has to provide the final results within 30 days of the election. (Diario el Tiempo (Venezuela) 12/4/09 from AFP; AFP (in English)12/4/09; CNN 12/6/09)
Turnout was the main issue in the Nov. 29 vote. As expected, the center-right National Party (PN) carried the elections easily: PN candidate Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo won the presidency, and PN candidates took 71 of 128 seats in the National Congress, followed by candidates from the Liberal Party (PL, also center-right) with 44. But the de facto government, in place since June 28, was focused on getting a high turnout to back its insistence that the elections were legitimate. Deposed president Manuel Zelaya and other opponents of the de facto government called for voters to boycott the elections; they estimated that the turnout was just 30-40% [see Update #1014]. Participation in the 2005 general elections was about 55%. (Reuters 12/5/09)
The confusion in the official figures started at a press conference held the night of the elections. The TSE gave the media its own turnout projection of 61.3%--and also a figure of 47.6% from the election monitoring nonprofit Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD).
According to FHD representative Rolando Bú, the group had observers at 1,173 of the country’s approximately 8,000 polling places and based its projections on the voting at these polling places in previous elections; he put the method's margin of error at 1%. [Following our sources, in Update #1014 we reported incorrectly that the TSE had contracted the FHD to do exit polls.] The FHD says it has monitored electoral processes successfully in 80 countries. It gets funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega have accused the group of having links to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/1/09 from correspondent; Rebanadas de Realidad (Argentina) 12/1/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 12/1/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 12/4/09)
The US government and media have generally ignored the confusion, even with the TSE’s own figures showing three very different turnout rates. “Turnout was 61%--higher than in the previous election, and evidence that Hondurans had rejected Mr. Zelaya's call for a boycott,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on Dec. 2, without mentioning other estimates. “The biggest loser in the vote may be Mr. Zelaya,” the article added. US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Arturo Valenzuela called the elections “a significant step in Honduras' return to the democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup.” (WSJ 12/2/09)
*3. Mexico: Electrical Workers Continue Protests
On Dec. 4 tens of thousands of laid-off Mexican electrical workers and their supporters again took to the streets of the capital to protest Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. The center-right government claims it took the step because the company was inefficient and was losing money; opponents say the government is seeking to privatize the LFC and to break the powerful independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represented the company’s 44,000 active employees and some 23,000 retirees [see Update #1012].
Accompanied by unionists from the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the Autonomous National University of Mexico Workers Union (STUNAM) and other unions, along with students and activists from grassroots organizations, the electrical workers held marches on different avenues--Tlalpan, Insurgentes, Paseo de la Reforma and Zaragoza—ending in an eight-hour rally at the Monument of the Revolution. The protest was called the “taking of Mexico City” to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the entrance of revolutionary heroes Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa into the capital.
STUNAM leader Agustín Rodríguez told the protesters that they might need to “discuss a general strike,” but SME general secretary Martín Esparza indicated that the union and the government had resumed negotiations. He had met with governance undersecretary Gerónimo Gutiérrez, and the government had agreed to extend Social Security to all the laid-off workers for one year, Esparza said. The benefits, which in Mexico include healthcare, were to expire in a week for some 20,000 laid-off LFC workers who had refused to sign up for the government’s compensation package.
The SME has proposed a five-member team to mediate future talks with the government, including Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) rector José Narro Robles, National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) director general Enrique Villa Rivera, and Congress members from the three largest political parties. (La Jornada 12/5/09, __; La Luz Es del Pueblo blog 12/5/09, __)
*4. Bolivia: Morales Headed for Election Sweep?
According to exit polls by three different firms, Bolivian president Evo Morales appears to have won a second five-year term in general elections on Dec. 6 with 61-63.2% of the vote. Rightwing former Cochabamba governor Manfred Reyes Villa was projected to get 23-25%, followed by center-right business owner Samuel Doria Medina with 7%.
Morales, a leader in the cocalero (coca grower) movement who at his inauguration in 2006 became the country’s first indigenous president, was expected to win easily. There was more question about the results for the Plurinational Assembly, which will have 130 deputies and 36 senators. The exit polls indicated that Morales’ leftist Movement to Socialism (MAS) party had won the two-thirds majority it would need to pass major constitutional reforms. (AFP 12/6/09; El País (Spain)12/7/09 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic
Abortion Phone Line in Argentina: More Information, Fewer Risks
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2240/68/
Turning Activists Into Voters in Uruguay: The Frente Amplio and José Mujica
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2241/1/
Uruguay Elects Former Guerrilla as Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2229/68/
Honduran elections exposed
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4573
Honduras: "An election validated by blood and repression"
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4550
Honduran Elections Marred by Police Violence, Censorship, International Non-Recognition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2233/68/
Live From Honduras: Electoral Observations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2234/1/
Election Report From Honduras: The People Say “We Didn’t Vote!”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2235/1/
Honduran "Electoral Observers" Launch Verbal Attack on Americas Program Director
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/honduran-electoral-observers-launch.html
Latin America: Summit Does Not Recognise Elections in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2236/68/
Behind Bars in Honduras: An Interview with a Women's Rights Leader Before the 'Free' Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2239/1/
Operation Sofia: Documenting Genocide in Guatemala
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB297/index.htm
Electrifying Guatemala: Clean Energy and Development
https://nacla.org/node/6269
Win for Environmentalists as San Xavier Mine Suspends Activities
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/win-for-environmentalists-as-san-xavier-mine-suspends-activities/
A Giant Step Backward: The Dominican Republic Reforms Its Constitution
https://nacla.org/node/6278
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 #1015, December 6, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance Plans New Strategies
2. Honduras: Confusion Wins in Turnout Dispute
3. Mexico: Electrical Workers Continue Protests
4. Bolivia: Morales Headed for Election Sweep?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic
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: Resistance Plans New Strategies
At a meeting on Dec. 3 at the headquarters of the Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS) in Tegucigalpa, 300 members of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of Honduran grassroots organizations, agreed not to end a five-month struggle that they started on June 28 when the military removed President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales from office. “We’re going to continue the struggle, but only for the Constituent [Assembly], not for the restitution [of Zelaya],” general director Juan Barahona told the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service, referring to demands for a convention to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution. The Resistance Front also said it would institute a “pause” in its daily street demonstrations, although it was planning a march for Dec. 11.
The Honduran social movements’ proposal for changing the Constitution was one of the factors precipitating the coup; President Zelaya had called for a nonbinding referendum on June 28 asking if a vote on the Constituent Assembly should be included in the Nov. 29 general elections.
The Dec. 3 Resistance Front meeting came in response to a decision the outgoing National Congress made the day before not to restore Zelaya to office. The deputies had voted 111 to 14, with three deputies absent, to uphold Decree 141-2009 of June 28, in which they rubberstamped Zelaya’s removal from office and replaced him with de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain. This vote, along with US recognition for the de facto government’s Nov. 29 elections, seems to guarantee that the coup regime will remain in power until Jan. 27, when Zelaya’s term expires [See Update #1014]. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 12/4/09; TeleSUR 12/4/09 via Vos el Soberano; Adital (Brazil) 12/3/09)
Like the Honduran resistance, the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) rejected what it called a “return to ‘business as usual.’” “The crisis in Honduras does not end with the election results,” Javier Zúñiga, head of the AI delegation in Honduras, said in a Dec. 3 statement. “There are dozens of people in Honduras still suffering the effects of the abuses carried out in the past five months. Failure to punish those responsible and to fix the malfunctioning system would open the door for more abuses in the future.”
AI called on the “future government” elected on Nov. 29 to “[r]epeal all legislation, decrees and executive orders issued by the de facto authorities”; take law enforcement powers away from the military; “[e]nsure that all members of the security forces are held accountable for human rights abuses” under the de facto regime; and “[d]evelop a National Plan for the protection of human rights.” The organization urged activist to send letters supporting these demands by going to: http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/call-honduras-hold-security-forces-accountable-human-rights-abuses. (AI statement 12/3/09; EFE 12/4/09 via Vos el Soberano)
On Dec. 4 the Mexican daily La Jornada published an article charging that Honduran members of the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei were a major force in the June 28 coup. Liberal Party (PL) politician Mauricio Villeda and PL presidential candidate Elvin Santos’ wife, Becky de Santos, are reportedly in Opus Dei, along with business leaders like Antonio Tavel Otero, who owns two-thirds of the country’s cell phone operations. In the first days of the coup, Tavel withdrew all advertising from media that opposed the de facto government, notably Radio Globo.
One of the causes of the June coup, according to Zelaya adviser Nelson Avila, was the president’s veto in May of a law Congress passed to ban the “morning after” contraceptive pill. The coup wasn’t really to fight the influence of leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, journalist Manuel Torres told La Jornada: “The coup responds to very conservative tendencies which are seeking to go backwards, not only in civil and political rights, but also in social rights. It’s a platform against change.” (LJ 12/4/09 from correspondent)
*2. Honduras: Confusion Wins in Turnout Dispute
On Dec. 4 the French wire service AFP reported that with 57% of the votes from Honduras’ Nov. 29 general elections officially counted, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had revised its earlier turnout estimate down from 61.3% to about 49%. Two days later, on Dec. 6, the CNN cable news network reported that it had gotten figures from TSE spokesperson Roberto Reyes Pineda showing that participation was at 56.6%, with 2,609,754 people voting out of a total of 4,611,000 registered voters. The TSE has to provide the final results within 30 days of the election. (Diario el Tiempo (Venezuela) 12/4/09 from AFP; AFP (in English)12/4/09; CNN 12/6/09)
Turnout was the main issue in the Nov. 29 vote. As expected, the center-right National Party (PN) carried the elections easily: PN candidate Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo won the presidency, and PN candidates took 71 of 128 seats in the National Congress, followed by candidates from the Liberal Party (PL, also center-right) with 44. But the de facto government, in place since June 28, was focused on getting a high turnout to back its insistence that the elections were legitimate. Deposed president Manuel Zelaya and other opponents of the de facto government called for voters to boycott the elections; they estimated that the turnout was just 30-40% [see Update #1014]. Participation in the 2005 general elections was about 55%. (Reuters 12/5/09)
The confusion in the official figures started at a press conference held the night of the elections. The TSE gave the media its own turnout projection of 61.3%--and also a figure of 47.6% from the election monitoring nonprofit Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD).
According to FHD representative Rolando Bú, the group had observers at 1,173 of the country’s approximately 8,000 polling places and based its projections on the voting at these polling places in previous elections; he put the method's margin of error at 1%. [Following our sources, in Update #1014 we reported incorrectly that the TSE had contracted the FHD to do exit polls.] The FHD says it has monitored electoral processes successfully in 80 countries. It gets funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega have accused the group of having links to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/1/09 from correspondent; Rebanadas de Realidad (Argentina) 12/1/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 12/1/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 12/4/09)
The US government and media have generally ignored the confusion, even with the TSE’s own figures showing three very different turnout rates. “Turnout was 61%--higher than in the previous election, and evidence that Hondurans had rejected Mr. Zelaya's call for a boycott,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on Dec. 2, without mentioning other estimates. “The biggest loser in the vote may be Mr. Zelaya,” the article added. US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Arturo Valenzuela called the elections “a significant step in Honduras' return to the democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup.” (WSJ 12/2/09)
*3. Mexico: Electrical Workers Continue Protests
On Dec. 4 tens of thousands of laid-off Mexican electrical workers and their supporters again took to the streets of the capital to protest Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. The center-right government claims it took the step because the company was inefficient and was losing money; opponents say the government is seeking to privatize the LFC and to break the powerful independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represented the company’s 44,000 active employees and some 23,000 retirees [see Update #1012].
Accompanied by unionists from the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the Autonomous National University of Mexico Workers Union (STUNAM) and other unions, along with students and activists from grassroots organizations, the electrical workers held marches on different avenues--Tlalpan, Insurgentes, Paseo de la Reforma and Zaragoza—ending in an eight-hour rally at the Monument of the Revolution. The protest was called the “taking of Mexico City” to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the entrance of revolutionary heroes Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa into the capital.
STUNAM leader Agustín Rodríguez told the protesters that they might need to “discuss a general strike,” but SME general secretary Martín Esparza indicated that the union and the government had resumed negotiations. He had met with governance undersecretary Gerónimo Gutiérrez, and the government had agreed to extend Social Security to all the laid-off workers for one year, Esparza said. The benefits, which in Mexico include healthcare, were to expire in a week for some 20,000 laid-off LFC workers who had refused to sign up for the government’s compensation package.
The SME has proposed a five-member team to mediate future talks with the government, including Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) rector José Narro Robles, National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) director general Enrique Villa Rivera, and Congress members from the three largest political parties. (La Jornada 12/5/09, __; La Luz Es del Pueblo blog 12/5/09, __)
*4. Bolivia: Morales Headed for Election Sweep?
According to exit polls by three different firms, Bolivian president Evo Morales appears to have won a second five-year term in general elections on Dec. 6 with 61-63.2% of the vote. Rightwing former Cochabamba governor Manfred Reyes Villa was projected to get 23-25%, followed by center-right business owner Samuel Doria Medina with 7%.
Morales, a leader in the cocalero (coca grower) movement who at his inauguration in 2006 became the country’s first indigenous president, was expected to win easily. There was more question about the results for the Plurinational Assembly, which will have 130 deputies and 36 senators. The exit polls indicated that Morales’ leftist Movement to Socialism (MAS) party had won the two-thirds majority it would need to pass major constitutional reforms. (AFP 12/6/09; El País (Spain)12/7/09 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic
Abortion Phone Line in Argentina: More Information, Fewer Risks
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2240/68/
Turning Activists Into Voters in Uruguay: The Frente Amplio and José Mujica
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2241/1/
Uruguay Elects Former Guerrilla as Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2229/68/
Honduran elections exposed
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4573
Honduras: "An election validated by blood and repression"
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4550
Honduran Elections Marred by Police Violence, Censorship, International Non-Recognition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2233/68/
Live From Honduras: Electoral Observations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2234/1/
Election Report From Honduras: The People Say “We Didn’t Vote!”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2235/1/
Honduran "Electoral Observers" Launch Verbal Attack on Americas Program Director
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/honduran-electoral-observers-launch.html
Latin America: Summit Does Not Recognise Elections in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2236/68/
Behind Bars in Honduras: An Interview with a Women's Rights Leader Before the 'Free' Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2239/1/
Operation Sofia: Documenting Genocide in Guatemala
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB297/index.htm
Electrifying Guatemala: Clean Energy and Development
https://nacla.org/node/6269
Win for Environmentalists as San Xavier Mine Suspends Activities
http://americasprogram.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/win-for-environmentalists-as-san-xavier-mine-suspends-activities/
A Giant Step Backward: The Dominican Republic Reforms Its Constitution
https://nacla.org/node/6278
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, December 1, 2009
WNU #1014: Former Rebel Wins Uruguayan Presidency
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1014, November 29, 2009
1. Uruguay: Former Rebel Wins Presidency
2. Honduras: Did Abstention Win the Vote?
3. Guatemala: Campesinos Continue Land Protests
4. Haiti: Charge Manipulation of 2010 Elections
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Uruguay: Former Rebel Wins Presidency
Honking car horns and waving flags in a heavy rain, tens of thousands of Uruguayans gathered on Montevideo’s main avenues the evening of Nov. 29 to celebrate the victory of José (“Pepe”) Mujica in that day’s runoff election for the presidency. According to projections based on early returns, Mujica, the candidate of the center-left Broad Front (Frente Amplio, FA), had won 50.1-51.6% of the votes, against 44.4-46.2% for former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995) of the center-right National Party. Mujica had been heavily favored in opinion polls, and Lacalle quickly conceded in a televised address.
Mujica and his running mate, former economy minister Danilo Astori, will begin a five-year term on Mar. 1. Mujica is succeeding the moderate socialist Tabaré Vázquez, who in 2004 became the first Broad Front candidate to win the presidency. (La Capital (Rosario, Argentina), 11/29/09; Reuters 11/29/09)
Mujica was a founding member of the rebel National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros (MLN-T). He participated in clandestine actions starting in 1969, was taken prisoner en 1970, and was one of the 111 prisoners, mostly Tupamaros, who broke out of the Punta Carretas prison in September 1971. He was captured again in 1972 and remained a prisoner under brutal conditions during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship. Freed by a 1985 amnesty, Mujica led the former urban guerrilleros into the Broad Front coalition in 1989, winning a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1995 and in the Senate in 1999. He is married to a Senator Lucía Topolansky, also a former member of the MLN-T. (Agence France Presse 11/29/09)
*2. Honduras: Did Abstention Win the Vote?
At about 10 pm on Nov. 29, Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced at a press conference that Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa of the center-right National Party (PN) had won the presidency in the general elections held that day; Hondurans also voted for deputies to the National Congress and the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and for members of the nation’s municipal governments. With 8,682 ballot boxes counted, about 60% of the total, Lobo had won 52.29% of the votes, while his main rival, Elvin Santos of the badly divided Liberal Party (PL, also center-right), trailed with 35.74%. The remaining three candidates got less than 3% each; more than 6% of the votes were blank or invalid. The TSE projected that the turnout was 61.3% of the voting population, about six percentage points higher than in the 2005 elections.
With these results, said Enrique Ortez Sequeira, a TSE magistrate from the PL, “the world is obliged to recognize us, because today we, seven million Hondurans, have told them that we want to live in peace and democracy.” (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 11/30/09)
Lobo had been expected to win easily. But the main issue in the election, voter turnout, was more difficult to resolve. Conservative forces were hoping to use the elections to legitimize the de facto government put in place when President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales was removed from office by a military coup on June 28. Zelaya and the labor and social movements that opposed the coup called for a boycott of the vote, and a number of Latin American nations announced that they wouldn’t recognize elections organized by a coup regime. Because of objections by many members, the Organization of American States (OAS) was unable to send observers [see Update #1013].
In a statement on Nov. 29, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations, said its national monitoring operation had found that “the level of abstention is, at a minimum, 65-70%, the highest in the nation’s history… In this form the people have castigated the coup-perpetrating candidates and the dictatorship.” (Frente Nacional de Resistencia Comunicado No. 40 11/29/09 via Vos el Soberano) “Abstention won, even counting the votes of all the candidates; abstention was more than 60% in the country,” President Zelaya said on Nov. 30. He noted that without electoral observers from the OAS, the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), "we can’t certify that the data that’s going to come out is correct.” (ANSA 11/30/09)
Some independent observers also cast doubt on the TSE’s projections of high turnout. A worker with the Danish Association for International Cooperation who visited voting centers in Tegucigalpa in the afternoon saw few voters, no lines and election workers passing the time in friendly conversations. (MS Central America 11/30/09)
Although not agreeing with the boycotters’ claims of 65-70% abstention, the nonprofit group that the TSE contracted to do exit polls, Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD), also disagreed with the official turnout projection of 61.3%. The FHD’s projection for turnout was about 47.6%, significantly lower than the 2005 turnout. At the Nov. 29 press conference, TSE magistrate Ortez Sequeira noted that the FHD’s exit polls were close to the TSE’s projections--except on the question of turnout. Skeptics also noted TSE president Saúl Escobar’s admission at the press conference that the electoral results were being delayed because of a technical problem in verifying the digitalized data. (El Tiempo 11/30/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/30/09)
With the legitimacy of his election under scrutiny, Porfirio Lobo has called for a “government of national unity, of reconciliation,” and has promised a “broad and sincere” dialogue of all the sectors. There has been speculation that if he assumes office when Zelaya’s term ends on Jan. 27, Lobo will extend an amnesty both to Zelaya and to the perpetrators of the coup. (BBC 11/30/09)
*3. Guatemala: Campesinos Continue Land Protests
Thousands of campesinos blocked highways in western Guatemala on Nov. 25 to press a demand for the government to allocate 350 million quetzales (about $42 million) to the National Lands Fund (Fontierras) for renting farmland to be used by more than 100,000 campesino families. The protesters stopped traffic on six highways in Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, Los Encuentros, and La Cumbre at kilometer 123 of the Las Verapaces and Las Victorias road, between Quetzaltenango and Colomba Costa Cuca. According to José Hernández—one of the leaders of the Coordinating Committee of Regional, Campesino and Independent Organizations, which called the protest—every two hours the protesters were opening the roads up and letting traffic pass for one hour. The organizers said 10,000 campesinos took part; the police estimate was 5,000.
Fontierras, with an annual budget of just $5 million, is supposed to carry out land reform by buying estates and turning them over to campesino groups. The protesters say the process is too slow to address the historic problem of land inequality in the country, which leaves many poor families without plots to farm. [Thousands of campesinos blocked roads in seven departments over land issues on June 4; see Update #992.]
The protesters also staged a sit-in on Nov. 25 outside the Congress building in Guatemala City, where members of health and road worker unions were protesting at the same time. The National Health Workers Union was calling for 1.290 billion quetzales (about $156 million) to be added to the annual public health budget, currently at 3.411 billion quetzales (about $411 million). (Miami Herald 11/25/09 from AP; Guatemala Hoy 11/26/09)
*4. Haiti: Charge Manipulation in 2010 Elections
On Nov. 25, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced that it was rejecting the applications of 16 of the 69 parties that submitted candidates for legislative elections scheduled to be held on Feb. 28. The largest of the rejected parties is the Lavalas Family (FL) of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004); among the others were the Lespwa (“Hope”) coalition, until now the party of current president René Préval; Working Together to Build Haiti (KONBA); the Union party; and the Solidarity Effort for the Construction of the People’s Camp (ESCAMP), formerly part of Lespwa. Voters are to elect 98 of the 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 10 of the country’s 30 senators.
Critics charged that President Préval was manipulating the elections to favor the Unity party, a new coalition with which he is replacing Lespwa, part of a process in which a number of parties and coalitions are regrouping. The Union party said it had been rejected after its coordinator, Chavannes Jeune, turned down an invitation from Préval to join Unity. CEP president Gaillot Dorsainvil insisted on Nov. 26 that the council had acted independently to exclude parties that hadn’t complied with the law.
Several of these groups are split by internal conflicts, as had been the case with the FL when the CEP wouldn’t include it in the Apr. 19 Senate elections earlier this year—the party had originally presented two different lists of candidates, and Aristide, the head of the party, reportedly refused to sign necessary paperwork as a protest against his removal from office in 2004 [see Update #980]. But this time LF director Maryse Narcisse presented a unified list with an authorization signed by Aristide, who has been in exile in South Africa since 2004.
Aristide confirmed this in an interview on Nov. 25 with Radio Solidarité, saying that the CEP’s decisions “shouldn’t be dictated by the government.” The ex-president, who usually avoids interviews, announced that he didn’t want to remain the head of the FL and that after a party congress was held, he would devote himself to education. (AlterPresse 11/24/09, 11/25/09, __; Haiti Press Network 11/25/09; Reuters 11/25/09; Radio Métropole 11/27/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Abortion Phone Line in Argentina: More Information, Less Risks
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6593
The Unpredictable Future: Stories From Worker-Run Factories in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2223/1/
Israeli Knesset demands extradition of Argentine junta officers
http://ww4report.com/node/8017
Brazil: Luladinejad
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/escobar251109.html
U.S. Court Allows Suit Against Bolivian Ex-President "Goni" and Minister of Defense to Proceed.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2224/1/
Afro-Peruvians receive official apology —but no reparations
http://ww4report.com/node/8006
US and Colombian Activists Target "World of Coca-Cola"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2225/1/
Tensions with Venezuela escalate as Bogotá boycotts Quito summit
http://ww4report.com/node/8008
Chavez Rejects U.S. Mediation in Venezuela-Colombia Spat, U.S. Withdrawal is “Only Solution”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2221/68/
Venezuela: anti-impunity activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8007
Salvadoran Gangs: Brutal Legacies and a Desperate Hope
https://nacla.org/node/6260
No Fair Election In Honduras Under Military Occupation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-frank/no-fair-election-in-hondu_b_371669.html
Honduras: Elections as coup laundering
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4535
Hearing at the IACHR on the Situation of Women's Rights within the Context of the Honduran Coup d'Etat
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6594
Report on Women's Human Rights Violations Shows Systematic Attack on Women Under Honduran Coup
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/report-on-womens-human-rights.html
Women Leaders Urge Clinton to Condemn Violence Against Women in Honduras
http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/home/article/clinton-openletter-honduras
Honduran Dictatorship Is A Threat to Democracy In the Hemisphere
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2222/68/
U.S. Groups That Supported Coups in Haiti and Venezuela Will Observe Elections in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2222/68/
Honduras: Coup Security Forces Raid Campesino Organization Day Before the Elections
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/coup-security-forces-raid-campesino.html
AFL-CIO Letter to Clinton Opposing Honduran Elections
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/afl-cio-letter-to-clinton-opposing.html
Honduras: real repression in prelude to bogus elections
http://ww4report.com/node/8009
Abortion in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6597
Mexico: Gender in the Workplace
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6595
Mexico: Call to Action in Solidarity with SME: Focus on Consulates, Send Letters, Emails
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=159#1063
Mexican radio journalist found assassinated in Jalisco
http://ww4report.com/node/8016
Mexico: anti-mining activist assassinated in Chiapas
http://ww4report.com/node/8020
Two-faced Democracy in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2227/1/
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 #1014, November 29, 2009
1. Uruguay: Former Rebel Wins Presidency
2. Honduras: Did Abstention Win the Vote?
3. Guatemala: Campesinos Continue Land Protests
4. Haiti: Charge Manipulation of 2010 Elections
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Uruguay: Former Rebel Wins Presidency
Honking car horns and waving flags in a heavy rain, tens of thousands of Uruguayans gathered on Montevideo’s main avenues the evening of Nov. 29 to celebrate the victory of José (“Pepe”) Mujica in that day’s runoff election for the presidency. According to projections based on early returns, Mujica, the candidate of the center-left Broad Front (Frente Amplio, FA), had won 50.1-51.6% of the votes, against 44.4-46.2% for former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995) of the center-right National Party. Mujica had been heavily favored in opinion polls, and Lacalle quickly conceded in a televised address.
Mujica and his running mate, former economy minister Danilo Astori, will begin a five-year term on Mar. 1. Mujica is succeeding the moderate socialist Tabaré Vázquez, who in 2004 became the first Broad Front candidate to win the presidency. (La Capital (Rosario, Argentina), 11/29/09; Reuters 11/29/09)
Mujica was a founding member of the rebel National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros (MLN-T). He participated in clandestine actions starting in 1969, was taken prisoner en 1970, and was one of the 111 prisoners, mostly Tupamaros, who broke out of the Punta Carretas prison in September 1971. He was captured again in 1972 and remained a prisoner under brutal conditions during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship. Freed by a 1985 amnesty, Mujica led the former urban guerrilleros into the Broad Front coalition in 1989, winning a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1995 and in the Senate in 1999. He is married to a Senator Lucía Topolansky, also a former member of the MLN-T. (Agence France Presse 11/29/09)
*2. Honduras: Did Abstention Win the Vote?
At about 10 pm on Nov. 29, Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced at a press conference that Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa of the center-right National Party (PN) had won the presidency in the general elections held that day; Hondurans also voted for deputies to the National Congress and the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and for members of the nation’s municipal governments. With 8,682 ballot boxes counted, about 60% of the total, Lobo had won 52.29% of the votes, while his main rival, Elvin Santos of the badly divided Liberal Party (PL, also center-right), trailed with 35.74%. The remaining three candidates got less than 3% each; more than 6% of the votes were blank or invalid. The TSE projected that the turnout was 61.3% of the voting population, about six percentage points higher than in the 2005 elections.
With these results, said Enrique Ortez Sequeira, a TSE magistrate from the PL, “the world is obliged to recognize us, because today we, seven million Hondurans, have told them that we want to live in peace and democracy.” (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 11/30/09)
Lobo had been expected to win easily. But the main issue in the election, voter turnout, was more difficult to resolve. Conservative forces were hoping to use the elections to legitimize the de facto government put in place when President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales was removed from office by a military coup on June 28. Zelaya and the labor and social movements that opposed the coup called for a boycott of the vote, and a number of Latin American nations announced that they wouldn’t recognize elections organized by a coup regime. Because of objections by many members, the Organization of American States (OAS) was unable to send observers [see Update #1013].
In a statement on Nov. 29, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations, said its national monitoring operation had found that “the level of abstention is, at a minimum, 65-70%, the highest in the nation’s history… In this form the people have castigated the coup-perpetrating candidates and the dictatorship.” (Frente Nacional de Resistencia Comunicado No. 40 11/29/09 via Vos el Soberano) “Abstention won, even counting the votes of all the candidates; abstention was more than 60% in the country,” President Zelaya said on Nov. 30. He noted that without electoral observers from the OAS, the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), "we can’t certify that the data that’s going to come out is correct.” (ANSA 11/30/09)
Some independent observers also cast doubt on the TSE’s projections of high turnout. A worker with the Danish Association for International Cooperation who visited voting centers in Tegucigalpa in the afternoon saw few voters, no lines and election workers passing the time in friendly conversations. (MS Central America 11/30/09)
Although not agreeing with the boycotters’ claims of 65-70% abstention, the nonprofit group that the TSE contracted to do exit polls, Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD), also disagreed with the official turnout projection of 61.3%. The FHD’s projection for turnout was about 47.6%, significantly lower than the 2005 turnout. At the Nov. 29 press conference, TSE magistrate Ortez Sequeira noted that the FHD’s exit polls were close to the TSE’s projections--except on the question of turnout. Skeptics also noted TSE president Saúl Escobar’s admission at the press conference that the electoral results were being delayed because of a technical problem in verifying the digitalized data. (El Tiempo 11/30/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/30/09)
With the legitimacy of his election under scrutiny, Porfirio Lobo has called for a “government of national unity, of reconciliation,” and has promised a “broad and sincere” dialogue of all the sectors. There has been speculation that if he assumes office when Zelaya’s term ends on Jan. 27, Lobo will extend an amnesty both to Zelaya and to the perpetrators of the coup. (BBC 11/30/09)
*3. Guatemala: Campesinos Continue Land Protests
Thousands of campesinos blocked highways in western Guatemala on Nov. 25 to press a demand for the government to allocate 350 million quetzales (about $42 million) to the National Lands Fund (Fontierras) for renting farmland to be used by more than 100,000 campesino families. The protesters stopped traffic on six highways in Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, Los Encuentros, and La Cumbre at kilometer 123 of the Las Verapaces and Las Victorias road, between Quetzaltenango and Colomba Costa Cuca. According to José Hernández—one of the leaders of the Coordinating Committee of Regional, Campesino and Independent Organizations, which called the protest—every two hours the protesters were opening the roads up and letting traffic pass for one hour. The organizers said 10,000 campesinos took part; the police estimate was 5,000.
Fontierras, with an annual budget of just $5 million, is supposed to carry out land reform by buying estates and turning them over to campesino groups. The protesters say the process is too slow to address the historic problem of land inequality in the country, which leaves many poor families without plots to farm. [Thousands of campesinos blocked roads in seven departments over land issues on June 4; see Update #992.]
The protesters also staged a sit-in on Nov. 25 outside the Congress building in Guatemala City, where members of health and road worker unions were protesting at the same time. The National Health Workers Union was calling for 1.290 billion quetzales (about $156 million) to be added to the annual public health budget, currently at 3.411 billion quetzales (about $411 million). (Miami Herald 11/25/09 from AP; Guatemala Hoy 11/26/09)
*4. Haiti: Charge Manipulation in 2010 Elections
On Nov. 25, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced that it was rejecting the applications of 16 of the 69 parties that submitted candidates for legislative elections scheduled to be held on Feb. 28. The largest of the rejected parties is the Lavalas Family (FL) of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004); among the others were the Lespwa (“Hope”) coalition, until now the party of current president René Préval; Working Together to Build Haiti (KONBA); the Union party; and the Solidarity Effort for the Construction of the People’s Camp (ESCAMP), formerly part of Lespwa. Voters are to elect 98 of the 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 10 of the country’s 30 senators.
Critics charged that President Préval was manipulating the elections to favor the Unity party, a new coalition with which he is replacing Lespwa, part of a process in which a number of parties and coalitions are regrouping. The Union party said it had been rejected after its coordinator, Chavannes Jeune, turned down an invitation from Préval to join Unity. CEP president Gaillot Dorsainvil insisted on Nov. 26 that the council had acted independently to exclude parties that hadn’t complied with the law.
Several of these groups are split by internal conflicts, as had been the case with the FL when the CEP wouldn’t include it in the Apr. 19 Senate elections earlier this year—the party had originally presented two different lists of candidates, and Aristide, the head of the party, reportedly refused to sign necessary paperwork as a protest against his removal from office in 2004 [see Update #980]. But this time LF director Maryse Narcisse presented a unified list with an authorization signed by Aristide, who has been in exile in South Africa since 2004.
Aristide confirmed this in an interview on Nov. 25 with Radio Solidarité, saying that the CEP’s decisions “shouldn’t be dictated by the government.” The ex-president, who usually avoids interviews, announced that he didn’t want to remain the head of the FL and that after a party congress was held, he would devote himself to education. (AlterPresse 11/24/09, 11/25/09, __; Haiti Press Network 11/25/09; Reuters 11/25/09; Radio Métropole 11/27/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Abortion Phone Line in Argentina: More Information, Less Risks
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6593
The Unpredictable Future: Stories From Worker-Run Factories in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2223/1/
Israeli Knesset demands extradition of Argentine junta officers
http://ww4report.com/node/8017
Brazil: Luladinejad
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/escobar251109.html
U.S. Court Allows Suit Against Bolivian Ex-President "Goni" and Minister of Defense to Proceed.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2224/1/
Afro-Peruvians receive official apology —but no reparations
http://ww4report.com/node/8006
US and Colombian Activists Target "World of Coca-Cola"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2225/1/
Tensions with Venezuela escalate as Bogotá boycotts Quito summit
http://ww4report.com/node/8008
Chavez Rejects U.S. Mediation in Venezuela-Colombia Spat, U.S. Withdrawal is “Only Solution”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2221/68/
Venezuela: anti-impunity activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8007
Salvadoran Gangs: Brutal Legacies and a Desperate Hope
https://nacla.org/node/6260
No Fair Election In Honduras Under Military Occupation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-frank/no-fair-election-in-hondu_b_371669.html
Honduras: Elections as coup laundering
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4535
Hearing at the IACHR on the Situation of Women's Rights within the Context of the Honduran Coup d'Etat
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6594
Report on Women's Human Rights Violations Shows Systematic Attack on Women Under Honduran Coup
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/report-on-womens-human-rights.html
Women Leaders Urge Clinton to Condemn Violence Against Women in Honduras
http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/home/article/clinton-openletter-honduras
Honduran Dictatorship Is A Threat to Democracy In the Hemisphere
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2222/68/
U.S. Groups That Supported Coups in Haiti and Venezuela Will Observe Elections in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2222/68/
Honduras: Coup Security Forces Raid Campesino Organization Day Before the Elections
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/coup-security-forces-raid-campesino.html
AFL-CIO Letter to Clinton Opposing Honduran Elections
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/afl-cio-letter-to-clinton-opposing.html
Honduras: real repression in prelude to bogus elections
http://ww4report.com/node/8009
Abortion in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6597
Mexico: Gender in the Workplace
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6595
Mexico: Call to Action in Solidarity with SME: Focus on Consulates, Send Letters, Emails
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=159#1063
Mexican radio journalist found assassinated in Jalisco
http://ww4report.com/node/8016
Mexico: anti-mining activist assassinated in Chiapas
http://ww4report.com/node/8020
Two-faced Democracy in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2227/1/
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, November 24, 2009
WNU #1013: Solidarity Wins for Honduran Maquila Workers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1013, November 22, 2009
1. Honduras: Solidarity Wins for Maquila Workers
2. Honduras: Isolated, De Factos Prepare for Vote
3. US: SOA Protest Highlights Honduras, El Salvador
4. Haiti: UN Troops Shoot Again
5. Links to alternative sources on: Economic Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, 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. Honduras: Solidarity Wins for Maquila Workers
On Nov. 17 the US-based United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) announced an agreement with Russell Athletic of Atlanta for the sports apparel maker to rehire 1,200 workers it laid off in January when it closed its Jerzees de Honduras plant soon after the workers joined a union. Russell, a subsidiary of Kentucky-based Fruit of the Loom, is to open a new maquiladora (tax-exempt assembly plant producing largely for export) in the same area as the old plant, the Choloma region of the northwestern Honduran department of Cortés. The new plant will be called Jerzees Nuevo Día (“Jerzees New Day”).
The agreement is the biggest win to date for the decade-old student movement against sweatshops, which organized at nearly 100 North American campuses to force colleges to end licensing agreements for Russell sportswear because of the company’s labor violations. The workers were represented by the local Union of Empresa Jerzees Workers (SITRAJERZEESH) and the national General Workers Central (CGT). Although the most conservative of the three main Honduran labor confederations, the CGT has been active in the resistance to a June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office; Honduran business owners generally supported the coup [see Updates #997, 1000].
The USAS-Russell agreement is expected to have a major impact on labor rights in Honduras. With eight maquiladoras and more than 10,000 workers in Honduras, Fruit of the Loom is the country’s largest private employer. "For Honduran workers this accord represents a real hope, especially in the midst of the unemployment crisis in our country,” said Evangelina Argueta, CGT coordinator in Choloma. “The support of the international organizations was very important.” (Honduras Laboral 11/18/09 from Red Solidaridad de la Maquila (RSM, Canada); New York Times 11/18/09; People’s Weekly World 11/19/09)
The agreement comes at a time when a five-year decline in the maquiladora sector has been worsened by the political crisis [see Update #1002]. Even the Catholic hierarchy seems to be concerned about getting the industry back on its feet. “Investment is very important,” Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga told the Wall Street Journal in early November. “With investments there are more jobs for our people.” Rodríguez, who backed the June 28 coup, admitted that investors “are not all saints…. But what should we do without those jobs?”
“Maquilas are especially important for women,” the cardinal added, “because their jobs have been a source of dignity. When they earn their own money they are no longer slaves to the macho man in their lives, who often is not even their husband.” (WSJ 11/16/09 from correspondent)
*2. Honduras: Isolated, De Factos Prepare for Vote
Guatemalan foreign minister Haroldo Rodas announced on Nov. 21 that Guatemala was not going to recognize the general elections to be held in Honduras on Nov. 29 under the de facto regime installed after the June 28 removal of President Manuel Zelaya. He added that Guatemala would not send observers to the elections. Spain was also planning not to send observers because it “cannot support” elections under these conditions, foreign ministry sources told the Spanish wire service EFE on Nov. 21.
Many Latin American governments have rejected the plan to proceed with the elections, although it is supported by the US. The presidents of two of the nations with the largest economies—Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—confirmed on Nov. 18 that their governments would not recognize the elections if they are held under the coup regime. Ecuador has the same position, according to Foreign Minister Fander Falconí. Organization of American States (OAS) general secretary José Miguel Insulza has said that that organization can’t send observers because the representatives of Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela indicated at a special meeting at the beginning of November that their governments wouldn’t recognize the elections.
Despite the boycott, a delegation of 250 election observers has been put together. It will include two former center-right Latin American presidents: Vicente Fox Quesada of Mexico (2000-2006) and Alejandro Toledo of Peru (2001-2006). The main Guatemalan business group, the Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF), has agreed to participate. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 11/21/09 from EFE; ADN.es (Spain) 11/21/09 from EFE; Radio YVKE Mundial (Venezuela) 11/22/09; Reuters 11/18/09)
On Nov. 20 Esdras Amado López, director of the Cholusat Sur Canal 36 television station, said his channel was “off the air because its signal has been interrupted with a signal from a parallel transmitter” playing “pornographic films and some westerns.” “[T]errorists paid by the government of [de facto president Roberto] Micheletti” are responsible, according to López. He wrote National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) head Miguel Angel Rodas asking for his “immediate attention to an extremely delicate matter taking place in the moment during which Honduras is getting ready to be present at an electoral process in which freedom of the press is an important bastion for legitimizing the process.”
Canal 36 and Radio Globo are the two largest broadcast media that have opposed the coup. The de facto government shut down both of them temporarily in the first days of the coup. (EFE 11/20/09; Vos el Soberano 11/20/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/20/09)
On the weekend of Nov. 21 the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), one of the country’s leading human rights organizations, warned of a deterioration in the human rights situation as the elections approached. COFADEH reported that there was an unusual deployment of soldiers, police agents and paramilitary groups in the country and that the military had acquired new equipment, including an armored car, a powerful water cannon and a chemical that would enable the authorities to identify anyone hit by the water for 48 hours. The group called for the international community to stay on alert about the situation. (Vos el Soberano 11/22/09 from Defensoresenlinea.com; Prensa Latina 11/22/09)
*3. US: SOA Protest Highlights Honduras, El Salvador
Four people were arrested for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia on Nov. 22 as thousands marched through pouring rain in an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The school trains Latin American soldiers; SOA Watch, which sponsors the protests, says SOA graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. Organizers didn’t give a crowd estimate this year, but Columbus police said there were 4,732 protesters at 10 am, down from 7,497 at the same time in 2008. The largest demonstration to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants [see Update #875]; 286 activists have served up to two years in prison for civil disobedience at the base since the protests began in 1990.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989 murder of six Jesuits, along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador. SOA graduates have been held responsible for the murders; activists started the Fort Benning protests a year later to highlight the connection. This year’s participants included Colombian human rights defenders and Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH). According to SOA Watch, two of the leaders of the June 28 coup d’état in Honduras, Armed Forces head Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez and Air Force head Gen. Luis Prince Suazo, received training at the SOA.
At this year’s protest, John Meyer of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) announced that his organization was nominating SOA Watch and its founder, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, for the Nobel peace prize; the AFSC was one of two Quaker organizations that won the prize in 1947 for their humanitarian work. (SOA Watch press release 11/22/09; EFE 11/22/09; Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus) 11/22/09)
*4. Haiti: UN Troops Shoot Again
Chilean troops from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) wounded one local man in the early morning of Nov. 10 when they opened fire on a crowd in Grand-Goâve, a town south of Port-au-Prince in the West Department, according to Haitian witnesses. Chilean Gen. Ricardo Toro Tassara said airborne troops from Chile’s 514-member contingent landed during a nighttime training exercise when one of their UH-1H helicopters developed a mechanical problem. At daybreak a crowd of 200 residents gathered around the helicopter asking for food and water, Toro Tassara said, and when some came “closer than necessary,” the soldiers fired into the air to disperse them.
Residents who were at the scene said the soldiers would not let anyone cross the field where they had landed, including farmers who wanted to reach the beach to go fishing. The troops fired several rounds into the field, according to the residents, and Rinvil Jean Weldy, a health worker from the neighborhood, was shot in the shoulder. “I want justice and reparations,” he told the Inter Press Service (IPS). “Weldy was there like everybody, he wasn't doing anything wrong,” resident Natacha Louis said. “We want MINUSTAH to leave." (EFE 11/11/2009; IPS 11/20/09)
Haitians have repeatedly accused MINUSTAH troops of firing indiscriminately. Two or three people, including a 10-year-old boy, were reportedly wounded in early June during protests by university students in Port-au-Prince for a higher minimum wage, and a young man was shot dead during the funeral of popular priest Gérard Jean-Juste on June 18 [see Updates #993, 994]. On Nov. 18 Haitian police arrested two professors, 12 students and two employees of the State University of Haiti (UEH) as they protested to mark the 206th anniversary of the defeat of French forces by Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the battle of Vertières. The demonstration was organized by the UEH Crisis Committee, the Association of Dessalinian University Students (ASID), the Autonomous Federation of Haitian Workers (CATH) and others to protest the handling of a curriculum dispute at UEH and “to say ‘no’ to the occupation of the country by a foreign force.” (AlterPresse 11/19/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Economic Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico
Impact of Crisis in Latin America Less Severe than in the Past
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2218/68/
Argentina moves to compel DNA from suspected "dirty war" children
http://ww4report.com/node/7971
From Chile to Guatemala: A Gringo in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2213/1/
Chile: Toward Reconstruction of the Mapuche Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2212/68/
Brazil: Guarani teacher missing after violence over ancestral lands
http://ww4report.com/node/7953
Brazil: protests greet Ahmadinejad at start of South American tour
http://ww4report.com/node/7995
Beyond the Votes in Bolivia: A Reflection on Evo Morales’ First Term
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2216/1/
Peruvian police peddle "pishtaco" paranoia
http://ww4report.com/node/7967
Colombia: secret police agent gets mobbed, guerilla suspect "unarrested"
http://ww4report.com/node/7949
Tensions rise as Venezuela blows up footbridges on Colombian border
http://ww4report.com/node/7966
Venezuela arrests one terrorist, praises another
http://ww4report.com/node/7988
Panama: police back up cattle company bulldozers to evict indigenous community
http://ww4report.com/node/7990
Nicaragua: political violence leaves one dead
http://ww4report.com/node/7989
El Salvador's gold fight goes international
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4473&updaterx=2009-11-13+17%3A25%3A23
Guatemala: Beneath the Rock and the Storm - Photo Essay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2217/1/
A New United Movement Stops Mexico for a Day
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2214/1/
Mexican Supreme Court Finds Oaxaca Governor Responsible for Human Rights Violations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6579
Mexico: A War Against Organized Crime Becomes a War Against Organized Labor
https://nacla.org/node/6251
Mexican Layoffs, U.S. Immigration: The Missing Link
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/wilson221109.html
Explosions of Unrest Mark Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6254
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 #1013, November 22, 2009
1. Honduras: Solidarity Wins for Maquila Workers
2. Honduras: Isolated, De Factos Prepare for Vote
3. US: SOA Protest Highlights Honduras, El Salvador
4. Haiti: UN Troops Shoot Again
5. Links to alternative sources on: Economic Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, 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. Honduras: Solidarity Wins for Maquila Workers
On Nov. 17 the US-based United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) announced an agreement with Russell Athletic of Atlanta for the sports apparel maker to rehire 1,200 workers it laid off in January when it closed its Jerzees de Honduras plant soon after the workers joined a union. Russell, a subsidiary of Kentucky-based Fruit of the Loom, is to open a new maquiladora (tax-exempt assembly plant producing largely for export) in the same area as the old plant, the Choloma region of the northwestern Honduran department of Cortés. The new plant will be called Jerzees Nuevo Día (“Jerzees New Day”).
The agreement is the biggest win to date for the decade-old student movement against sweatshops, which organized at nearly 100 North American campuses to force colleges to end licensing agreements for Russell sportswear because of the company’s labor violations. The workers were represented by the local Union of Empresa Jerzees Workers (SITRAJERZEESH) and the national General Workers Central (CGT). Although the most conservative of the three main Honduran labor confederations, the CGT has been active in the resistance to a June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office; Honduran business owners generally supported the coup [see Updates #997, 1000].
The USAS-Russell agreement is expected to have a major impact on labor rights in Honduras. With eight maquiladoras and more than 10,000 workers in Honduras, Fruit of the Loom is the country’s largest private employer. "For Honduran workers this accord represents a real hope, especially in the midst of the unemployment crisis in our country,” said Evangelina Argueta, CGT coordinator in Choloma. “The support of the international organizations was very important.” (Honduras Laboral 11/18/09 from Red Solidaridad de la Maquila (RSM, Canada); New York Times 11/18/09; People’s Weekly World 11/19/09)
The agreement comes at a time when a five-year decline in the maquiladora sector has been worsened by the political crisis [see Update #1002]. Even the Catholic hierarchy seems to be concerned about getting the industry back on its feet. “Investment is very important,” Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga told the Wall Street Journal in early November. “With investments there are more jobs for our people.” Rodríguez, who backed the June 28 coup, admitted that investors “are not all saints…. But what should we do without those jobs?”
“Maquilas are especially important for women,” the cardinal added, “because their jobs have been a source of dignity. When they earn their own money they are no longer slaves to the macho man in their lives, who often is not even their husband.” (WSJ 11/16/09 from correspondent)
*2. Honduras: Isolated, De Factos Prepare for Vote
Guatemalan foreign minister Haroldo Rodas announced on Nov. 21 that Guatemala was not going to recognize the general elections to be held in Honduras on Nov. 29 under the de facto regime installed after the June 28 removal of President Manuel Zelaya. He added that Guatemala would not send observers to the elections. Spain was also planning not to send observers because it “cannot support” elections under these conditions, foreign ministry sources told the Spanish wire service EFE on Nov. 21.
Many Latin American governments have rejected the plan to proceed with the elections, although it is supported by the US. The presidents of two of the nations with the largest economies—Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—confirmed on Nov. 18 that their governments would not recognize the elections if they are held under the coup regime. Ecuador has the same position, according to Foreign Minister Fander Falconí. Organization of American States (OAS) general secretary José Miguel Insulza has said that that organization can’t send observers because the representatives of Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela indicated at a special meeting at the beginning of November that their governments wouldn’t recognize the elections.
Despite the boycott, a delegation of 250 election observers has been put together. It will include two former center-right Latin American presidents: Vicente Fox Quesada of Mexico (2000-2006) and Alejandro Toledo of Peru (2001-2006). The main Guatemalan business group, the Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF), has agreed to participate. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 11/21/09 from EFE; ADN.es (Spain) 11/21/09 from EFE; Radio YVKE Mundial (Venezuela) 11/22/09; Reuters 11/18/09)
On Nov. 20 Esdras Amado López, director of the Cholusat Sur Canal 36 television station, said his channel was “off the air because its signal has been interrupted with a signal from a parallel transmitter” playing “pornographic films and some westerns.” “[T]errorists paid by the government of [de facto president Roberto] Micheletti” are responsible, according to López. He wrote National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) head Miguel Angel Rodas asking for his “immediate attention to an extremely delicate matter taking place in the moment during which Honduras is getting ready to be present at an electoral process in which freedom of the press is an important bastion for legitimizing the process.”
Canal 36 and Radio Globo are the two largest broadcast media that have opposed the coup. The de facto government shut down both of them temporarily in the first days of the coup. (EFE 11/20/09; Vos el Soberano 11/20/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/20/09)
On the weekend of Nov. 21 the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), one of the country’s leading human rights organizations, warned of a deterioration in the human rights situation as the elections approached. COFADEH reported that there was an unusual deployment of soldiers, police agents and paramilitary groups in the country and that the military had acquired new equipment, including an armored car, a powerful water cannon and a chemical that would enable the authorities to identify anyone hit by the water for 48 hours. The group called for the international community to stay on alert about the situation. (Vos el Soberano 11/22/09 from Defensoresenlinea.com; Prensa Latina 11/22/09)
*3. US: SOA Protest Highlights Honduras, El Salvador
Four people were arrested for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia on Nov. 22 as thousands marched through pouring rain in an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The school trains Latin American soldiers; SOA Watch, which sponsors the protests, says SOA graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. Organizers didn’t give a crowd estimate this year, but Columbus police said there were 4,732 protesters at 10 am, down from 7,497 at the same time in 2008. The largest demonstration to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants [see Update #875]; 286 activists have served up to two years in prison for civil disobedience at the base since the protests began in 1990.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989 murder of six Jesuits, along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador. SOA graduates have been held responsible for the murders; activists started the Fort Benning protests a year later to highlight the connection. This year’s participants included Colombian human rights defenders and Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH). According to SOA Watch, two of the leaders of the June 28 coup d’état in Honduras, Armed Forces head Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez and Air Force head Gen. Luis Prince Suazo, received training at the SOA.
At this year’s protest, John Meyer of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) announced that his organization was nominating SOA Watch and its founder, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, for the Nobel peace prize; the AFSC was one of two Quaker organizations that won the prize in 1947 for their humanitarian work. (SOA Watch press release 11/22/09; EFE 11/22/09; Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus) 11/22/09)
*4. Haiti: UN Troops Shoot Again
Chilean troops from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) wounded one local man in the early morning of Nov. 10 when they opened fire on a crowd in Grand-Goâve, a town south of Port-au-Prince in the West Department, according to Haitian witnesses. Chilean Gen. Ricardo Toro Tassara said airborne troops from Chile’s 514-member contingent landed during a nighttime training exercise when one of their UH-1H helicopters developed a mechanical problem. At daybreak a crowd of 200 residents gathered around the helicopter asking for food and water, Toro Tassara said, and when some came “closer than necessary,” the soldiers fired into the air to disperse them.
Residents who were at the scene said the soldiers would not let anyone cross the field where they had landed, including farmers who wanted to reach the beach to go fishing. The troops fired several rounds into the field, according to the residents, and Rinvil Jean Weldy, a health worker from the neighborhood, was shot in the shoulder. “I want justice and reparations,” he told the Inter Press Service (IPS). “Weldy was there like everybody, he wasn't doing anything wrong,” resident Natacha Louis said. “We want MINUSTAH to leave." (EFE 11/11/2009; IPS 11/20/09)
Haitians have repeatedly accused MINUSTAH troops of firing indiscriminately. Two or three people, including a 10-year-old boy, were reportedly wounded in early June during protests by university students in Port-au-Prince for a higher minimum wage, and a young man was shot dead during the funeral of popular priest Gérard Jean-Juste on June 18 [see Updates #993, 994]. On Nov. 18 Haitian police arrested two professors, 12 students and two employees of the State University of Haiti (UEH) as they protested to mark the 206th anniversary of the defeat of French forces by Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the battle of Vertières. The demonstration was organized by the UEH Crisis Committee, the Association of Dessalinian University Students (ASID), the Autonomous Federation of Haitian Workers (CATH) and others to protest the handling of a curriculum dispute at UEH and “to say ‘no’ to the occupation of the country by a foreign force.” (AlterPresse 11/19/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Economic Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico
Impact of Crisis in Latin America Less Severe than in the Past
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2218/68/
Argentina moves to compel DNA from suspected "dirty war" children
http://ww4report.com/node/7971
From Chile to Guatemala: A Gringo in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2213/1/
Chile: Toward Reconstruction of the Mapuche Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2212/68/
Brazil: Guarani teacher missing after violence over ancestral lands
http://ww4report.com/node/7953
Brazil: protests greet Ahmadinejad at start of South American tour
http://ww4report.com/node/7995
Beyond the Votes in Bolivia: A Reflection on Evo Morales’ First Term
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2216/1/
Peruvian police peddle "pishtaco" paranoia
http://ww4report.com/node/7967
Colombia: secret police agent gets mobbed, guerilla suspect "unarrested"
http://ww4report.com/node/7949
Tensions rise as Venezuela blows up footbridges on Colombian border
http://ww4report.com/node/7966
Venezuela arrests one terrorist, praises another
http://ww4report.com/node/7988
Panama: police back up cattle company bulldozers to evict indigenous community
http://ww4report.com/node/7990
Nicaragua: political violence leaves one dead
http://ww4report.com/node/7989
El Salvador's gold fight goes international
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4473&updaterx=2009-11-13+17%3A25%3A23
Guatemala: Beneath the Rock and the Storm - Photo Essay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2217/1/
A New United Movement Stops Mexico for a Day
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2214/1/
Mexican Supreme Court Finds Oaxaca Governor Responsible for Human Rights Violations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6579
Mexico: A War Against Organized Crime Becomes a War Against Organized Labor
https://nacla.org/node/6251
Mexican Layoffs, U.S. Immigration: The Missing Link
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/wilson221109.html
Explosions of Unrest Mark Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6254
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, November 17, 2009
WNU #1012: Actions in Mexico Protest Layoffs
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1012, November 15, 2009
1. Mexico: Nationwide Actions Protest Layoffs
2. Honduras: More Candidates Join Election Boycott
3. Panama: Students Protest “US Bases”
4. Dominican Republic: One Dead in New Blackout Protests
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Global Warming, Terror Threats
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Nationwide Actions Protest Layoffs
Tens of thousands of unionists, campesinos, students, and members of grassroots organizations and left and center-left parties demonstrated in Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and more than 20 of the country’s 31 states on Nov. 11 to express solidarity with some 44,000 electrical workers laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10 [see Updates #1007, 1008, 1009].
Mexico City was paralyzed as members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represents the LFC workers, led marches from five different points in the city starting early in the morning of Nov. 11. Miners, telephone and transportation workers, and employees and students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which suspended classes for the day, joined the protesters as they moved around the city, rallying at various government buildings. Adding to the disruption of traffic, protesters blocked major arteries in the states surrounding the capital.
The actions outside the city were sometimes violent. There were 10 arrests and a number of injuries as protesters and agents of the Federal Police (PF) confronted each other near Tlalnepantla, México state, north of Mexico City on the México-Querétaro highway. Shots were fired; the government blamed the protesters, who said that they were unarmed and that the police had shot in the air. Protesters also blocked roads in Ecatepec de Morelos and Nezahualcóyotl. Some 400 SME members massed on the Peñón-Texcoco turnpike, joined by students and teachers from the Chapingo Autonomous University and by activists from the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino organization based in San Salvador Atenco, México state. The protesters took over the tollbooth and let cars drive on the turnpike without paying. Other activists opened up the México-Pachuca turnpike to traffic at Pirámides. PF agents used tear gas and anti-riot equipment to disperse protesters blocking the entrances to the city from Puebla state and Cuernavaca, Morelos, in the east and south. Residents of Mexico City’s Xochimilco and Tlalpan boroughs who had been blocking the Cuernavaca highway regrouped and hurled rocks at the police.
At the end of 12 hours of actions, many of the protesters went into the capital to join a march and rally in the central Zócalo plaza. More than 200,000 people participated in the closing demonstration, according to the SME; the DF police put the number at 60,000. Two well-known activist bishops, Samuel Ruiz García, former bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, and Raúl Vera López, bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila, sent solidarity messages.
In the southeastern state of Chiapas solidarity actions also targeted recent tax hikes and the arrests of farmer leaders accused of having links with armed groups. In the southern state of Oaxaca, an estimated 70,000 school teachers carried out a one-day strike, and the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) took over the offices of the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), the country’s larger publicly owned electrical company, into which the LFC is being merged. In the north, hundreds of telephone workers, leftists and social activists held public marches in Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua state. (Frontera NorteSur (FNS) 11/12/09 via MexiData.info; Latin American Herald Tribune 11/11/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/12/09, __)
An editorial in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada called Nov. 11 “a day without precedent in the history of the country’s popular causes,” an action which brought together “the different sectors of the opposition—the parties, the unions, the social organizations.” The paper called this “the possible birth of a broad bloc antagonistic to the political-business-alliance that holds the country’s power (public and private).” SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores raised the possibility of planning a national general strike. He noted that in 2010 Mexico will celebrate the bicentennial of its war of independence from Spain and the centennial of the revolution against the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship: “And as before, we will defeat the transnationals, the dictatorship, tyranny and violations of the Constitution. It’s time for the people to organize.” (LJ 11/12/09, __; FNS 11/12/09)
On Nov. 12 Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón discounted the ability of the SME and its supporters to mount a general strike. He said that 24,149 laid-off LFC workers, 54.2% of the total workforce, had already signed up for the governemt's severance package; in the government’s view, workers lose the ability to challenge their termination if they accept the severance agreement. On Nov. 14, the deadline for signing with the government, reporters found a low turnout at the centers where the former employees could file their papers. One young worker arrived with his wife, who needed treatment for a kidney ailment, and their two children. “I’m coming here against my will, from necessity,” he told a reporter. “I support the compañeros all the way, I’m a unionist and I’ll put up with blows, insults and what have you...but not my children.” (LJ 12/13/09, 12/15/09)
In other news, in Oaxaca on Nov. 9 federal magistrate Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez ruled that evidence the federal government had presented against APPO activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will was “false” and “prefabricated.” Will was shot during a demonstration against Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz on Oct. 27, 2006; activists and Will’s friends and family have insisted that he was killed by Ruiz’s supporters, not by APPO activists [see Update #964]. Magistrate Santiago ordered district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez to free Martínez Moreno within 48 hours. The government can appeal, and the activist’s attorney, Gilberto López, said he didn’t expect his client to be released immediately. (EFE 11/9/09; Milenio (Mexico) 11/9/09)
*2. Honduras: More Candidates Join Election Boycott
In a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua, on Nov. 13, the mayor of San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second largest city, confirmed that he was no longer running for another term in general elections scheduled for Nov. 29. “The people don’t believe in this process, because these are elections where absolutely nothing is going to get elected,” Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunceri said. A member of the center-right Liberal Party (PL), Padilla joined a growing number of candidates who have withdrawn from the race in order to protest the control of the process by a de facto government put in place after a military coup removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office on June 28 [see Update #1011]. Padilla was the frontrunner in polls taken before the coup. The Nov. 29 general elections are intended to elect the president, the 128 members of the National Congress, 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and members of the country’s municipal governments.
Independent presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes officially withdrew from the race on Nov. 9. A former unionist with strong links to the grassroots movement against the coup, Reyes was third in a field of six candidates, according to polls. The frontrunner is Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the rightwing National Party (PN); Liberal candidate Elvin Santos trails him by 15-20%, according to political analyst Gustavo Irías. Santos is badly damaged by a split in the PL between supporters of President Zelaya and supporters of de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain; both are members of the party.
The mayoral candidates boycotting the election include Heber Iván Gómez Mendoza, PL candidate in Morolica, Choluteca department; Luis Alberto Posadas Alfar, an independent candidate in Danlí, El Paraíso; and Gladys Gloria Ebanks Campell, an independent candidate on Roatán island, Islas de la Bahía department. The small leftist Democratic Unification (UD) is badly split, with presidential candidate César Ham planning to continue in the race while many other candidates want to withdraw; the party will lose its place on the ballot and government matching funds if too many candidates drop out. The Party of Innovation and Social Democratic Unity (PINU) is also split. The leadership supports the coup, but many candidates for Congress oppose it and may withdraw, so that this party too could lose its ballot position. (EFE 11/13/09; Comun-Noticias 11/13/09 via Honduras Laboral blog; La Jornada 11/14/09 from correspondent)
During the night of Nov. 12 an explosive device was detonated in a Tegucigalpa residential neighborhood without causing any damage or injuries. The police and the media originally said an airplane flew over the city and dropped a bomb on a location where ballots were being stored for the Nov. 29 elections, even though no damage was reported there. The airplane turned to be a commercial flight from Guatemala. Later an RPG-1 grenade-launching device was discovered in the area, and the military announced that unidentified persons had attempted to hit the storehouse but had overshot it. “We have preliminary information about some actions which people who are from the left are carrying out,” Armed Forces head Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez said at a Nov. 13 press conference. "We know where these artifacts come from,” said Gen. Miguel Ángel García Padgett, the army’s commander. “[T]hey cross over the border and are artifacts of Russian or Chinese origin, and they are precisely the ones used by people of a leftist tendency.”
Unionist Juan Barahona, a coordinator of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, insisted that the opposition’s strategy was a nonviolent boycott of the elections. “The people don’t have the ability to do these things [bombings]. Here the only ones who have this ability are the police and the Armed Forces.” He charged that the military had used similar tactics in its campaign against the left in the 1980s. “They are the ones responsible; they’re generating an environment so that later they can generate the repression they’ve got planned and can consolidate the coup,” he said.
The Front has been focused on printing up and distributing handbills and posters calling on people to boycott the voting. (EFE 11/13/09 via ADN.es; LJ 11/14/09; Adital (Brazil) 11/13/09)
*3. Panama: Students Protest “US Bases”
Students from the Student Revolutionary Front (FER-29) and the University Popular Bloc closed off one of Panama City’s main arteries for more than an hour on Nov. 11 to protest what they said were plans to open US military bases in Panama. Police agents dispersed the demonstrators with water cannons and tear gas and arrested 16 students, most of them from the Arts and Trades College. On Nov. 12 Governance and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino told reporters that the four bases the students were protesting would be “100% Panamanian.” They are to be under the control of the Air-Navy Service (SENAN) and the National Border Service (Senafront) as part of the agencies’ effort to control the transport of narcotics through Panama, he said. “They are not military bases.”
According to Mulina, the government is opening up the first of the bases on Chapera island before Nov. 30. The others are to be in Darién province, near the border with Colombia, and in the La Perlas archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. According to the Venezuelan-based TeleSUR television network, on Oct. 20 Mulina had referred to two bases the US would set up in Panama, but in his Nov. 12 statement the minister clarified that while the bases would be Panamanian, they were part of the Mérida Initiative, a US-funded operation to fight the drug trade in Mexico and Central America. The US military had as many as 100 bases in Panama before the US withdrawal from the Panama Canal was completed in 1999. (EFE 11/11/09; ABC.com (Paraguay) 11/12/09 from ANSA; TeleSUR 11/13/09, some from EFE) [Many activists in Mexico and the US oppose the Mérida Initiative, calling it “Plan Mexico,” on the model of the US-sponsored Plan Colombia; see Update #987.]
*4. Dominican Republic: One Dead in New Blackout Protests
One person was killed and one wounded in the early morning of Nov. 11 during protests over power outages in the community of Canca, Licey al Medio municipality, in the northern Dominican province of Santiago. Police spokesperson Jesús Cordero Paredes told the Spanish EFE news service that masked protesters had been blocking a highway with tree trunks and burning tires at 3am when Ramón Martín Medina Rivas and Emilio José Vargas drove up to the barricade in a truck carrying plantains and other farm products to be sold in the Santiago market. The protesters fired on the truck, killing Medina and wounding Vargas, according to the police.
Víctor Bretón, a spokesperson for the Broad Front of Popular Struggle (FALPO), condemned the killing and denied that members of his grassroots coalition were involved. The demonstrations had started on Nov. 10 over repeated blackouts and a number of local grievances, including the construction of a sports stadium. Working-class neighborhoods in the provincial capital, Santiago de los 30 Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, have reported 12-hour blackouts, while outages are said to have lasted up to 20 hours in the northwest of the country. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which approved a de $1.7 billion credit program for the Dominican Republic on Nov. 9, has called for restructuring the electrical sector. (EFE 11/11/09) [The sector was privatized in the 1990s. At least two other people have died in protests over blackouts in the Dominican Republic this year; see Update #998.]
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Global Warming, Terror Threats
New DNA Law in Argentina Will Help Find the Missing Grandchildren
https://nacla.org/node/6247
Brazil claims progress against Amazon destruction
http://ww4report.com/node/7939
Evo Morales: US has military designs on Bolivia's hydrocarbons
http://ww4report.com/node/7946
Peru: oil majors eye Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/7945
World indigenous leaders condemn Peru's Amazon repression
http://ww4report.com/node/7944
Colombia: Cauca militarized after deadly FARC attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7936
Colombia, Venezuela in new border incident as tensions mount
http://ww4report.com/node/7948
Venezuela: Chávez faces off with governor of militarized Táchira
http://ww4report.com/node/7935
Venezuelan blackouts: corporate media gloat —Chávez ignores lessons?
http://ww4report.com/node/7947
El Salvador Devastated by Hurricane Ida - Support People to People Disaster Relief Via CISPES
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2209/68/
Emergency aid for El Salvador
http://ww4report.com/node/7927
Honduras: US seeks "happy end" —at cost of democracy?
http://ww4report.com/node/7934
Academics and Experts on Latin America Call on Obama to Denounce Human Rights Abuses by Honduran Dictatorship
https://nacla.org/node/6244
Honduran Resistance Calls for Deepening of Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2201/1/
Video Documentary: Honduran Voices
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2205/1/
U.S. State Department Sells Out Honduran Democracy for Senate Confirmations
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-state-department-sells-out-honduran.html
Honduras Revisited
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6565
President Zelaya to President Obama: Walk the Talk
http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/president-zelaya-to-president-obama.html
Electrical Workers of Mexico Take on Calderon Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2200/1/
UN peacekeepers for northern Mexico?
http://ww4report.com/node/7950
From Greenland to Andes, signs mount of climate shift
http://ww4report.com/node/7938
Manufacturing a Terror Threat in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2208/1/
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 #1012, November 15, 2009
1. Mexico: Nationwide Actions Protest Layoffs
2. Honduras: More Candidates Join Election Boycott
3. Panama: Students Protest “US Bases”
4. Dominican Republic: One Dead in New Blackout Protests
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Global Warming, Terror Threats
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Nationwide Actions Protest Layoffs
Tens of thousands of unionists, campesinos, students, and members of grassroots organizations and left and center-left parties demonstrated in Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and more than 20 of the country’s 31 states on Nov. 11 to express solidarity with some 44,000 electrical workers laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10 [see Updates #1007, 1008, 1009].
Mexico City was paralyzed as members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represents the LFC workers, led marches from five different points in the city starting early in the morning of Nov. 11. Miners, telephone and transportation workers, and employees and students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which suspended classes for the day, joined the protesters as they moved around the city, rallying at various government buildings. Adding to the disruption of traffic, protesters blocked major arteries in the states surrounding the capital.
The actions outside the city were sometimes violent. There were 10 arrests and a number of injuries as protesters and agents of the Federal Police (PF) confronted each other near Tlalnepantla, México state, north of Mexico City on the México-Querétaro highway. Shots were fired; the government blamed the protesters, who said that they were unarmed and that the police had shot in the air. Protesters also blocked roads in Ecatepec de Morelos and Nezahualcóyotl. Some 400 SME members massed on the Peñón-Texcoco turnpike, joined by students and teachers from the Chapingo Autonomous University and by activists from the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino organization based in San Salvador Atenco, México state. The protesters took over the tollbooth and let cars drive on the turnpike without paying. Other activists opened up the México-Pachuca turnpike to traffic at Pirámides. PF agents used tear gas and anti-riot equipment to disperse protesters blocking the entrances to the city from Puebla state and Cuernavaca, Morelos, in the east and south. Residents of Mexico City’s Xochimilco and Tlalpan boroughs who had been blocking the Cuernavaca highway regrouped and hurled rocks at the police.
At the end of 12 hours of actions, many of the protesters went into the capital to join a march and rally in the central Zócalo plaza. More than 200,000 people participated in the closing demonstration, according to the SME; the DF police put the number at 60,000. Two well-known activist bishops, Samuel Ruiz García, former bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, and Raúl Vera López, bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila, sent solidarity messages.
In the southeastern state of Chiapas solidarity actions also targeted recent tax hikes and the arrests of farmer leaders accused of having links with armed groups. In the southern state of Oaxaca, an estimated 70,000 school teachers carried out a one-day strike, and the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) took over the offices of the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), the country’s larger publicly owned electrical company, into which the LFC is being merged. In the north, hundreds of telephone workers, leftists and social activists held public marches in Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua state. (Frontera NorteSur (FNS) 11/12/09 via MexiData.info; Latin American Herald Tribune 11/11/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/12/09, __)
An editorial in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada called Nov. 11 “a day without precedent in the history of the country’s popular causes,” an action which brought together “the different sectors of the opposition—the parties, the unions, the social organizations.” The paper called this “the possible birth of a broad bloc antagonistic to the political-business-alliance that holds the country’s power (public and private).” SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores raised the possibility of planning a national general strike. He noted that in 2010 Mexico will celebrate the bicentennial of its war of independence from Spain and the centennial of the revolution against the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship: “And as before, we will defeat the transnationals, the dictatorship, tyranny and violations of the Constitution. It’s time for the people to organize.” (LJ 11/12/09, __; FNS 11/12/09)
On Nov. 12 Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón discounted the ability of the SME and its supporters to mount a general strike. He said that 24,149 laid-off LFC workers, 54.2% of the total workforce, had already signed up for the governemt's severance package; in the government’s view, workers lose the ability to challenge their termination if they accept the severance agreement. On Nov. 14, the deadline for signing with the government, reporters found a low turnout at the centers where the former employees could file their papers. One young worker arrived with his wife, who needed treatment for a kidney ailment, and their two children. “I’m coming here against my will, from necessity,” he told a reporter. “I support the compañeros all the way, I’m a unionist and I’ll put up with blows, insults and what have you...but not my children.” (LJ 12/13/09, 12/15/09)
In other news, in Oaxaca on Nov. 9 federal magistrate Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez ruled that evidence the federal government had presented against APPO activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will was “false” and “prefabricated.” Will was shot during a demonstration against Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz on Oct. 27, 2006; activists and Will’s friends and family have insisted that he was killed by Ruiz’s supporters, not by APPO activists [see Update #964]. Magistrate Santiago ordered district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez to free Martínez Moreno within 48 hours. The government can appeal, and the activist’s attorney, Gilberto López, said he didn’t expect his client to be released immediately. (EFE 11/9/09; Milenio (Mexico) 11/9/09)
*2. Honduras: More Candidates Join Election Boycott
In a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua, on Nov. 13, the mayor of San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second largest city, confirmed that he was no longer running for another term in general elections scheduled for Nov. 29. “The people don’t believe in this process, because these are elections where absolutely nothing is going to get elected,” Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunceri said. A member of the center-right Liberal Party (PL), Padilla joined a growing number of candidates who have withdrawn from the race in order to protest the control of the process by a de facto government put in place after a military coup removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office on June 28 [see Update #1011]. Padilla was the frontrunner in polls taken before the coup. The Nov. 29 general elections are intended to elect the president, the 128 members of the National Congress, 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and members of the country’s municipal governments.
Independent presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes officially withdrew from the race on Nov. 9. A former unionist with strong links to the grassroots movement against the coup, Reyes was third in a field of six candidates, according to polls. The frontrunner is Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the rightwing National Party (PN); Liberal candidate Elvin Santos trails him by 15-20%, according to political analyst Gustavo Irías. Santos is badly damaged by a split in the PL between supporters of President Zelaya and supporters of de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain; both are members of the party.
The mayoral candidates boycotting the election include Heber Iván Gómez Mendoza, PL candidate in Morolica, Choluteca department; Luis Alberto Posadas Alfar, an independent candidate in Danlí, El Paraíso; and Gladys Gloria Ebanks Campell, an independent candidate on Roatán island, Islas de la Bahía department. The small leftist Democratic Unification (UD) is badly split, with presidential candidate César Ham planning to continue in the race while many other candidates want to withdraw; the party will lose its place on the ballot and government matching funds if too many candidates drop out. The Party of Innovation and Social Democratic Unity (PINU) is also split. The leadership supports the coup, but many candidates for Congress oppose it and may withdraw, so that this party too could lose its ballot position. (EFE 11/13/09; Comun-Noticias 11/13/09 via Honduras Laboral blog; La Jornada 11/14/09 from correspondent)
During the night of Nov. 12 an explosive device was detonated in a Tegucigalpa residential neighborhood without causing any damage or injuries. The police and the media originally said an airplane flew over the city and dropped a bomb on a location where ballots were being stored for the Nov. 29 elections, even though no damage was reported there. The airplane turned to be a commercial flight from Guatemala. Later an RPG-1 grenade-launching device was discovered in the area, and the military announced that unidentified persons had attempted to hit the storehouse but had overshot it. “We have preliminary information about some actions which people who are from the left are carrying out,” Armed Forces head Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez said at a Nov. 13 press conference. "We know where these artifacts come from,” said Gen. Miguel Ángel García Padgett, the army’s commander. “[T]hey cross over the border and are artifacts of Russian or Chinese origin, and they are precisely the ones used by people of a leftist tendency.”
Unionist Juan Barahona, a coordinator of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, insisted that the opposition’s strategy was a nonviolent boycott of the elections. “The people don’t have the ability to do these things [bombings]. Here the only ones who have this ability are the police and the Armed Forces.” He charged that the military had used similar tactics in its campaign against the left in the 1980s. “They are the ones responsible; they’re generating an environment so that later they can generate the repression they’ve got planned and can consolidate the coup,” he said.
The Front has been focused on printing up and distributing handbills and posters calling on people to boycott the voting. (EFE 11/13/09 via ADN.es; LJ 11/14/09; Adital (Brazil) 11/13/09)
*3. Panama: Students Protest “US Bases”
Students from the Student Revolutionary Front (FER-29) and the University Popular Bloc closed off one of Panama City’s main arteries for more than an hour on Nov. 11 to protest what they said were plans to open US military bases in Panama. Police agents dispersed the demonstrators with water cannons and tear gas and arrested 16 students, most of them from the Arts and Trades College. On Nov. 12 Governance and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino told reporters that the four bases the students were protesting would be “100% Panamanian.” They are to be under the control of the Air-Navy Service (SENAN) and the National Border Service (Senafront) as part of the agencies’ effort to control the transport of narcotics through Panama, he said. “They are not military bases.”
According to Mulina, the government is opening up the first of the bases on Chapera island before Nov. 30. The others are to be in Darién province, near the border with Colombia, and in the La Perlas archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. According to the Venezuelan-based TeleSUR television network, on Oct. 20 Mulina had referred to two bases the US would set up in Panama, but in his Nov. 12 statement the minister clarified that while the bases would be Panamanian, they were part of the Mérida Initiative, a US-funded operation to fight the drug trade in Mexico and Central America. The US military had as many as 100 bases in Panama before the US withdrawal from the Panama Canal was completed in 1999. (EFE 11/11/09; ABC.com (Paraguay) 11/12/09 from ANSA; TeleSUR 11/13/09, some from EFE) [Many activists in Mexico and the US oppose the Mérida Initiative, calling it “Plan Mexico,” on the model of the US-sponsored Plan Colombia; see Update #987.]
*4. Dominican Republic: One Dead in New Blackout Protests
One person was killed and one wounded in the early morning of Nov. 11 during protests over power outages in the community of Canca, Licey al Medio municipality, in the northern Dominican province of Santiago. Police spokesperson Jesús Cordero Paredes told the Spanish EFE news service that masked protesters had been blocking a highway with tree trunks and burning tires at 3am when Ramón Martín Medina Rivas and Emilio José Vargas drove up to the barricade in a truck carrying plantains and other farm products to be sold in the Santiago market. The protesters fired on the truck, killing Medina and wounding Vargas, according to the police.
Víctor Bretón, a spokesperson for the Broad Front of Popular Struggle (FALPO), condemned the killing and denied that members of his grassroots coalition were involved. The demonstrations had started on Nov. 10 over repeated blackouts and a number of local grievances, including the construction of a sports stadium. Working-class neighborhoods in the provincial capital, Santiago de los 30 Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, have reported 12-hour blackouts, while outages are said to have lasted up to 20 hours in the northwest of the country. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which approved a de $1.7 billion credit program for the Dominican Republic on Nov. 9, has called for restructuring the electrical sector. (EFE 11/11/09) [The sector was privatized in the 1990s. At least two other people have died in protests over blackouts in the Dominican Republic this year; see Update #998.]
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Global Warming, Terror Threats
New DNA Law in Argentina Will Help Find the Missing Grandchildren
https://nacla.org/node/6247
Brazil claims progress against Amazon destruction
http://ww4report.com/node/7939
Evo Morales: US has military designs on Bolivia's hydrocarbons
http://ww4report.com/node/7946
Peru: oil majors eye Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/7945
World indigenous leaders condemn Peru's Amazon repression
http://ww4report.com/node/7944
Colombia: Cauca militarized after deadly FARC attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7936
Colombia, Venezuela in new border incident as tensions mount
http://ww4report.com/node/7948
Venezuela: Chávez faces off with governor of militarized Táchira
http://ww4report.com/node/7935
Venezuelan blackouts: corporate media gloat —Chávez ignores lessons?
http://ww4report.com/node/7947
El Salvador Devastated by Hurricane Ida - Support People to People Disaster Relief Via CISPES
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2209/68/
Emergency aid for El Salvador
http://ww4report.com/node/7927
Honduras: US seeks "happy end" —at cost of democracy?
http://ww4report.com/node/7934
Academics and Experts on Latin America Call on Obama to Denounce Human Rights Abuses by Honduran Dictatorship
https://nacla.org/node/6244
Honduran Resistance Calls for Deepening of Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2201/1/
Video Documentary: Honduran Voices
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2205/1/
U.S. State Department Sells Out Honduran Democracy for Senate Confirmations
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-state-department-sells-out-honduran.html
Honduras Revisited
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6565
President Zelaya to President Obama: Walk the Talk
http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/president-zelaya-to-president-obama.html
Electrical Workers of Mexico Take on Calderon Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2200/1/
UN peacekeepers for northern Mexico?
http://ww4report.com/node/7950
From Greenland to Andes, signs mount of climate shift
http://ww4report.com/node/7938
Manufacturing a Terror Threat in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2208/1/
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, November 10, 2009
WNU #1011: Honduran Resistance Rejects “Afghanistan-Style” Elections
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1011, November 8, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance Rejects “Afghanistan-Style” Elections
2. Honduras: US and Latin America Split Over Elections
3. In Other News: Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Biodiversity, Indigenous, Economy, Media
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: Resistance Rejects “Afghanistan-Style” Elections
As of the evening of Nov. 7 talks in Tegucigalpa between representatives of Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales and de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain had failed to revive the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord, an agreement the two sides signed on Oct. 30, a little more than one week earlier. Members of a Verification Commission established by the agreement had tried to salvage the accord by having the two sides meet again on Nov. 7.
Zelaya’s representatives apparently signed the Oct. 30 agreement on the understanding that the National Congress would return Zelaya to the presidency--from which he was removed by a June 28 military coup backed by the Congress and Supreme Court--and that he would then form a multi-party Government of Unity and National Reconciliation. The agreement stipulated that the new government would be in place by the end of Nov. 5 [see Update #1010]. But the Congress, which is in recess until general elections scheduled for Nov. 29, failed to reconvene, and Micheletti proceeded to name a multi-party cabinet which Zelaya refused to recognize. Micheletti’s new cabinet had the same ministers as the old de facto government in key ministries: foreign relations, finance, agriculture, defense, security and the presidency. (Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/8/09; El Día (Spain) 11/8/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/09 from correspondent)
On Nov. 3 the US government, which had brokered the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord, abruptly dropped its commitment not to recognize the Nov. 29 elections if Zelaya wasn’t returned to office. During an interview with the CNN en Español television network, US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Thomas Shannon was asked whether the US would recognize the elections without Zelaya’s restitution. “The future of Honduran democracy is in the hands of the Hondurans,” Shannon replied. The interviewer then asked more explicitly: “The US, whatever may happen, in the process will recognize whatever happens on Nov. 29?” Shannon answered: “Yes, exactly.” (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 11/4/09)
“I don’t want Afghanistan-style elections for my country,” Zelaya told the opposition Radio Globo station on Nov. 6, referring to the reelection of US-backed Afghani president Hamid Karzai in August balloting marred by reports of widespread fraud. The grassroots movement against the coup is calling for a boycott of the elections. Some resistance activists want to go further. “It’s not just about not going to vote,” indigenous leader Salvador Zúñiga said on Nov. 6. “The same way they took away our ballot box on June 28, we have to take theirs away from them.” The June 28 coup prevented Zelaya’s government from holding a nonbinding referendum that day to ask Hondurans whether they wanted to vote in the Nov. 29 elections on a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution.
“From now on,” Zúñiga said, “it’s going to be forbidden for politicians to come into our neighborhoods and communities, and we’re going to forbid them to set up the voting places.” (LJ 11/7/09)
*2. Honduras: US and Latin America Split Over Elections
The rapid failure of an Oct. 30 accord between Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the country’s de facto government “leaves egg on the faces of US and regional diplomats who had engineered the deal,” according to an analysis piece by the Reuters news service. (Reuters 11/6/09)
The agreement’s collapse also increases the distance between the government of US president Barack Obama—which is now in effect siding with the de facto regime--and most governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. On Nov. 6 the 12-member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) demanded Zelaya’s “immediate restitution,” as did foreign ministers at a meeting of the Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (CALC) in Jamaica the same day.
Even diplomats and leaders who maintain good relations with the US implicitly criticized the US position. “The measures in the accord are clear and were subscribed to by the free will of the parties,” Organization of American States (OAS) general secretary José Miguel Insulza said on Nov. 5 after de facto president Roberto Micheletti named a “unity government” not backed by Zelaya. “I expect [these measures] to be fulfilled without more subterfuges, in order to reestablish democracy, institutional legitimacy and coexistence among the Hondurans.” “[N]aturally, the person who was elected by the Honduran people to exercise the function of the president of the republic should preside” over the unity government, Insulza said in Washington. (Prensa Latina 11/6/09; Adital 11/6/09; LJ 11/7/09)
In an interview with CNN en Español on 11/7/09, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), the highest-ranking member of the accord’s Verification Commission, was equally clear that Micheletti had violated the agreement when he named his own “unity government.” Asked who should head the Government of Unity and National Reconciliation, Lagos answered: “[T]he logic of this accord is that in the event that Zelaya Rosales was installed as president…there would be a national unity cabinet.” “When we met with Mr. Micheletti and he said what he was doing [naming a unity cabinet], we told him that this wasn’t what was agreed to and that he couldn’t do it.”
Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, generally a supporter of the US and a leader in the negotiations that led to the accord, distanced himself from the de facto government on Nov. 7: “They are looking, by means of delaying tactics, to pass the time until the elections come, risking that the future government will not be recognized by some countries," he said. (Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/8/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 11/8/09; El Día (Spain) 11/8/09 from EFE)
In the US, Congress members from the Republican Party are supporting the Obama administration’s new position. But criticism is coming from forces that usually side with the Democratic president. “If the Obama administration chooses to recognize the election without Zelaya first being reinstated, it will find itself at odds with the rest of Latin America,” a Los Angeles Times editorial warned on Nov. 5. “That would be a setback for democracy and for the United States.” (LAT 11/5/09) “An election run by the coup plotters won’t be credible to Hondurans—and it shouldn’t be to anyone else,” the editors of the New York Times wrote on Nov. 7. (NYT 11/7/09)
At the same time, other forces on the liberal side seem to pushing for the US to recognize the Nov. 29 elections. The “pragmatic middle ground” might be for the US and the OAS to recognize the elections “under protest of how they came about,” according to Shelley A. McConnell, an assistant professor of government at St. Lawrence University and a former analyst for the Carter Center, a prestigious election-monitoring organization founded by liberal former US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). “You don’t punish the next guy,” she told the New York Times. (NYT 11/7/09) [The frontrunner in the Honduran presidential race is Profirio (“Pepe”) Lobo of the center-right National Party (PN); he and his party backed the June 28 coup.]
*3. In Other News: Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Mexican government announced in mid-October that it had approved 35 requests to test-plant genetically modified (GM) corn. The announcement said the testing would be strictly monitored and would be confined to closed areas. Environmental activists and campesinos have staged protests in recent years to demand a total ban on GM corn, which they say could threaten the country’s 200 existing varieties of corn. (Xinhua 10/21/09) … The United Nations General Assembly voted on Oct. 28 to condemn the US embargo on trade with Cuba that has been in effect since 1962. This is the 18th time the General Assembly has supported a nonbinding resolution against the embargo. The vote was 187-3 with two abstentions; last year’s tally was 185-3 with one abstention [see Update #966]. The US, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution; the Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. (Reuters 10/28/09) … On Nov. 7 Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies voted 52-0 with two abstentions to confirm Planning and External Cooperation Minister Jean-Max Bellerive as the next prime minister. The Senate had approved him the day before. Bellerive will replace Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, who was voted out of office by the Senate on Oct. 30 [see Update #1011]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/8/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Biodiversity, Indigenous, Economy, Media
Argentina's last dictator stands trial in rights absues
http://ww4report.com/node/7911
Argentina: Kraft Firings Feed Protests
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6484
Hope and Disappointment in Uruguay's Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2193/1/
Paraguay: military shake-up amid coup rumblings
http://ww4report.com/node/7915
Peru: indigenous people face off with Hunt Oil in rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/7917
Peru: Hunt Oil Contract to Reignite Amazon Uprising?
https://nacla.org/node/6231
Peru: US Oil Company Threatened with Eviction from Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2194/68/
Ecuador: The Battle for Natural Resources Intensifies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6521
U.S. Military Documents Show Colombia Base Agreement Poses Threat to Region
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2198/68/
Authorized’ Minga in Colombia? The Challenges of Popular Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2196/1/
Colombia: court rules against US bases plan as more details revealed
http://ww4report.com/node/7923
Border violence, US base plans escalate tensions between Bogotá and Caracas
http://ww4report.com/node/7910
Venezeula: isolated Amazon people die in "swine flu" epidemic
http://ww4report.com/node/7914
Suspects Arrested in Murder of Venezuelan Indigenous, but Chief’s Detention Fuels Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2190/68/
Constitutional Reform Cuts Both Ways in Central America: The Right Pushes Back
https://nacla.org/node/6235
Clandestine Graves Re-emerge in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2192/68/
My Thoughts on Honduras--Robert White
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6544
Nothing resolved in Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4431
Honduras: US and coupsters pull bait-and-switch on Zelaya?
http://ww4report.com/node/7906
The Real Winner in Honduras: The United States?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2191/1/
Unilateral "Unity Government" Announced in Honduras; Deal "Dead"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2199/68/
President Obama's Credibility on the Line in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2197/68/
Honduras: political deal "dead"; bogus "unity government" declared
http://ww4report.com/node/7922
Mexico: campesino leader killed in Sonora massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7909
Mexico: extraditions to US reach record high
http://ww4report.com/node/7901
International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom Condemns Mexican Presidency
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23010
The Case of the Cuban Five
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6509
Biodiversity Report
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6513
Indigenous Uranium Forum Denounces Mining, Militarization, and Hate Crimes in Indian Country
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6547
Facing Economic Crisis, Citizen Organizations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Mexico Fight Back Against Structural Adjustment
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6556
Inter American Press Association: free speech under attack across hemisphere
http://ww4report.com/node/7918
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 #1011, November 8, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance Rejects “Afghanistan-Style” Elections
2. Honduras: US and Latin America Split Over Elections
3. In Other News: Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Biodiversity, Indigenous, Economy, Media
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: Resistance Rejects “Afghanistan-Style” Elections
As of the evening of Nov. 7 talks in Tegucigalpa between representatives of Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales and de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain had failed to revive the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord, an agreement the two sides signed on Oct. 30, a little more than one week earlier. Members of a Verification Commission established by the agreement had tried to salvage the accord by having the two sides meet again on Nov. 7.
Zelaya’s representatives apparently signed the Oct. 30 agreement on the understanding that the National Congress would return Zelaya to the presidency--from which he was removed by a June 28 military coup backed by the Congress and Supreme Court--and that he would then form a multi-party Government of Unity and National Reconciliation. The agreement stipulated that the new government would be in place by the end of Nov. 5 [see Update #1010]. But the Congress, which is in recess until general elections scheduled for Nov. 29, failed to reconvene, and Micheletti proceeded to name a multi-party cabinet which Zelaya refused to recognize. Micheletti’s new cabinet had the same ministers as the old de facto government in key ministries: foreign relations, finance, agriculture, defense, security and the presidency. (Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/8/09; El Día (Spain) 11/8/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/09 from correspondent)
On Nov. 3 the US government, which had brokered the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord, abruptly dropped its commitment not to recognize the Nov. 29 elections if Zelaya wasn’t returned to office. During an interview with the CNN en Español television network, US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Thomas Shannon was asked whether the US would recognize the elections without Zelaya’s restitution. “The future of Honduran democracy is in the hands of the Hondurans,” Shannon replied. The interviewer then asked more explicitly: “The US, whatever may happen, in the process will recognize whatever happens on Nov. 29?” Shannon answered: “Yes, exactly.” (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 11/4/09)
“I don’t want Afghanistan-style elections for my country,” Zelaya told the opposition Radio Globo station on Nov. 6, referring to the reelection of US-backed Afghani president Hamid Karzai in August balloting marred by reports of widespread fraud. The grassroots movement against the coup is calling for a boycott of the elections. Some resistance activists want to go further. “It’s not just about not going to vote,” indigenous leader Salvador Zúñiga said on Nov. 6. “The same way they took away our ballot box on June 28, we have to take theirs away from them.” The June 28 coup prevented Zelaya’s government from holding a nonbinding referendum that day to ask Hondurans whether they wanted to vote in the Nov. 29 elections on a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution.
“From now on,” Zúñiga said, “it’s going to be forbidden for politicians to come into our neighborhoods and communities, and we’re going to forbid them to set up the voting places.” (LJ 11/7/09)
*2. Honduras: US and Latin America Split Over Elections
The rapid failure of an Oct. 30 accord between Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the country’s de facto government “leaves egg on the faces of US and regional diplomats who had engineered the deal,” according to an analysis piece by the Reuters news service. (Reuters 11/6/09)
The agreement’s collapse also increases the distance between the government of US president Barack Obama—which is now in effect siding with the de facto regime--and most governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. On Nov. 6 the 12-member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) demanded Zelaya’s “immediate restitution,” as did foreign ministers at a meeting of the Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (CALC) in Jamaica the same day.
Even diplomats and leaders who maintain good relations with the US implicitly criticized the US position. “The measures in the accord are clear and were subscribed to by the free will of the parties,” Organization of American States (OAS) general secretary José Miguel Insulza said on Nov. 5 after de facto president Roberto Micheletti named a “unity government” not backed by Zelaya. “I expect [these measures] to be fulfilled without more subterfuges, in order to reestablish democracy, institutional legitimacy and coexistence among the Hondurans.” “[N]aturally, the person who was elected by the Honduran people to exercise the function of the president of the republic should preside” over the unity government, Insulza said in Washington. (Prensa Latina 11/6/09; Adital 11/6/09; LJ 11/7/09)
In an interview with CNN en Español on 11/7/09, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), the highest-ranking member of the accord’s Verification Commission, was equally clear that Micheletti had violated the agreement when he named his own “unity government.” Asked who should head the Government of Unity and National Reconciliation, Lagos answered: “[T]he logic of this accord is that in the event that Zelaya Rosales was installed as president…there would be a national unity cabinet.” “When we met with Mr. Micheletti and he said what he was doing [naming a unity cabinet], we told him that this wasn’t what was agreed to and that he couldn’t do it.”
Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, generally a supporter of the US and a leader in the negotiations that led to the accord, distanced himself from the de facto government on Nov. 7: “They are looking, by means of delaying tactics, to pass the time until the elections come, risking that the future government will not be recognized by some countries," he said. (Honduras Coup 2009 blog 11/8/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 11/8/09; El Día (Spain) 11/8/09 from EFE)
In the US, Congress members from the Republican Party are supporting the Obama administration’s new position. But criticism is coming from forces that usually side with the Democratic president. “If the Obama administration chooses to recognize the election without Zelaya first being reinstated, it will find itself at odds with the rest of Latin America,” a Los Angeles Times editorial warned on Nov. 5. “That would be a setback for democracy and for the United States.” (LAT 11/5/09) “An election run by the coup plotters won’t be credible to Hondurans—and it shouldn’t be to anyone else,” the editors of the New York Times wrote on Nov. 7. (NYT 11/7/09)
At the same time, other forces on the liberal side seem to pushing for the US to recognize the Nov. 29 elections. The “pragmatic middle ground” might be for the US and the OAS to recognize the elections “under protest of how they came about,” according to Shelley A. McConnell, an assistant professor of government at St. Lawrence University and a former analyst for the Carter Center, a prestigious election-monitoring organization founded by liberal former US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). “You don’t punish the next guy,” she told the New York Times. (NYT 11/7/09) [The frontrunner in the Honduran presidential race is Profirio (“Pepe”) Lobo of the center-right National Party (PN); he and his party backed the June 28 coup.]
*3. In Other News: Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Mexican government announced in mid-October that it had approved 35 requests to test-plant genetically modified (GM) corn. The announcement said the testing would be strictly monitored and would be confined to closed areas. Environmental activists and campesinos have staged protests in recent years to demand a total ban on GM corn, which they say could threaten the country’s 200 existing varieties of corn. (Xinhua 10/21/09) … The United Nations General Assembly voted on Oct. 28 to condemn the US embargo on trade with Cuba that has been in effect since 1962. This is the 18th time the General Assembly has supported a nonbinding resolution against the embargo. The vote was 187-3 with two abstentions; last year’s tally was 185-3 with one abstention [see Update #966]. The US, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution; the Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. (Reuters 10/28/09) … On Nov. 7 Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies voted 52-0 with two abstentions to confirm Planning and External Cooperation Minister Jean-Max Bellerive as the next prime minister. The Senate had approved him the day before. Bellerive will replace Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, who was voted out of office by the Senate on Oct. 30 [see Update #1011]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/8/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Biodiversity, Indigenous, Economy, Media
Argentina's last dictator stands trial in rights absues
http://ww4report.com/node/7911
Argentina: Kraft Firings Feed Protests
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6484
Hope and Disappointment in Uruguay's Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2193/1/
Paraguay: military shake-up amid coup rumblings
http://ww4report.com/node/7915
Peru: indigenous people face off with Hunt Oil in rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/7917
Peru: Hunt Oil Contract to Reignite Amazon Uprising?
https://nacla.org/node/6231
Peru: US Oil Company Threatened with Eviction from Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2194/68/
Ecuador: The Battle for Natural Resources Intensifies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6521
U.S. Military Documents Show Colombia Base Agreement Poses Threat to Region
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2198/68/
Authorized’ Minga in Colombia? The Challenges of Popular Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2196/1/
Colombia: court rules against US bases plan as more details revealed
http://ww4report.com/node/7923
Border violence, US base plans escalate tensions between Bogotá and Caracas
http://ww4report.com/node/7910
Venezeula: isolated Amazon people die in "swine flu" epidemic
http://ww4report.com/node/7914
Suspects Arrested in Murder of Venezuelan Indigenous, but Chief’s Detention Fuels Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2190/68/
Constitutional Reform Cuts Both Ways in Central America: The Right Pushes Back
https://nacla.org/node/6235
Clandestine Graves Re-emerge in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2192/68/
My Thoughts on Honduras--Robert White
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6544
Nothing resolved in Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4431
Honduras: US and coupsters pull bait-and-switch on Zelaya?
http://ww4report.com/node/7906
The Real Winner in Honduras: The United States?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2191/1/
Unilateral "Unity Government" Announced in Honduras; Deal "Dead"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2199/68/
President Obama's Credibility on the Line in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2197/68/
Honduras: political deal "dead"; bogus "unity government" declared
http://ww4report.com/node/7922
Mexico: campesino leader killed in Sonora massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/7909
Mexico: extraditions to US reach record high
http://ww4report.com/node/7901
International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom Condemns Mexican Presidency
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23010
The Case of the Cuban Five
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6509
Biodiversity Report
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6513
Indigenous Uranium Forum Denounces Mining, Militarization, and Hate Crimes in Indian Country
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6547
Facing Economic Crisis, Citizen Organizations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Mexico Fight Back Against Structural Adjustment
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6556
Inter American Press Association: free speech under attack across hemisphere
http://ww4report.com/node/7918
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
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