[We are again unable to send out an Update, but we hope to be back on schedule next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
German court issues arrest warrant for Argentine "Dirty War" junta leader
http://ww4report.com/node/8246
Who Lost Chile? Conservative Multi-Millionaire is President Elect
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2323-who
For Chile’s Wealthy President-Elect, Victory Spells Huge Payoff
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2328-for-chiles-rich-president-elect-victory-spells-huge-payoff
Rio de Janeiro: Control of the Poor Seen as Crucial for the Olympics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2325-rio-de-janeiro-control-of-the-poor-seen-as-crucial-for-the-olympics
Brazil’s World Cup Development Debacle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/2316-brazils-world-cup-development-debacle-
Peru: indigenous leaders reject Bagua massacre report; García intransigent
http://ww4report.com/node/8149
The Commission of Inquiry's Report on the Violent Events in Bagua, Peru: A Truth Commission with Little Truth
https://nacla.org/node/6363
Ecuador: Politics Closes Indigenous Shuar Radio
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2327-ecuador-politics-close-indigenous-shuar-radio
Venezuela: protests as cable TV stations ordered closed
http://ww4report.com/node/8247
Venezuela: stores raided for price gouging following devaluation
http://ww4report.com/node/8197
Voices of Participatory Democracy in Venezuela: A Review of Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassroots
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2329-voices-of-participatory-democracy-in-venezuela-a-review-of-venezuela-speaks-voices-from-the-grassroots
Panama: Supreme Court declines to hear Noriega extradition appeal
http://ww4report.com/node/8251
Costa-Rica: Last-Ditch Leftwing Alliance to 'Save' the Country
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2333-costa-rica-last-ditch-leftwing-alliance-to-save-the-country
A Nicaraguan Farce
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/2330-a-nicaraguan-farce
El Salvador: Fallen Anti-Mining Activists Honored with Vigil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/2314-solidarity-with-environmentalists-killed-in-el-salvador-
An Electoral Defeat for Democracy: The Regional Implications of the Honduran Vote
https://nacla.org/node/6359
Honduras: whither amnesty?
http://ww4report.com/node/8212
Honduras: prosecutors charge military officials for Zelaya ouster
http://ww4report.com/node/8169
Honduras: arson attack on Garifuna community radio station
http://ww4report.com/node/8168
Canada, Honduras and the Coup d’Etat
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2320-canada-honduras-and-the-coup-detat
Honduras: Entrenched Corruption Stymies Hope
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2291-honduras-entrenched-corruption-stymies-hope
Honduras: Zelaya's Safety Ensured by Ban on Pen Deliveries to Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2292-honduras-zelayas-safety-ensured-by-ban-on-pen-deliveries-to-brazilian-embassy-in-tegucigalpa
Honduras: Why Do Garifuna Community Radios Burn?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2308-honduras-why-do-garifuna-community-radios-burn-honduran-black-fraternal-organization-denounces-attack-against-their-radio-station
Guatemala: murdered lawyer planned his own death
http://ww4report.com/node/8205
Assassinations Continue in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2322-assassinations-continue-in-guatemala
US seeks extradition of Guatemalan ex-president on money laundering
http://ww4report.com/node/8250
Angels in Guatemala: Confronting a Legacy of Official Terror
https://nacla.org/node/6337
Mexico: 23 dead in Durango prison riot
http://ww4report.com/node/8235
Mexico: 860 more army troops to Tijuana
http://ww4report.com/node/8215
Mexico: body of kidnapped journalist found
http://ww4report.com/node/8214
Mexico: more hideous narco-violence
http://ww4report.com/node/8180
Mexico: Corporate Hit Men Find New Ways to Turn a Profit
https://nacla.org/node/6369
Cuban Musicians Resuming U.S. Performances
https://nacla.org/node/6364
New airline passenger screening unconstitutional: rights groups
http://ww4report.com/node/8154
Haiti earthquake refugees may not migrate to US: Napolitano
http://ww4report.com/node/8242
Haiti: US, UN beef up troop strength
http://ww4report.com/node/8234
Doctors Without Borders plane repeatedly diverted from landing in Haiti
http://ww4report.com/node/8228
Haiti: reports of violence, fears of "undercover occupation"
http://ww4report.com/node/8221
Nicaragua's Ortega raises specter of US occupation in Haiti
http://ww4report.com/node/8218
Haiti: eye-witness to devastation
http://ww4report.com/node/8192
Singing and praying at night in Port-au-Prince
http://ww4report.com/node/8204
Day Two in Port-au-Prince: "Young men with crowbars"
http://ww4report.com/node/8223
Day Three in Port-au-Prince: "A difficult situation"
http://ww4report.com/node/8229
Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2321-profiting-from-haitis-crisis-disaster-capitalism-in-washingtons-backyard
US puts removal of undocumented Haitians on hold
http://ww4report.com/node/8217
Haitian earthquake refugees to Guantánamo?
http://ww4report.com/node/8200
Emergency earthquake relief for Haiti
http://ww4report.com/node/8198
Support Victims of the Earthquake in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2311-support-victims-of-the-earthquake
Haiti: anger rises as food aid mired in bureaucracy
http://ww4report.com/node/8256
Israel exploits Haiti for propaganda ...and Sri Lanka?
http://ww4report.com/node/8255
UN report: indigenous peoples threatened worldwide
http://ww4report.com/node/8239
Muscling Latin America
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/grandin
Canada's Long Road to Mining Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2332-canada-s-long-road-to-mining-reform-
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Day Three in Port-au-Prince: "A difficult situation"
David L. Wilson of Weekly News Update on the Americas was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the Jan. 12 earthquake struck the city. Because of limited electricity and internet access, he was unable to send this report out until after he got back to New York the morning of Jan. 18.:
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Wednesday night, January 13, the second night after a giant earthquake shattered this city, was filled with strange sounds.
At one point a hundred or more people rushed along the Avenue Henri Christophe in front of the Hotel Oloffson in the southwestern part of the city. They were shouting in Creole: "Dlo! dlo!" ("Water! Water!") and claiming, improbably, that a tsunami was coming from the hills to the southeast. Later a vehicle stopped at the intersection by the hotel so a man could make an announcement over a booming loudspeaker. Apparently he was looking for volunteers for something; a few young men climbed on to the back of his vehicle. All I understood was the phrase "gen yon sitiyasyon difisil," repeated over and over—literally, "there's a difficult situation." [...]
Read the full article at World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8229
* * *
Friday, Jan. 22, NYC: Press Conference on Haiti
HAITI EMERGENCY COMMITTEE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE! January 20, 2010
For more information, contact Marty Goodman Phone: (646) 898-7328 E-mail: bosolidarity@yahoo.com
STOP BLOCKING AID–NO TO US/UN OCCUPATION
WHAT: Press conference including an eyewitness to the earthquake.
WHEN: Friday, January 22 at 12:00 p.m. (Noon). Rally at 4 pm at same location.
WHERE: Outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, 140 East 45th Street, Manhattan (between 3rd Avenue and Lexington)
Contact:Tel: 646-898-7328 or HaitiEmergencyCommittee-Owner@yahoogroups.com
On Friday, January 22, 2010 at 12 noon, the Haiti Emergency Committee will hold a press conference in front of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, at 140 E. 45th St. The press conference will feature members of the newly formed Haiti Emergency Committee and a member of a delegation who has just returned to the U.S. from the ravaged Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as other speakers.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are feared dead under the rubble following the January 12th earthquake. Haiti needs robust Emergency Assistance. The first 48 hours in the aftermath of the earthquake were very critical. Right from the first few moments after the earthquake, the Haitian people have been digging people out with their bare hands and household tools, with no assistance from the U.S. government.
People throughout the world are striving to support the Haitian people any way they can. Yet, the U.S. military has taken total control of the ports and the main airport in Port-Au-Prince (as well as throughout the country) and is refusing to allow cargo planes from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, and from such crucial non-profit agencies as Doctors Without Borders, to bring urgently needed medical supplies, water, food, and medicine to the people in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere.
For days, US and UN officials on the ground stopped volunteers from distributing supplies to the people in the hardest hit places. There is a real Humanitarian crisis in Haiti and the US/UN must stop preventing the aid from reaching the people. This is mass genocide.
Haitians living in Port-au-Prince did the best they could in mobilizing themselves and their scant resources to deal collectively with their situation. Yet as occurred during the Katrina aftermath, the US media has portrayed the people as animals, looters and criminals, providing the rationale for the US government to send over 11,000 heavily armed troops into Haiti and seizing control of the airport, ports and facilities. But the media's portrayal is not true. It is NOT what is happening on the ground in Haiti. The US/UN officials and military personnel must stop preventing the distribution of aid provided by other countries and by not-for-profit agencies from around the globe.
The United States, instead of providing the immediate aid necessary in the first critical hours, mobilized an arsenal of military hardware and personnel with at least 11,000 soldiers to militarily occupy Port-au-Prince and the rest of Haiti, adding to the 9,000-strong UN military force in the country. The Haitian people need humanitarian assistance – water, medicine, medical supplies, healthcare workers -- not a military arsenal. The Haiti Emergency Committee says NO to this military deployment in Haiti. We oppose the occupation of Haiti.
We demand:
1) Let the aid get through to Haiti! Stop preventing the Haitian People from organizing their own relief efforts. Stop U.S. Military interference with international rescue & humanitarian aid. Yes to solidarity, No to militarization.
2) Stop denying Humanitarian entry into the US for Haitians whose lives are at risk.
3) END U.S./U.N. occupation of Haiti.
4) Stop the cruel and unjust IMF/World Bank/USAID structural adjustment program in Haiti.5) Cancel Haiti's debt to foreign banks, countries and to the International Monetary Fund.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Wednesday night, January 13, the second night after a giant earthquake shattered this city, was filled with strange sounds.
At one point a hundred or more people rushed along the Avenue Henri Christophe in front of the Hotel Oloffson in the southwestern part of the city. They were shouting in Creole: "Dlo! dlo!" ("Water! Water!") and claiming, improbably, that a tsunami was coming from the hills to the southeast. Later a vehicle stopped at the intersection by the hotel so a man could make an announcement over a booming loudspeaker. Apparently he was looking for volunteers for something; a few young men climbed on to the back of his vehicle. All I understood was the phrase "gen yon sitiyasyon difisil," repeated over and over—literally, "there's a difficult situation." [...]
Read the full article at World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8229
* * *
Friday, Jan. 22, NYC: Press Conference on Haiti
HAITI EMERGENCY COMMITTEE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE! January 20, 2010
For more information, contact Marty Goodman Phone: (646) 898-7328 E-mail: bosolidarity@yahoo.com
STOP BLOCKING AID–NO TO US/UN OCCUPATION
WHAT: Press conference including an eyewitness to the earthquake.
WHEN: Friday, January 22 at 12:00 p.m. (Noon). Rally at 4 pm at same location.
WHERE: Outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, 140 East 45th Street, Manhattan (between 3rd Avenue and Lexington)
Contact:Tel: 646-898-7328 or HaitiEmergencyCommittee-Owner@yahoogroups.com
On Friday, January 22, 2010 at 12 noon, the Haiti Emergency Committee will hold a press conference in front of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, at 140 E. 45th St. The press conference will feature members of the newly formed Haiti Emergency Committee and a member of a delegation who has just returned to the U.S. from the ravaged Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as other speakers.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are feared dead under the rubble following the January 12th earthquake. Haiti needs robust Emergency Assistance. The first 48 hours in the aftermath of the earthquake were very critical. Right from the first few moments after the earthquake, the Haitian people have been digging people out with their bare hands and household tools, with no assistance from the U.S. government.
People throughout the world are striving to support the Haitian people any way they can. Yet, the U.S. military has taken total control of the ports and the main airport in Port-Au-Prince (as well as throughout the country) and is refusing to allow cargo planes from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, and from such crucial non-profit agencies as Doctors Without Borders, to bring urgently needed medical supplies, water, food, and medicine to the people in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere.
For days, US and UN officials on the ground stopped volunteers from distributing supplies to the people in the hardest hit places. There is a real Humanitarian crisis in Haiti and the US/UN must stop preventing the aid from reaching the people. This is mass genocide.
Haitians living in Port-au-Prince did the best they could in mobilizing themselves and their scant resources to deal collectively with their situation. Yet as occurred during the Katrina aftermath, the US media has portrayed the people as animals, looters and criminals, providing the rationale for the US government to send over 11,000 heavily armed troops into Haiti and seizing control of the airport, ports and facilities. But the media's portrayal is not true. It is NOT what is happening on the ground in Haiti. The US/UN officials and military personnel must stop preventing the distribution of aid provided by other countries and by not-for-profit agencies from around the globe.
The United States, instead of providing the immediate aid necessary in the first critical hours, mobilized an arsenal of military hardware and personnel with at least 11,000 soldiers to militarily occupy Port-au-Prince and the rest of Haiti, adding to the 9,000-strong UN military force in the country. The Haitian people need humanitarian assistance – water, medicine, medical supplies, healthcare workers -- not a military arsenal. The Haiti Emergency Committee says NO to this military deployment in Haiti. We oppose the occupation of Haiti.
We demand:
1) Let the aid get through to Haiti! Stop preventing the Haitian People from organizing their own relief efforts. Stop U.S. Military interference with international rescue & humanitarian aid. Yes to solidarity, No to militarization.
2) Stop denying Humanitarian entry into the US for Haitians whose lives are at risk.
3) END U.S./U.N. occupation of Haiti.
4) Stop the cruel and unjust IMF/World Bank/USAID structural adjustment program in Haiti.5) Cancel Haiti's debt to foreign banks, countries and to the International Monetary Fund.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Day 2 in Port-au-Prince: "Young Men with Crowbars"
by David L. Wilson
[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city. Because of limited electricity and internet connection, he was unable to send this report out until he got back to New York the morning of January 18. For an earlier report, see "Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince."]
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 15 -- I finally saw uniformed Haitian police on the street here at about 9 am two days ago, on Wednesday, more than 16 hours after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed much of the Haitian capital.
I'd gone out with photojournalist Tequila Minsky to survey damaged neighborhoods and the wrecked National Palace, and we'd just gone a few blocks back towards our hotel when Tequila spotted the agents. Four were sitting on chairs in front of a small building; another seemed to be getting something out of a patrol car.
Read the full article on Monthly Review's MRZine:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson180110.html
or World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8223
***
Thursday, Jan. 21: NYC Area Haiti Teach-In
We Are Haiti: A Teach In on the Crisis
Thursday, January 21, 2010
7:30pm - 10:00pm
The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (Between Bank and Bethune)
With:
Ray Laforest, a Haitian American labor leader
Christian Lemoine, a Haitian American activist
David L. Wilson, a US based activist who was present during the Haiti earthquake
While the earthquake in Haiti has revealed the faultlines of United States intervention in the country since its founding in 1804, the relief efforts led by grassroots activists and organizations have opened up new political space for a lasting international solidarity with the Haitian people at their time of need.
Join us for an emergency teach in on the Haitian crisis as we hear first hand accounts of the earthquake, relief efforts, US policy and the prospects for a new solidarity movement with the people of Haiti.
http://brechtforum.org/events/we-are-haiti
[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city. Because of limited electricity and internet connection, he was unable to send this report out until he got back to New York the morning of January 18. For an earlier report, see "Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince."]
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 15 -- I finally saw uniformed Haitian police on the street here at about 9 am two days ago, on Wednesday, more than 16 hours after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed much of the Haitian capital.
I'd gone out with photojournalist Tequila Minsky to survey damaged neighborhoods and the wrecked National Palace, and we'd just gone a few blocks back towards our hotel when Tequila spotted the agents. Four were sitting on chairs in front of a small building; another seemed to be getting something out of a patrol car.
Read the full article on Monthly Review's MRZine:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson180110.html
or World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8223
***
Thursday, Jan. 21: NYC Area Haiti Teach-In
We Are Haiti: A Teach In on the Crisis
Thursday, January 21, 2010
7:30pm - 10:00pm
The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (Between Bank and Bethune)
With:
Ray Laforest, a Haitian American labor leader
Christian Lemoine, a Haitian American activist
David L. Wilson, a US based activist who was present during the Haiti earthquake
While the earthquake in Haiti has revealed the faultlines of United States intervention in the country since its founding in 1804, the relief efforts led by grassroots activists and organizations have opened up new political space for a lasting international solidarity with the Haitian people at their time of need.
Join us for an emergency teach in on the Haitian crisis as we hear first hand accounts of the earthquake, relief efforts, US policy and the prospects for a new solidarity movement with the people of Haiti.
http://brechtforum.org/events/we-are-haiti
Friday, January 15, 2010
No Update on 1/17; Update Editor Files Article from Haiti
There will be no Weekly News Update published on January 17, 2010. Update editor David L. Wilson remains in Port-au-Prince; he was on a delegation in Haiti when the earthquake took place on Tuesday, January 12. He has had limited internet access but managed to file this report yesterday, written the previous evening:
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
by David L. Wilson
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 13 -- Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o'clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital. Another group was singing a block away, on the other side of the Hotel Oloffson, where I was camping out. [...]
Read the full article on World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8204
or Monthly Review's MRZine: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson140110.html
Following are some links to other alternative news sources on Haiti and quake relief efforts. If you would like to recommend other sources, please submit them as comments to this post.
Haiti Smashed, Diaspora Shaken, Deportations Frozen
Michelle Chen, Racewire Blog
http://www.racewire.org/archives/2010/01/haiti_smashed_diaspora_shaken_deportations_frozen.html
What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
Carl Lindskoog, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-2
Our role in Haiti's plight
Peter Hallward, Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
Ten Things the US Can and Should Do for Haiti
Bill Quigley, posted at naomiklein.org
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/ten-things-us-can-and-should-do-haiti
Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA - Why the Blood Is on Our Hands
Ted Rall, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-13
Relief efforts:
Call for Solidarity and Funds for the Working People of Haiti! Donate now to Batay Ouvriye- Haitian Worker and Peasant’s Organization
http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Lakou New York, and MUDHA (Movement of Dominican Haitian Women) are organizing an immediate delivery of first aid relief:
For more info: http://www.ifconews.org/node/723
To donate online: https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=4382 (designate "IFCO/Haiti Relief")
Bassin Zim Education & Development Fund works with partners in Haiti including KOSMIKA( a farmers cooperative), ASTRAL (a food transportation co-op) and the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP): http://www.seedsforhaiti.org/
Lambi Fund of Haiti
http://www.lambifund.org/
Grassroots International Earthquake Emergency Response Fund for Haiti
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/press-releases/grassroots-international-establishes-earthquake-emergency-relief-fund-haiti
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
c/o East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html
Help Haiti: Drop the Debt
http://www.avaaz.org/en/haiti_drop_the_debt/?1338
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
by David L. Wilson
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 13 -- Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o'clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital. Another group was singing a block away, on the other side of the Hotel Oloffson, where I was camping out. [...]
Read the full article on World War 4 Report: http://ww4report.com/node/8204
or Monthly Review's MRZine: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson140110.html
Following are some links to other alternative news sources on Haiti and quake relief efforts. If you would like to recommend other sources, please submit them as comments to this post.
Haiti Smashed, Diaspora Shaken, Deportations Frozen
Michelle Chen, Racewire Blog
http://www.racewire.org/archives/2010/01/haiti_smashed_diaspora_shaken_deportations_frozen.html
What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
Carl Lindskoog, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-2
Our role in Haiti's plight
Peter Hallward, Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
Ten Things the US Can and Should Do for Haiti
Bill Quigley, posted at naomiklein.org
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/ten-things-us-can-and-should-do-haiti
Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA - Why the Blood Is on Our Hands
Ted Rall, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-13
Relief efforts:
Call for Solidarity and Funds for the Working People of Haiti! Donate now to Batay Ouvriye- Haitian Worker and Peasant’s Organization
http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Lakou New York, and MUDHA (Movement of Dominican Haitian Women) are organizing an immediate delivery of first aid relief:
For more info: http://www.ifconews.org/no
To donate online: https://npo.networkforgood
Bassin Zim Education & Development Fund works with partners in Haiti including KOSMIKA( a farmers cooperative), ASTRAL (a food transportation co-op) and the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP): http://www.seedsforhaiti.o
Lambi Fund of Haiti
http://www.lambifund.org/
Grassroots International Earthquake Emergency Response Fund for Haiti
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/press-releases/grassroots-international-establishes-earthquake-emergency-relief-fund-haiti
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
c/o East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
http://www.haitiaction.net
Help Haiti: Drop the Debt
http://www.avaaz.org/en/haiti_drop_the_debt/?1338
Monday, January 4, 2010
WNU #1019: Uphold 25-Year Jail Term for Peru’s Fujimori
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1019, January 3, 2010
1. Peru: Uphold 25-Year Jail Term for Ex-President
2. Guatemala: 2 Charged as “Authors” of Lawyer’s Murder
3. Mexico: Activist Cleared in Journalist’s Murder--Again
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US, Canada
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
Note: There will be no Update on January 10, 2010. Publication will resume the following week.
*1. Peru: Uphold 25-Year Jail Term for Ex-President
On Jan. 3 a five-member panel of the Peruvian Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 25-year prison sentence for former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) for deaths and serious injuries caused by a paramilitary unit during his administration; Supreme Court justice César San Martín Castro had handed down the sentence on Apr. 7, 2009 [see Update #993]. The panel also voted 4-1 to confirm Fujimori’s conviction for two kidnappings. The ex-president, who is 71, could remain in prison until 2032; the two years since he was arrested in Chile in 2007 count as time served. He would be eligible for parole in 2025.
The homicide and injury convictions stem from two massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Colina Group, a death squad organized by military intelligence and allegedly reporting to the president: the November 1991 killing of 15 people at a family barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, and the July 1992 abduction and murder of nine university students and a professor from the Enrique Guzmán y Valle (La Cantuta) university [see Update #784]. The group also kidnapped journalist Gustavo Gorriti [see Update #394] and business owner Samuel Dyer in 1992; both were subsequently released. The kidnapping conviction is significant because presidential pardons are not allowed in kidnapping cases. According to opinion polls, Fujimori’s daughter, Congress member Keiko Fujimori, is the second most popular candidate for the 2011 presidential race; she has said she would free her father if elected. (El País (Spain) 1/3/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 1/3/10)
Many Peruvians supported Fujimori in his campaign of repression against rebel groups, and random interviews by the daily El Comercio in the streets of Lima on Jan. 3 found a sizeable minority opposing the Supreme Court decision. But the paper reported that a clear majority approved of the sentence. “The crimes were real,” one person said. “There had to be a guilty party, and everything starts from the head. I don’t believe he wasn’t informed on the subject.” (El Comercio (Peru) 1/3/10)
Meanwhile, US activist Lori Berenson, arrested by Fujimori’s government in 1995, continues to serve a 20-year sentence for allegedly collaborating with the rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) [see Update # 775]. In 2003 she married a fellow prisoner, former MRTA member Anibal Apari, who was released from prison that year and is now a lawyer in Lima; the couple had their first child in May 2009. Berenson, who insists on her innocence, becomes eligible for parole in November of this year. (Huffington Post 5/6/09)
*2. Guatemala: 2 Charged as “Authors” of Lawyer’s Murder
According to local media, on Dec. 10 a Guatemalan court issued arrest warrants for the brothers Francisco José and José Estuardo Valdez Paiz in the May 10, 2009 murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano. The Valdez brothers, who own pharmaceutical businesses and are reportedly distant relations of Rosenberg, are charged as the “intellectual authors” of the crime. Three of 11 people arrested in the case told the authorities that the brothers had contracted them to kill an alleged extortionist, who turned out to be Rosenberg. The suspects are thought to be out of the country.
Shortly before his death, Rosenberg made a video in which he said: “If you are reading this message, it is because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, have been murdered by the private Presidency secretary Gustavo Alejos and his colleague Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Mr. Álvaro Colom [the Guatemalan president] and Sandra de Colom [his wife]." The release of the video after Rosenberg’s death led to a political crisis, with the opposition demanding that President Colom step down. Colom refused, insisting on his innocence.
The investigation is being conducted by the UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) [see Update # 1004]. (EFE 12/31/09; Prensa Latina 12/31/09)
*3. Mexico: Activist Cleared in Journalist’s Murder--Again
Mexican district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez in Oaxaca city issued an order on Dec. 30 giving the federal government 10 days to release activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, who has been held since Oct. 16, 2008 for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will. Martínez Moreno, a member of the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), had already been cleared of the murder charges on Nov. 9 by magistrate judge Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez, who asked Judge Ortega Pérez to release the prisoner within 48 hours [see Update #1012, where we reported incorrectly that the magistrate judge “ordered” the district judge, his superior, to release the activist]. However, the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) appealed, as it is expected to do again with Judge Ortega Pérez’s decision.
Will, who was openly sympathetic to the APPO, was shot dead while covering an APPO-sponsored demonstration against Oaxaca state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz on Oct. 27, 2006; the government failed to produce any witnesses claiming to have seen Martínez Moreno shoot Will. The defendant’s lawyer, Alba Cruz Ramos, said Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and organizations in APPO may hold a sit-in in early January in front of the local PGR office to demand Martínez Moreno’s immediate release. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/31/09)
In other news, as of Jan. 3 the semi-governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) had issued a recommendation to Zeferino Torreblanca, center-left governor of the southern state of Guerrero, in the unsolved case of two indigenous leaders kidnapped by three armed men on Feb. 13, 2009 in Ayutla de los Libres municipality, Guerrero, and found dead on Feb. 20 in Tecoanapa municipality. The CNDH noted irregularities in the state’s investigation, and asked Torreblanca to correct them and to offer protection to witnesses and to the families of the victims, who were leaders in the Organization for the Development of the Mixteco Méphaa Peoples. (LJ 1/3/2010)
Although media reports failed to identify the victims, presumably they were Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas, Guerrero indigenous leaders whose bodies were found on Feb. 20, 2009 “with visible signs of torture and in an advanced state of decomposition,” according to the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center. (El Universal (Mexico City) 2/21/09 from AP)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US, Canada
Argentina: First Same-Sex Marriage in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2287/68/
Brazil: Guarani leaders murdered, tortured
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8124
An Independent Candidate Jolts Chile's Center-Left Coalition
https://nacla.org/node/6330
Bolivia Debates Media Law Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2289/68/
Report on Massacre of Native Protesters in Peru Biased, Says Head of Inquiry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2286/1/
Peru: hostage crisis follows Huancas prison revolt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8131
Colombians Refuse to Be Displaced: Over 5,000 Occupy the Piñuña Negro Police Inspectors Office in Putumayo
http://www.narconews.com/Issue63/article3998.html
Mary O’Grady Incites Violence in Colombian Peace Community
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2284/1/
Venezuela and China Consolidate “Strategic Alliance,” Expand Bilateral Trade
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5032
Guatemala: The Incessant Search for the Disappeared: Exhumation in Villalobos
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2285/1/
Mexican Editor Detained, Interrogated
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=79af74f85d2241aec14ac53eddff63bc
Cuba-US: Stuck at a Standstill
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49846
Militarizing Latin America
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4864/militarizing_latin_america/
Canadian Mining in Latin America: Paramilitaries, Assassinations, and Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2280/1/
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 #1019, January 3, 2010
1. Peru: Uphold 25-Year Jail Term for Ex-President
2. Guatemala: 2 Charged as “Authors” of Lawyer’s Murder
3. Mexico: Activist Cleared in Journalist’s Murder--Again
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US, Canada
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
Note: There will be no Update on January 10, 2010. Publication will resume the following week.
*1. Peru: Uphold 25-Year Jail Term for Ex-President
On Jan. 3 a five-member panel of the Peruvian Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 25-year prison sentence for former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) for deaths and serious injuries caused by a paramilitary unit during his administration; Supreme Court justice César San Martín Castro had handed down the sentence on Apr. 7, 2009 [see Update #993]. The panel also voted 4-1 to confirm Fujimori’s conviction for two kidnappings. The ex-president, who is 71, could remain in prison until 2032; the two years since he was arrested in Chile in 2007 count as time served. He would be eligible for parole in 2025.
The homicide and injury convictions stem from two massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Colina Group, a death squad organized by military intelligence and allegedly reporting to the president: the November 1991 killing of 15 people at a family barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, and the July 1992 abduction and murder of nine university students and a professor from the Enrique Guzmán y Valle (La Cantuta) university [see Update #784]. The group also kidnapped journalist Gustavo Gorriti [see Update #394] and business owner Samuel Dyer in 1992; both were subsequently released. The kidnapping conviction is significant because presidential pardons are not allowed in kidnapping cases. According to opinion polls, Fujimori’s daughter, Congress member Keiko Fujimori, is the second most popular candidate for the 2011 presidential race; she has said she would free her father if elected. (El País (Spain) 1/3/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 1/3/10)
Many Peruvians supported Fujimori in his campaign of repression against rebel groups, and random interviews by the daily El Comercio in the streets of Lima on Jan. 3 found a sizeable minority opposing the Supreme Court decision. But the paper reported that a clear majority approved of the sentence. “The crimes were real,” one person said. “There had to be a guilty party, and everything starts from the head. I don’t believe he wasn’t informed on the subject.” (El Comercio (Peru) 1/3/10)
Meanwhile, US activist Lori Berenson, arrested by Fujimori’s government in 1995, continues to serve a 20-year sentence for allegedly collaborating with the rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) [see Update # 775]. In 2003 she married a fellow prisoner, former MRTA member Anibal Apari, who was released from prison that year and is now a lawyer in Lima; the couple had their first child in May 2009. Berenson, who insists on her innocence, becomes eligible for parole in November of this year. (Huffington Post 5/6/09)
*2. Guatemala: 2 Charged as “Authors” of Lawyer’s Murder
According to local media, on Dec. 10 a Guatemalan court issued arrest warrants for the brothers Francisco José and José Estuardo Valdez Paiz in the May 10, 2009 murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano. The Valdez brothers, who own pharmaceutical businesses and are reportedly distant relations of Rosenberg, are charged as the “intellectual authors” of the crime. Three of 11 people arrested in the case told the authorities that the brothers had contracted them to kill an alleged extortionist, who turned out to be Rosenberg. The suspects are thought to be out of the country.
Shortly before his death, Rosenberg made a video in which he said: “If you are reading this message, it is because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, have been murdered by the private Presidency secretary Gustavo Alejos and his colleague Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Mr. Álvaro Colom [the Guatemalan president] and Sandra de Colom [his wife]." The release of the video after Rosenberg’s death led to a political crisis, with the opposition demanding that President Colom step down. Colom refused, insisting on his innocence.
The investigation is being conducted by the UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) [see Update # 1004]. (EFE 12/31/09; Prensa Latina 12/31/09)
*3. Mexico: Activist Cleared in Journalist’s Murder--Again
Mexican district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez in Oaxaca city issued an order on Dec. 30 giving the federal government 10 days to release activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, who has been held since Oct. 16, 2008 for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will. Martínez Moreno, a member of the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), had already been cleared of the murder charges on Nov. 9 by magistrate judge Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez, who asked Judge Ortega Pérez to release the prisoner within 48 hours [see Update #1012, where we reported incorrectly that the magistrate judge “ordered” the district judge, his superior, to release the activist]. However, the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) appealed, as it is expected to do again with Judge Ortega Pérez’s decision.
Will, who was openly sympathetic to the APPO, was shot dead while covering an APPO-sponsored demonstration against Oaxaca state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz on Oct. 27, 2006; the government failed to produce any witnesses claiming to have seen Martínez Moreno shoot Will. The defendant’s lawyer, Alba Cruz Ramos, said Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and organizations in APPO may hold a sit-in in early January in front of the local PGR office to demand Martínez Moreno’s immediate release. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/31/09)
In other news, as of Jan. 3 the semi-governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) had issued a recommendation to Zeferino Torreblanca, center-left governor of the southern state of Guerrero, in the unsolved case of two indigenous leaders kidnapped by three armed men on Feb. 13, 2009 in Ayutla de los Libres municipality, Guerrero, and found dead on Feb. 20 in Tecoanapa municipality. The CNDH noted irregularities in the state’s investigation, and asked Torreblanca to correct them and to offer protection to witnesses and to the families of the victims, who were leaders in the Organization for the Development of the Mixteco Méphaa Peoples. (LJ 1/3/2010)
Although media reports failed to identify the victims, presumably they were Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas, Guerrero indigenous leaders whose bodies were found on Feb. 20, 2009 “with visible signs of torture and in an advanced state of decomposition,” according to the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center. (El Universal (Mexico City) 2/21/09 from AP)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US, Canada
Argentina: First Same-Sex Marriage in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2287/68/
Brazil: Guarani leaders murdered, tortured
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8124
An Independent Candidate Jolts Chile's Center-Left Coalition
https://nacla.org/node/6330
Bolivia Debates Media Law Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2289/68/
Report on Massacre of Native Protesters in Peru Biased, Says Head of Inquiry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2286/1/
Peru: hostage crisis follows Huancas prison revolt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8131
Colombians Refuse to Be Displaced: Over 5,000 Occupy the Piñuña Negro Police Inspectors Office in Putumayo
http://www.narconews.com/Issue63/article3998.html
Mary O’Grady Incites Violence in Colombian Peace Community
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2284/1/
Venezuela and China Consolidate “Strategic Alliance,” Expand Bilateral Trade
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5032
Guatemala: The Incessant Search for the Disappeared: Exhumation in Villalobos
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2285/1/
Mexican Editor Detained, Interrogated
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=79af74f85d2241aec14ac53eddff63bc
Cuba-US: Stuck at a Standstill
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49846
Militarizing Latin America
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4864/militarizing_latin_america/
Canadian Mining in Latin America: Paramilitaries, Assassinations, and Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2280/1/
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, December 29, 2009
WNU #1018: Mexico City OKs Same-Sex Marriage
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1018, December 27, 2009
1. Mexico: Federal District OKs Same-Sex Marriage
2. Colombia: Who Killed Gov. Cuéllar, and Why?
3. Bolivia: Government Wants Immigrants Back
4. Panama: Families Mark 20 Years Since US Invasion
5. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
1. Mexico: Federal District OKs Same-Sex Marriage
On Dec. 21 Mexico City’s legislature, the Federal District Legislative Assembly (ALDF), voted 39-20 to permit same-sex marriage; another 39-20 vote later in the session gave same-sex couples the legal right to adopt children. Deputies from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the small leftist Workers Party (PT) voted for the measure, while the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the small Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) opposed it. Two deputies from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) voted with the opposition, and five abstained. PAN coordinator Mariana Gómez del Campo and PRI coordinator Israel Betanzos said they would challenge the law’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).
Federal District (DF) head of government Marcelo Ebrard—in effect, Mexico City’s mayor—is a member of the PRD and is expected to sign the bill. If he does, the Mexican capital will become the first city in Latin America to recognize same-sex marriages. (Associated Press 12/21/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/22/09). [The DF was the first Mexican political unit to approve same-sex civil unions, in a vote on Nov. 9, 2006; see Updates #874, 905].
2. Colombia: Who Killed Gov. Cuéllar, and Why?
Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba announced on Dec. 26 that she had asked the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to state whether they are responsible for the Dec. 21 abduction of Luis Francisco Cuéllar, governor of the southern department of Caquetá; his body was found with a slashed throat outside the state capital, Florencia, on Dec. 22. Police agent Javier García Gutiérrez was also killed in the incident, and two agents were injured. The government of rightwing president Alvaro Uribe immediately blamed the FARC for the kidnapping and deaths. Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (ANNCOL), a news agency which carries communiqués from the rebels, called the government’s claim “irresponsible,” but as of Dec. 26 there had been no denial from the FARC.
Many governments—including those of Chile, France and the US--issued statements denouncing the killings. On Dec. 23 the center-left government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa expressed its “most energetic condemnation and rejection of the kidnapping and murder” and its “solidarity with the relatives of the governor and the police agents.”
The incident may put a brake on negotiations that Sen. Córdoba and the organization Colombians for Peace had been holding with the FARC for the unilateral release of two soldiers the rebels are holding captive: Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Josué Daniel Calvo. President Uribe reacted to the abduction and killing by announcing that his government would take military action to free all FARC prisoners. As of Dec. 26 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had been making arrangements for the transfer of the prisoners, had suspended its participation, citing the lack of safety guarantees if the government is carrying out military actions.
The case of Pablo Moncayo, a noncommissioned officer, is especially familiar to the Colombian public because his father, the schoolteacher Gustavo Moncayo, has been carrying out a "walk for peace" for several years to call for the government and the FARC to negotiate his son’s release [see Update #909]. Gustavo Moncayo has asked the government not to attempt a rescue of his son. (El Universal (Caracas) 12/26/09; Prensa Latina 12/23/09, 12/26/09; El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/23/09; EFE 12/23/09)
Aside from delaying or possibly sabotaging the prisoner release, the operation against Gov. Cuéllar seemed badly timed in other ways for opponents of President Uribe, one of the US government’s few remaining Latin American allies. Elections are scheduled for Mar. 14 to select 102 senators and 166 representatives for the Congress, along with five members of the Andean Parliament; on May 30 voters are to choose the president and vice president, with a runoff on June 20 if no one wins a majority. Uribe, who has based much of his political career on confrontations with the FARC, is contemplating a controversial run for a third term. Cuéllar’s death is “opportune” for Uribe, Argentine-born journalist Irene Selser wrote in her column in the conservative Mexican daily Milenio on Dec. 24. It also “legitimizes the presence in the country of US troops, who will be arriving in the next weeks to ‘defend…democracy from these narco-terrorists,’ as the White House put it” on Dec. 23.
The FARC unit that operates in Caquetá is the Teófilo Forero column, which is known for such spectacular operations as the kidnapping of Green presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and the hijacking of former senator Eduardo Gechem Turbay’s plane, both in February 2002. But recently the unit has been quiet, according to Selser, who wrote that “a possible action of infiltration by the US can’t be discounted.” The Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR reported on Dec. 23 that according to its Colombia correspondent “some Colombians have indicated that the governor’s death could be a matter of a ‘false positive’ carried out by the Colombian government”—a reference to cases of the Colombian military killing civilians and then dressing their bodies in FARC uniforms. (Prensa Latina 12/26/09; Milenio 12/24/09; El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/23/09; Colombia Reports 12/23/09)
But others thought the operation may have stemmed simply from local Caquetá politics. The rebels frequently accused Cuéllar of supporting the rightwing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) when he was mayor of Morelia, and they had kidnapped him for ransoms a total of four times before the Dec. 21 incident.
Meanwhile, this year the national government was investigating Cuéllar for “parapolitics,” based on accusations by former paramilitary leader Luis Alberto Medina Salazar (“Cristo Malo”) that the governor had funded paramilitaries. In an appearance before the prosecutor’s office in Bogotá in early November, Cuéllar denied the charges, which he said were politically motivated. In fact, a political rival, former governor Juan Carlos Claros, allegedly had members of the Heroes of the Andaquíes Bloc—a paramilitary group reportedly tied to Claros—plant 300 uniforms camouflage uniforms in one of Cuéllar’s ranches in 2005 to create the appearance that Cuéllar was still working actively with the paramilitaries. (Rebelión 12/24/09)
In other news, the Corporation Humanitarian Action for Coexistence and Peace in the Antioquian Northeast (Cahucopana) reported the discovery of the body of Luis Alberto Aris Pran (presumably a local resident) on Nov. 21 in Remedios municipality in the northwestern department of Antioquia. According to some reports, the killing was carried out by paramilitaries operating in the region; the group is said to include an army deserter. On Dec. 13 the vendor Sergio Alonso Gallego was murdered in Remedios; the motive and identity of the killers is unknown. (Adital 12/22/09 from Prensa Rural)
3. Bolivia: Government Wants Immigrants Back
At a ceremony in La Paz marking International Migrants Day on Dec. 18, Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca said the leftist government of President Evo Morales had an “obligation” to help Bolivian migrants return to their country. “The recovery of our natural resources is important for us so that Bolivians who for different reasons have gone abroad to look for work or to study can return to our country and can build [their] dreams in our lands,” Choquehuanca said, linking the issue to the government’s nationalization policies. He also announced accords with Spain to make it easier for Bolivian immigrants to Spain to get drivers’ licenses there.
Alfonso Hinojosa, who heads Bolivia’s consular offices, told the Spanish wire service EFE that the government had taken several steps to encourage the return of migrants, including an offer of land to Bolivian immigrant communities in Argentina and Chile. The government is also considering incentives for Bolivians working at low-wage jobs in shops in Argentina and Brazil to come home, he said. According to the government more than two million people have left Bolivia in the past 30 years, most of them moving to Argentina, where about 1.5 million Bolivians are living. Some 250,000 Bolivians are in the US, and around the same number live in Brazil, while as many as 350,000 may have immigrated to Spain from 2002 to 2007. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 12/23/09 from EFE)
4. Panama: Families Mark 20 Years Since US Invasion
Relatives of people who were killed when the US military invaded Panama in 1989 marked the 20th anniversary of the intervention on Dec. 20 with a protest outside the old US embassy in Panama City, burning effigies of US president Barack Obama and Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli. The Association of Relatives of the Fallen is calling for a Truth Commission to investigate the events of December 1989, including possible war crimes. The protesters said they have brought this demand to four Panamanian governments without success and are now trying to get action from rightwing president Martinelli, who took office on July 1.
Some 26,000 elite US troops invaded Panamanian cities and installations in the early morning of Dec. 20, 1989; they were joined by 12,000 soldiers from the more than 100 bases the US still maintained in the Canal Zone at the time. The invasion, codenamed “Operation Just Cause,” was ordered by then-president George H.W. Bush without a declaration of war and without approval from the United Nations; the pretext was that the US needed to end drug trafficking by the regime of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who for most of his career had been a paid informant of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The operation, following the “overkill” strategy of Gen. Colin Powell, then the head of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, included bombing civilian areas in Panama City and Colón. Official sources say 427 people were killed in the invasion, but relatives and social organizations put the number at 4,000. Local media said 14,000 homes were destroyed and estimated the material damage at $1.5 billion.
The protesters noted that Martinelli had agreed to give the US access to as many as 11 new Panamanian bases, allegedly to fight narcotrafficking under the US-funded Mérida Initiative [see Update #1012]. The first of these bases opened on Dec. 1 on the Pacific island of Chapera. (Prensa Latina 12/20/09; Earth Times 12/20/09 from DPA; La Jornada 12/21/09, from AP, DPA, Notimex)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Brazilian Guarani Tortured and Murdered
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2272/68/
Bolivia Debates Media Law Reform
https://nacla.org/node/6328
Bolivia: Native People Take First Steps Towards Self-Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2274/68/
Bicentennial and Breaking Continuity: Ecuador, Latin America, and Obama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2277/1/
Canada-Ecuador: When Stock Exchanges Fuel Human Rights Violations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2268/1/
Colombia: Chicha, Fashionable Survivor
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2271/68/
Colombia: FARC blamed in slaying of Caquetá governor
http://ww4report.com/node/8104
Venezuela signs new oil deals with China, imposes power cuts on industry
http://ww4report.com/node/8103
Honduran Coup d'état Finds Rival in Nicaragua
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2270/1/
El Salvador: Ramiro Rivera Shot to Death in Cabañas
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2266/1/
Action Alert: Demand an Investigation Into the Murder of Anti-mining Activist Ramiro Rivera Gómez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2273/68/
Hitmen Assassinate Prominent Woman Activist in Cabañas; Pro-Mining Violence Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2279/1/
El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8114
Killing Activists in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2278/1/
Mexico: Where the Holidays are a Cruel Hoax
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross12252009.html
Mexico: Drug War in Guerrero: A War on the Poor
https://nacla.org/node/6326
Mexico: Quintana Roo journalist 12th killed in 2009
http://ww4report.com/node/8113
Mexico: grisly vengeance follows Arturo Beltrán Leyva killing
http://ww4report.com/node/8101
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 #1018, December 27, 2009
1. Mexico: Federal District OKs Same-Sex Marriage
2. Colombia: Who Killed Gov. Cuéllar, and Why?
3. Bolivia: Government Wants Immigrants Back
4. Panama: Families Mark 20 Years Since US Invasion
5. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
1. Mexico: Federal District OKs Same-Sex Marriage
On Dec. 21 Mexico City’s legislature, the Federal District Legislative Assembly (ALDF), voted 39-20 to permit same-sex marriage; another 39-20 vote later in the session gave same-sex couples the legal right to adopt children. Deputies from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the small leftist Workers Party (PT) voted for the measure, while the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the small Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) opposed it. Two deputies from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) voted with the opposition, and five abstained. PAN coordinator Mariana Gómez del Campo and PRI coordinator Israel Betanzos said they would challenge the law’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).
Federal District (DF) head of government Marcelo Ebrard—in effect, Mexico City’s mayor—is a member of the PRD and is expected to sign the bill. If he does, the Mexican capital will become the first city in Latin America to recognize same-sex marriages. (Associated Press 12/21/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/22/09). [The DF was the first Mexican political unit to approve same-sex civil unions, in a vote on Nov. 9, 2006; see Updates #874, 905].
2. Colombia: Who Killed Gov. Cuéllar, and Why?
Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba announced on Dec. 26 that she had asked the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to state whether they are responsible for the Dec. 21 abduction of Luis Francisco Cuéllar, governor of the southern department of Caquetá; his body was found with a slashed throat outside the state capital, Florencia, on Dec. 22. Police agent Javier García Gutiérrez was also killed in the incident, and two agents were injured. The government of rightwing president Alvaro Uribe immediately blamed the FARC for the kidnapping and deaths. Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (ANNCOL), a news agency which carries communiqués from the rebels, called the government’s claim “irresponsible,” but as of Dec. 26 there had been no denial from the FARC.
Many governments—including those of Chile, France and the US--issued statements denouncing the killings. On Dec. 23 the center-left government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa expressed its “most energetic condemnation and rejection of the kidnapping and murder” and its “solidarity with the relatives of the governor and the police agents.”
The incident may put a brake on negotiations that Sen. Córdoba and the organization Colombians for Peace had been holding with the FARC for the unilateral release of two soldiers the rebels are holding captive: Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Josué Daniel Calvo. President Uribe reacted to the abduction and killing by announcing that his government would take military action to free all FARC prisoners. As of Dec. 26 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had been making arrangements for the transfer of the prisoners, had suspended its participation, citing the lack of safety guarantees if the government is carrying out military actions.
The case of Pablo Moncayo, a noncommissioned officer, is especially familiar to the Colombian public because his father, the schoolteacher Gustavo Moncayo, has been carrying out a "walk for peace" for several years to call for the government and the FARC to negotiate his son’s release [see Update #909]. Gustavo Moncayo has asked the government not to attempt a rescue of his son. (El Universal (Caracas) 12/26/09; Prensa Latina 12/23/09, 12/26/09; El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/23/09; EFE 12/23/09)
Aside from delaying or possibly sabotaging the prisoner release, the operation against Gov. Cuéllar seemed badly timed in other ways for opponents of President Uribe, one of the US government’s few remaining Latin American allies. Elections are scheduled for Mar. 14 to select 102 senators and 166 representatives for the Congress, along with five members of the Andean Parliament; on May 30 voters are to choose the president and vice president, with a runoff on June 20 if no one wins a majority. Uribe, who has based much of his political career on confrontations with the FARC, is contemplating a controversial run for a third term. Cuéllar’s death is “opportune” for Uribe, Argentine-born journalist Irene Selser wrote in her column in the conservative Mexican daily Milenio on Dec. 24. It also “legitimizes the presence in the country of US troops, who will be arriving in the next weeks to ‘defend…democracy from these narco-terrorists,’ as the White House put it” on Dec. 23.
The FARC unit that operates in Caquetá is the Teófilo Forero column, which is known for such spectacular operations as the kidnapping of Green presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and the hijacking of former senator Eduardo Gechem Turbay’s plane, both in February 2002. But recently the unit has been quiet, according to Selser, who wrote that “a possible action of infiltration by the US can’t be discounted.” The Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR reported on Dec. 23 that according to its Colombia correspondent “some Colombians have indicated that the governor’s death could be a matter of a ‘false positive’ carried out by the Colombian government”—a reference to cases of the Colombian military killing civilians and then dressing their bodies in FARC uniforms. (Prensa Latina 12/26/09; Milenio 12/24/09; El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/23/09; Colombia Reports 12/23/09)
But others thought the operation may have stemmed simply from local Caquetá politics. The rebels frequently accused Cuéllar of supporting the rightwing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) when he was mayor of Morelia, and they had kidnapped him for ransoms a total of four times before the Dec. 21 incident.
Meanwhile, this year the national government was investigating Cuéllar for “parapolitics,” based on accusations by former paramilitary leader Luis Alberto Medina Salazar (“Cristo Malo”) that the governor had funded paramilitaries. In an appearance before the prosecutor’s office in Bogotá in early November, Cuéllar denied the charges, which he said were politically motivated. In fact, a political rival, former governor Juan Carlos Claros, allegedly had members of the Heroes of the Andaquíes Bloc—a paramilitary group reportedly tied to Claros—plant 300 uniforms camouflage uniforms in one of Cuéllar’s ranches in 2005 to create the appearance that Cuéllar was still working actively with the paramilitaries. (Rebelión 12/24/09)
In other news, the Corporation Humanitarian Action for Coexistence and Peace in the Antioquian Northeast (Cahucopana) reported the discovery of the body of Luis Alberto Aris Pran (presumably a local resident) on Nov. 21 in Remedios municipality in the northwestern department of Antioquia. According to some reports, the killing was carried out by paramilitaries operating in the region; the group is said to include an army deserter. On Dec. 13 the vendor Sergio Alonso Gallego was murdered in Remedios; the motive and identity of the killers is unknown. (Adital 12/22/09 from Prensa Rural)
3. Bolivia: Government Wants Immigrants Back
At a ceremony in La Paz marking International Migrants Day on Dec. 18, Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca said the leftist government of President Evo Morales had an “obligation” to help Bolivian migrants return to their country. “The recovery of our natural resources is important for us so that Bolivians who for different reasons have gone abroad to look for work or to study can return to our country and can build [their] dreams in our lands,” Choquehuanca said, linking the issue to the government’s nationalization policies. He also announced accords with Spain to make it easier for Bolivian immigrants to Spain to get drivers’ licenses there.
Alfonso Hinojosa, who heads Bolivia’s consular offices, told the Spanish wire service EFE that the government had taken several steps to encourage the return of migrants, including an offer of land to Bolivian immigrant communities in Argentina and Chile. The government is also considering incentives for Bolivians working at low-wage jobs in shops in Argentina and Brazil to come home, he said. According to the government more than two million people have left Bolivia in the past 30 years, most of them moving to Argentina, where about 1.5 million Bolivians are living. Some 250,000 Bolivians are in the US, and around the same number live in Brazil, while as many as 350,000 may have immigrated to Spain from 2002 to 2007. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 12/23/09 from EFE)
4. Panama: Families Mark 20 Years Since US Invasion
Relatives of people who were killed when the US military invaded Panama in 1989 marked the 20th anniversary of the intervention on Dec. 20 with a protest outside the old US embassy in Panama City, burning effigies of US president Barack Obama and Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli. The Association of Relatives of the Fallen is calling for a Truth Commission to investigate the events of December 1989, including possible war crimes. The protesters said they have brought this demand to four Panamanian governments without success and are now trying to get action from rightwing president Martinelli, who took office on July 1.
Some 26,000 elite US troops invaded Panamanian cities and installations in the early morning of Dec. 20, 1989; they were joined by 12,000 soldiers from the more than 100 bases the US still maintained in the Canal Zone at the time. The invasion, codenamed “Operation Just Cause,” was ordered by then-president George H.W. Bush without a declaration of war and without approval from the United Nations; the pretext was that the US needed to end drug trafficking by the regime of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who for most of his career had been a paid informant of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The operation, following the “overkill” strategy of Gen. Colin Powell, then the head of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, included bombing civilian areas in Panama City and Colón. Official sources say 427 people were killed in the invasion, but relatives and social organizations put the number at 4,000. Local media said 14,000 homes were destroyed and estimated the material damage at $1.5 billion.
The protesters noted that Martinelli had agreed to give the US access to as many as 11 new Panamanian bases, allegedly to fight narcotrafficking under the US-funded Mérida Initiative [see Update #1012]. The first of these bases opened on Dec. 1 on the Pacific island of Chapera. (Prensa Latina 12/20/09; Earth Times 12/20/09 from DPA; La Jornada 12/21/09, from AP, DPA, Notimex)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Brazilian Guarani Tortured and Murdered
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2272/68/
Bolivia Debates Media Law Reform
https://nacla.org/node/6328
Bolivia: Native People Take First Steps Towards Self-Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2274/68/
Bicentennial and Breaking Continuity: Ecuador, Latin America, and Obama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2277/1/
Canada-Ecuador: When Stock Exchanges Fuel Human Rights Violations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2268/1/
Colombia: Chicha, Fashionable Survivor
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2271/68/
Colombia: FARC blamed in slaying of Caquetá governor
http://ww4report.com/node/8104
Venezuela signs new oil deals with China, imposes power cuts on industry
http://ww4report.com/node/8103
Honduran Coup d'état Finds Rival in Nicaragua
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2270/1/
El Salvador: Ramiro Rivera Shot to Death in Cabañas
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2266/1/
Action Alert: Demand an Investigation Into the Murder of Anti-mining Activist Ramiro Rivera Gómez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2273/68/
Hitmen Assassinate Prominent Woman Activist in Cabañas; Pro-Mining Violence Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2279/1/
El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8114
Killing Activists in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2278/1/
Mexico: Where the Holidays are a Cruel Hoax
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross12252009.html
Mexico: Drug War in Guerrero: A War on the Poor
https://nacla.org/node/6326
Mexico: Quintana Roo journalist 12th killed in 2009
http://ww4report.com/node/8113
Mexico: grisly vengeance follows Arturo Beltrán Leyva killing
http://ww4report.com/node/8101
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 22, 2009
WNU #1017: Reporter Threatened Over Honduran Election Story
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1017, December 20, 2009
1. Honduras: Reporter Threatened Over Election Story
2. Honduras: De Factos to Leave ALBA, Keep Oil Deal
3. Colombia: Peace Community Called “FARC Haven”
4. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Anti-Gay Crimes
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Drug War
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: Reporter Threatened Over Election Story
Ernesto Carmona, the Chilean general secretary of the Investigation Commission on Attacks Against Journalists (CIAP) of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP), told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina on Dec. 17 that the life of Swedish journalist Dick Emanuelsson was in danger because of an article he wrote questioning official turnout projections in the Nov. 29 Honduran general elections [see Update #1015]. Rightwing forces in the country have claimed there was high voter participation, which they say validated a June 28 coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office; coup opponents said turnout was about 30-40%.
Emanuelsson, who is based in Honduras, wrote an article on Dec. 1 about an interview he held with Rolando Bú, coordinator of the election monitoring nonprofit Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD). The interview focused on the discrepancy between the 61.3% voter participation rate given by Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the 47.6% figure the FHD gave based on its own monitoring of polling places; Emanuelsson also revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) paid up to 29% of the FHD’s $300,000 budget for 2009.
Bú later charged that Emanuelsson taped the interview without permission, and he threatened to press charges. Emanuelsson said one of Bú’s secretaries told him he might “meet the same fate as Father [José Andrés] Tamayo”—a Salvadoran environmental activist and priest who has been ordered expelled from Honduras [see Update #1004]. Emanuelsson thinks he might be physically attacked, according to CIAP. “Things are ugly here, and every day it seems more like Colombia,” Carmona quoted Emanuelsson as saying. The reporter left Colombia previously because of death threats. (PL 12/17/09; Rebanadas de Realidad (Argentina) 12/1/09)
The TSE isn’t expected to give its final count until Dec. 23 at the earliest, but on Dec. 19 its website showed a participation rate of 49.4%--with “100.07%” [sic] of the 2,297,465 votes counted. The total of blank and spoiled ballots was 155,584, according to the website, so that the total valid votes in the official count represented about 46% of registered voters, far below the TSE’s original figure. It is unknown how many voters spoiled their votes or left them blank on purpose to protest the de facto government, but the pro-coup Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna showed a picture of a spoiled ballot: the voter had written “coup-perpetrating SOBs” across the pictures of the presidential candidates. (Honduras Coup 2009 12/19/09; La Tribuna 12/13/09)
*2. Honduras: De Factos to Leave ALBA, Keep Oil Deal
On Dec. 16 de facto Honduran president Roberto Micheletti Bain sent the National Congress a proposal for Honduras to withdraw from the Venezuelan-inspired Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America trade bloc (ALBA, formerly the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America). De facto presidency minister Rafael Pineda Ponce said the move only concerned the ALBA pact and “will not affect in any way commercial or other types of relations that have been maintained, or the importation of oil or anything connected to PetroCaribe,” a system through which Venezuela provides oil to other Caribbean countries at favorable terms. Honduras currently receives 20,000 barrels a day; it pays 60% of the cost in 90 days and the rest over 25 years at just 1% interest a year.
Deposed president Manuel Zelaya called Micheletti’s move “insolent” and charged that the de facto government had wasted “more than $100 million coming from ALBA and Petrocaribe.” He noted that Micheletti was president of the Congress when it approved Honduras’ entry into ALBA in August 2008; Honduras joined PetroCaribe in January 2008. Congress won’t take up Micheletti’s proposal until it resumes its sessions in January. (Honduras Laboral 12/16/09; Página 12 (Argentina) 12/17/09; Adital 12/18/09)
Also on Dec. 16, de facto president Micheletti blamed coup opponents for the murder the night before of 16-year-old Kathleen Nicolle Rodríguez Cabrera. Two men on a motorcycle shot her as she, her boyfriend and two friends were driving in a Tegucigalpa neighborhood. Rodríguez Cabrera, who was eight months pregnant, was pronounced dead at the hospital; doctors saved the baby, who was reportedly in critical condition in an incubator.
The murder victim’s mother was Karol Cabrera, a radio and television broadcaster who supports the coup. Police were investigating the possibility that the murder was revenge by the resistance for her commentaries, but on Dec. 17 Francisco Murillo López, head of the National Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DNIC), indicated that the likely cause of the murder was a fight between youth groups supporting two different local soccer teams, the Olimpia and Motagua clubs. There are reports that Rodríguez Cabrera’s boyfriend was connected to one of these groups. Attorney Fredin Funes of the Lawyers’ Front Against the Coup d’Etat charged that Micheletti’s statements were irresponsible and that the de facto president “is inciting [people] to repression and revenge.” (EFE 12/16/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 12/16/09, 12/18/09; La Tribuna 12/17/09)
*3. Colombia: Peace Community Called “FARC Haven”
The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) is calling for letters to Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot (wsj.ltrs@wsj.com) to protest a Dec. 14 opinion piece about the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia. In the article the paper’s Latin America correspondent Mary Anastasia O’Grady repeated charges from a former rebel commander, Daniel Sierra Martinez ("Samir"), that despite the community's claim of rejecting the presence of all weapons and armed groups, it is really a “safe haven” for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “Samir” also claimed that when he was a rebel leader, “the supposed peaceniks who ran the local NGO”—the faith-based human rights group Justice and Peace—“were his allies and an important FARC tool in the effort to discredit the military,” O’Grady wrote.
People familiar with the community say its members have been harassed and attacked repeatedly by all sides in Colombia’s internal conflict--the military, the rightwing paramilitaries and the rebels [see Update #966]. According to a CSN statement, “more than 30 Peace Community residents have been murdered by FARC guerrillas since 1997.” In a letter to Gigot, the well-known Colombian human rights activist Father Javier Giraldo Moreno called O’Grady’s article “libelous,” “repulsive and despicable” and a “disgrace.” He said it repeated disinformation that reflects a “media strategy, directed during the last 13 years by [the Colombian military’s] Seventeenth Brigade), which seeks to destroy the Peace Community.” (WSJ 12/13/09; CSN statement 12/15/09; CSN Urgent Action 12/16/09; Giraldo Moreno letter 12/18/09)
*4. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Anti-Gay Crimes
On Dec. 16 the body of an unidentified man was found in a motel in the southern Puerto Rican city of Ponce; he had been stabbed 20 times and partly decapitated. Julio Serrano, spokesperson for the National Association for the Defense of Homosexuals, said the police should investigate the possibility that this was a hate crime against gays. Serrano added that no one has ever been charged with an anti-gay hate crime in Puerto Rico and that "not doing anything creates a climate of homophobia, hate and persecution." (Univision 12/17/09)
Thousands of people had demonstrated in San Juan the evening of Nov. 25 to protest what they called the Puerto Rican government’s indifference in the similar case of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a gay university student whose dismembered and burned body was found on Nov. 12 in the southern town of Cayey. Juan Martínez Matos confessed to the murder, saying he killed López Mercado, who was dressed as a woman, when he found out that the victim was a man. Prosecutors charged Martínez Matos with murder but not with a hate crime. "We are gay people, heterosexual people, young and old,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a spokesperson for the US-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said at the candlelight protest outside the Puerto Rican Justice Department. “It’s Puerto Rico that’s marching tonight.” There were also vigils in New York, Los Angeles and other US cities. (EFE 11/25/09; Universo Gay (Spain) 11/26/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Drug War
Memory and Justice: A Photo Essay on Argentina's Human Rights Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2261/1/
Colombia: AQIM-FARC "narco-terrorism" charged in al-Qaeda conspiracy indictments
http://ww4report.com/node/8087
Colombia: FARC and ELN broach merger
http://ww4report.com/node/8084
Colombia: Ex-Paramilitary Implicates Two U.S. Companies in Murder of Trade Unionists
https://nacla.org/node/6315
Colombia and Honduras: It's Holiday Shopping Time, while the Peace of the Graveyard Marches on
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-guskin/emla-paz-del-cementerioem_b_399189.html
Venezuela: Chávez sees Curaçao threat
http://ww4report.com/node/8085
Nicaragua Names an Ombudswoman for Sexual Diversity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2260/68/
El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8095
Honduras: reject amnesty for abuses during coup
http://ww4report.com/node/8076
Gay activist assassinated in Honduras
http://ww4report.com/node/8075
Amnesty: Full and Prompt Investigation Needed Into Death of Honduran LGBT Human Rights Campaigner
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2259/68/
Speech by Honduran Ambassador Rodolfo Pastor de Maria y Campos at Georgetown University
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2255/68/
Amid Repression, Mobilizing Against the Coup Continues in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2258/1/
Guatemala: Army Records Spur Hopes for Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2256/68/
International Day for Human Rights “Celebrated” in Guatemala City
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2262/1/
Rody Alvarado Peña and Guatemala's Lingering War
https://nacla.org/node/6321
Critiquing the Trajectory of the Zapatista Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2257/1/
Mexico: kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva killed in shoot-out
http://ww4report.com/node/8083
Drug War Sea Change in the US Congress?
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/12/drug-war-sea-change-us-congress
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 #1017, December 20, 2009
1. Honduras: Reporter Threatened Over Election Story
2. Honduras: De Factos to Leave ALBA, Keep Oil Deal
3. Colombia: Peace Community Called “FARC Haven”
4. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Anti-Gay Crimes
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Drug War
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: Reporter Threatened Over Election Story
Ernesto Carmona, the Chilean general secretary of the Investigation Commission on Attacks Against Journalists (CIAP) of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP), told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina on Dec. 17 that the life of Swedish journalist Dick Emanuelsson was in danger because of an article he wrote questioning official turnout projections in the Nov. 29 Honduran general elections [see Update #1015]. Rightwing forces in the country have claimed there was high voter participation, which they say validated a June 28 coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office; coup opponents said turnout was about 30-40%.
Emanuelsson, who is based in Honduras, wrote an article on Dec. 1 about an interview he held with Rolando Bú, coordinator of the election monitoring nonprofit Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD). The interview focused on the discrepancy between the 61.3% voter participation rate given by Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the 47.6% figure the FHD gave based on its own monitoring of polling places; Emanuelsson also revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) paid up to 29% of the FHD’s $300,000 budget for 2009.
Bú later charged that Emanuelsson taped the interview without permission, and he threatened to press charges. Emanuelsson said one of Bú’s secretaries told him he might “meet the same fate as Father [José Andrés] Tamayo”—a Salvadoran environmental activist and priest who has been ordered expelled from Honduras [see Update #1004]. Emanuelsson thinks he might be physically attacked, according to CIAP. “Things are ugly here, and every day it seems more like Colombia,” Carmona quoted Emanuelsson as saying. The reporter left Colombia previously because of death threats. (PL 12/17/09; Rebanadas de Realidad (Argentina) 12/1/09)
The TSE isn’t expected to give its final count until Dec. 23 at the earliest, but on Dec. 19 its website showed a participation rate of 49.4%--with “100.07%” [sic] of the 2,297,465 votes counted. The total of blank and spoiled ballots was 155,584, according to the website, so that the total valid votes in the official count represented about 46% of registered voters, far below the TSE’s original figure. It is unknown how many voters spoiled their votes or left them blank on purpose to protest the de facto government, but the pro-coup Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna showed a picture of a spoiled ballot: the voter had written “coup-perpetrating SOBs” across the pictures of the presidential candidates. (Honduras Coup 2009 12/19/09; La Tribuna 12/13/09)
*2. Honduras: De Factos to Leave ALBA, Keep Oil Deal
On Dec. 16 de facto Honduran president Roberto Micheletti Bain sent the National Congress a proposal for Honduras to withdraw from the Venezuelan-inspired Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America trade bloc (ALBA, formerly the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America). De facto presidency minister Rafael Pineda Ponce said the move only concerned the ALBA pact and “will not affect in any way commercial or other types of relations that have been maintained, or the importation of oil or anything connected to PetroCaribe,” a system through which Venezuela provides oil to other Caribbean countries at favorable terms. Honduras currently receives 20,000 barrels a day; it pays 60% of the cost in 90 days and the rest over 25 years at just 1% interest a year.
Deposed president Manuel Zelaya called Micheletti’s move “insolent” and charged that the de facto government had wasted “more than $100 million coming from ALBA and Petrocaribe.” He noted that Micheletti was president of the Congress when it approved Honduras’ entry into ALBA in August 2008; Honduras joined PetroCaribe in January 2008. Congress won’t take up Micheletti’s proposal until it resumes its sessions in January. (Honduras Laboral 12/16/09; Página 12 (Argentina) 12/17/09; Adital 12/18/09)
Also on Dec. 16, de facto president Micheletti blamed coup opponents for the murder the night before of 16-year-old Kathleen Nicolle Rodríguez Cabrera. Two men on a motorcycle shot her as she, her boyfriend and two friends were driving in a Tegucigalpa neighborhood. Rodríguez Cabrera, who was eight months pregnant, was pronounced dead at the hospital; doctors saved the baby, who was reportedly in critical condition in an incubator.
The murder victim’s mother was Karol Cabrera, a radio and television broadcaster who supports the coup. Police were investigating the possibility that the murder was revenge by the resistance for her commentaries, but on Dec. 17 Francisco Murillo López, head of the National Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DNIC), indicated that the likely cause of the murder was a fight between youth groups supporting two different local soccer teams, the Olimpia and Motagua clubs. There are reports that Rodríguez Cabrera’s boyfriend was connected to one of these groups. Attorney Fredin Funes of the Lawyers’ Front Against the Coup d’Etat charged that Micheletti’s statements were irresponsible and that the de facto president “is inciting [people] to repression and revenge.” (EFE 12/16/09; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 12/16/09, 12/18/09; La Tribuna 12/17/09)
*3. Colombia: Peace Community Called “FARC Haven”
The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) is calling for letters to Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot (wsj.ltrs@wsj.com) to protest a Dec. 14 opinion piece about the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia. In the article the paper’s Latin America correspondent Mary Anastasia O’Grady repeated charges from a former rebel commander, Daniel Sierra Martinez ("Samir"), that despite the community's claim of rejecting the presence of all weapons and armed groups, it is really a “safe haven” for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “Samir” also claimed that when he was a rebel leader, “the supposed peaceniks who ran the local NGO”—the faith-based human rights group Justice and Peace—“were his allies and an important FARC tool in the effort to discredit the military,” O’Grady wrote.
People familiar with the community say its members have been harassed and attacked repeatedly by all sides in Colombia’s internal conflict--the military, the rightwing paramilitaries and the rebels [see Update #966]. According to a CSN statement, “more than 30 Peace Community residents have been murdered by FARC guerrillas since 1997.” In a letter to Gigot, the well-known Colombian human rights activist Father Javier Giraldo Moreno called O’Grady’s article “libelous,” “repulsive and despicable” and a “disgrace.” He said it repeated disinformation that reflects a “media strategy, directed during the last 13 years by [the Colombian military’s] Seventeenth Brigade), which seeks to destroy the Peace Community.” (WSJ 12/13/09; CSN statement 12/15/09; CSN Urgent Action 12/16/09; Giraldo Moreno letter 12/18/09)
*4. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Anti-Gay Crimes
On Dec. 16 the body of an unidentified man was found in a motel in the southern Puerto Rican city of Ponce; he had been stabbed 20 times and partly decapitated. Julio Serrano, spokesperson for the National Association for the Defense of Homosexuals, said the police should investigate the possibility that this was a hate crime against gays. Serrano added that no one has ever been charged with an anti-gay hate crime in Puerto Rico and that "not doing anything creates a climate of homophobia, hate and persecution." (Univision 12/17/09)
Thousands of people had demonstrated in San Juan the evening of Nov. 25 to protest what they called the Puerto Rican government’s indifference in the similar case of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a gay university student whose dismembered and burned body was found on Nov. 12 in the southern town of Cayey. Juan Martínez Matos confessed to the murder, saying he killed López Mercado, who was dressed as a woman, when he found out that the victim was a man. Prosecutors charged Martínez Matos with murder but not with a hate crime. "We are gay people, heterosexual people, young and old,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a spokesperson for the US-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said at the candlelight protest outside the Puerto Rican Justice Department. “It’s Puerto Rico that’s marching tonight.” There were also vigils in New York, Los Angeles and other US cities. (EFE 11/25/09; Universo Gay (Spain) 11/26/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Drug War
Memory and Justice: A Photo Essay on Argentina's Human Rights Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2261/1/
Colombia: AQIM-FARC "narco-terrorism" charged in al-Qaeda conspiracy indictments
http://ww4report.com/node/8087
Colombia: FARC and ELN broach merger
http://ww4report.com/node/8084
Colombia: Ex-Paramilitary Implicates Two U.S. Companies in Murder of Trade Unionists
https://nacla.org/node/6315
Colombia and Honduras: It's Holiday Shopping Time, while the Peace of the Graveyard Marches on
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-guskin/emla-paz-del-cementerioem_b_399189.html
Venezuela: Chávez sees Curaçao threat
http://ww4report.com/node/8085
Nicaragua Names an Ombudswoman for Sexual Diversity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2260/68/
El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8095
Honduras: reject amnesty for abuses during coup
http://ww4report.com/node/8076
Gay activist assassinated in Honduras
http://ww4report.com/node/8075
Amnesty: Full and Prompt Investigation Needed Into Death of Honduran LGBT Human Rights Campaigner
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2259/68/
Speech by Honduran Ambassador Rodolfo Pastor de Maria y Campos at Georgetown University
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2255/68/
Amid Repression, Mobilizing Against the Coup Continues in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2258/1/
Guatemala: Army Records Spur Hopes for Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2256/68/
International Day for Human Rights “Celebrated” in Guatemala City
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2262/1/
Rody Alvarado Peña and Guatemala's Lingering War
https://nacla.org/node/6321
Critiquing the Trajectory of the Zapatista Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2257/1/
Mexico: kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva killed in shoot-out
http://ww4report.com/node/8083
Drug War Sea Change in the US Congress?
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/12/drug-war-sea-change-us-congress
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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