Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1052, October 10, 2010
1. Chile: Mapuche Prisoners End Hunger Strike
2. Haiti: Donors Detail “Reconstruction” Plans
3. Haiti: Who Speaks for Lavalas in the Elections?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, 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. Chile: Mapuche Prisoners End Hunger Strike
Ten indigenous Mapuche prisoners in the city of Angol in Chile’s southern Araucanía region agreed late on Oct. 8 to end a liquids-only hunger strike protesting the use of Law No. 19.027, an “antiterrorism” measure from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, against indigenous activists [see Update #1049]. A total of 34 Mapuche prisoners in six locations had participated in the hunger strike, which started on July 12, but 24 of them ended their action on Oct. 2.
Jorge Huenchullán, the spokesperson for the 10 prisoners in Angol, said that they made the agreement because of the serious health conditions of some of the strikers even though “from the beginning we made it clear that [the agreement] wasn’t sufficient.” The Mapuche prisoners are serving long sentences under Law No. 19.027, which treats land occupations and attacks on the equipment or personnel of multinational companies as acts of terrorism; indigenous activists say they need to use these tactics to protest illegal seizures of their land.
It was not clear what concessions the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera had made during the eight hours of negotiations that secretaries of state held with six strikers in the Victoria hospital in Angol on Oct. 8, but officials made several conciliatory gestures that day as the negotiations were taking place. Piñera visited the heavily Mapuche area of Purén, and the government announced a proposal for the Constitution to recognize indigenous peoples. Presidential spokesperson Ena von Baer announced plans for a Nov. 2 meeting in Concepción between a government representative, Mapuche spokesperson Natividad Llanquileo and Catholic archbishop Ricardo Ezzati, who acted as a mediador during the hunger strike.
Congress recently passed a modification to the “antiterrorism” law that exempted minors under the age of 18 and reduced the penalties for arson; the charges against the prisoners included setting fire to ranches and agricultural machinery. The government is also talking about improving roads, schools and health care in the Mapuche region.
The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group, accounting for about 700,000 of the country’s 17 million inhabitants. (Prensa Latina 10/9/10; La Tercera (Chile) 10/10/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/10/10 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)
*2. Haiti: Donors Detail “Reconstruction” Plans
On Oct. 6 Haitian president René Préval, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) attended a meeting in Port-au-Prince of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH), the group in charge of monitoring the use of international aid to help the country recover from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. This was only the third time the group has met since it was formally established on Apr. 21.
At the Oct. 6 meeting the CIRH approved 18 new projects, expected to cost $803.2 million; the group has now approved a total of 49 projects. But Bellerive and Clinton, the CIRH’s two co-presidents, said the new focus needs to be on executing projects, not just approving them. According to Clinton, the priorities should be creating a system of universal education, providing women’s health services, constructing new homes and removing the rubble left by the earthquake. Clinton expressed regret for delays in the delivery of promised funds from the US, which he said would start flowing within days, and he called on other donor nations to expedite their payments. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 10/6/10; AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/6/10; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/7/10)
At least some of the CIRH’s reconstruction projects seem intended to benefit the private sector in the donor countries, including the US and Brazil.
During the week of Oct. 4 details were released on an agreement the Haitian and US governments signed on Sept. 20 for creating two industrial parks for assembly plants where low-wage workers will stitch together garments for export, principally to North American manufacturers and retailers [see Update #1050]. The first will be, as expected, near the government-organized camp for displaced persons at Corail-Cesselesse just north of Port-au-Prince; the 220-hectare park is to be leased by Seoul-based Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. The Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) is paying for the planning studies, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) is building the park, and the US government is giving support for electric power and supplying 10,000 housing units. The second industrial park will be in the north of the country at a location to be determined; the South Korean Hansoll Textile, Ltd company will lease the park, and the US will supply power and 12,000 housing units. (AlterPresse 10/7/10)
During a Sept. 29-30 visit to Haiti, Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim presented the results of a study for building a hydroelectric dam on the Artibonite River in the Central Plateau at a cost of $190 million. Brazil is putting up $40 million, and Haiti is seeking the rest from international institutions like the IBD. Although Brazil is donating the money through the CIRH, the project has been being planned for three years, since long before the earthquake. (AlterPresse 9/30/10) Brazilian companies are expected to build the dam. (HydroWorld.com 3/2/10)
Correction: This paragraph originally misidentified the location of the dam.
The day before the CIRH meeting economist Camille Chalmers, executive secretary of the nonprofit Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), held a press conference criticizing the international efforts at reconstruction. “Nine months after the earthquake it is unacceptable that only 4% of the rubble has been removed, only 2-3% of the promised funds have been disbursed,” he said. He also criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which he said continues to charge interest on loans. Some international institutions, including the IDB, cancelled Haiti’s debts, but they have attached conditions to the cancellations.
Chalmers called for reducing Haitian dependence on these institutions. “An extraordinary inter-Haitian solidarity was already displayed after Jan. 12 and needs to be supported by concrete policies and alternative financing mechanisms,” he said. (AlterPresse 10/5/10)
In other news, on Oct. 8--two days after Bill Clinton called for a system of universal education--riot police used tear gas to disperse teachers, students and parents demonstrating outside the National Education and Professional Training Ministry (MENFP) in Port-au-Prince to call for the government to expand the education system. Two people were wounded. A police bullet reportedly hit math and physics teacher Jean Philbert Louis (or Jean Louis Filbert) in the head; he died the next day at the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH). Jean Pierre Edouard, who denied being part of the protest, was lightly injured and didn’t need to be hospitalized. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 10/8/10; Radio Kiskeya 10/9/10)
*3. Haiti: Who Speaks for Lavalas in the Elections?
In a letter sent to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the week of Oct. 4, a group of 45 US Congress members called on the US government not to support presidential and legislative elections in Haiti on Nov. 28 if the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) continues its exclusion of 14 political parties from the ballot. The letter focused on the exclusion of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) [see Update #1039]; the letter’s author was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is said to be close to Aristide and to FL. The elections will cost some $29 million and will largely be financed by the international community, including the US. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 10/8/10; New York Times 10/9/10 from Reuters)
The situation seemed less clear back in Haiti. FL coordinator Maryse Narcisse indicated in mid-September that she supported calls to boycott the elections [see Update #1049], but a number of politicians associated with FL or Aristide have decided to run with other parties. Three of them are officially approved presidential candidates: former prime minister Yvon Neptune; Yves Christalin, one of FL’s founders; and Aristide’s former lawyer, Jean Henry Céant [see Update #1043]
On Oct. 7 Sonny Aurélien (or Sony Orélien), general secretary of the Cell for Reflection of the FL Grassroots Base Organizations, spoke at a press conference announcing his group’s support for Christalin, who he said would bring Aristide back from his exile in South Africa. According to a local radio station, Radio Kiskeya, the press conference was held at the home of folksinger and longtime FL activist Annette Auguste (“Sò Ann,” “Sister Ann”), although she was not present. Like Rep. Waters, Sò Ann is considered close to Aristide. On Oct. 8 Ansyto Félix of the FL Mobilization Commission denied that the FL was supporting Christalin. (Radio Kiskeya 10/7/10; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 10/7/10, 10/8/10)
But Yvon Neptune, who was Aristide’s last prime minister (2002-2004) and was imprisoned for two years after Aristide’s ouster on Feb. 29, 2004, is clearly not seeking support from FL or Aristide. During an Oct. 6 interview on Radio Kiskeya, he said that Aristide had resigned in proper form in 2004. “I had a copy of Mr. Aristide’s resignation letter,” he said. “It was authentic.” Aristide and his supporters have always insisted that he was the victim of a “modern kidnapping” by the US and possibly other countries. Neptune also said that the bands of Aristide supporters widely known as chimè had been integrated into the police force in the last days of Aristide’s administration. (Radio Kiskeya 10/6/10)
President René Préval has also been having problems with a former prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, who is now running for president for the Mobilization for Haiti’s Progress (MPH) after being passed over for the nomination of Préval’s Unity party in favor of Jude Célestin. On Oct. 5 Alexis charged that Préval had distributed firearms to his supporters to ensure Unity’s victory in the elections. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 10/5/10)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico
Brazil: Social Movement Leaders Predict Gains with Rousseff
https://nacla.org/node/6767
Brazilian Elections: Shifting Dynamics and the Green Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/2727-brazilian-elections-shifting-dynamics-and-the-green-vote
Guaraní under siege (Brazil)
http://ww4report.com/node/8124#comment-321920
Bolivia: newspapers protest proposed racism law
http://ww4report.com/node/9177
Seven SOA graduates convicted in Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/9175
Peru: indigenous leader Alberto Pizango runs for president
http://ww4report.com/node/9176
Standing Up for Democracy in Ecuador
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3330
Ecuador Detains 46 Police Officers; Obama Calls Correa To Ask For Calm
http://latindispatch.com/2010/10/07/ecuador-detains-46-police-officers-obama-calls-correa-to-ask-for-calm/
Ecuador: Air Force and Navy Reluctantly Backed President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2722-chavez-revving-up-revolution-with-land-takeovers-
SOA graduate charged in Ecuador coup attempt
http://ww4report.com/node/9174
U.S. Base Deal for Colombia: Back to the Status Quo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2728-us-base-deal-for-colombia-back-to-the-status-quo
Where Flowers Bloom So Does Hope: Colombia’s Troubled Flower Industry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2723-where-flowers-bloom-so-does-hope-colombias-troubled-flower-industry
Venezuela: Chávez announces new land seizures
http://ww4report.com/node/9172
Chávez Revving Up Revolution with Land Takeovers
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2722-chavez-revving-up-revolution-with-land-takeovers-
Venezuelan Mitsubishi Workers Protest Further Firings and Government Treatment
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5698
Colombian-Venezuelan Integration Furthered after July Break in Ties
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5699
Panama Awakes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2725-panama-awakes
Mexico Ordered To Pay Damages To Two Indigenous Women Raped By Soldiers
http://latindispatch.com/2010/10/05/mexico-ordered-to-pay-damages-to-two-indigenous-women-raped-by-soldiers/
State Department Backing US Troops In Mexico
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/erin-rosa/2010/10/state-department-backing-us-troops-mexico
Goldcorp’s Peñasquito Mine Sparks Controversy In Mazapil, Mexico
http://latindispatch.com/2010/10/05/goldcorps-penasquito-mine-sparks-controversy-in-mazapil-mexico/
San Juan Copala evacuated (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9130#comment-321919
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, October 11, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
WNU #1051: “No Problem” With Constituent Assembly for Honduras?
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1051, October 3, 2010
1. Honduras: “What’s the Problem” With a Constituent Assembly?
2. Colombia: Inspector General Removes Senator Córdoba
3. Argentina: Chilean Rebel Gets Asylum
4. Guatemala: US Apologizes for Syphilis Experiment
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Amazonia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: “What’s the Problem” With a Constituent Assembly?
At a press conference in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 29, a reporter asked conservative Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa about calls from unions and grassroots organizations for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution. “But what’s the problem with that?” Lobo responded. “What’s the problem?” The president said he considered it his “moral duty…to invite the sectors that promote it to hold a dialogue…. Let’s sit down and discuss [these things]. That isn’t the problem.”
Lobo’s comment seemed to represent a break from the official policy of ignoring calls for rewriting the Constitution, a proposal which the Honduran elite vehemently opposes. An effort by former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) to hold a nonbinding plebiscite on calling a constituent assembly was one of the reasons given for the military coup d’état that removed him from office on June 28, 2009, the day the vote was to take place. Lobo--who was elected on Nov. 29, 2009, in elections organized by the de facto government installed by the coup--has made it clear that his government does not support a constituent assembly.
But it is now obvious that there is widespread support for the idea. On Sept. 15 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition of many different groups opposing the 2009 coup, concluded a campaign it started on Apr. 20 to gather 1.25 million signatures on a petition calling for a constituent assembly [see Update #1047]. The final count, according to the FNRP, was 1,342,876 signatures.
This is a significant number in a country with a total population of about eight million, and considerably higher than the number of votes Lobo received in last year’s elections. According to Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), there were 4,611,211 registered voters at the time of the elections; 2,300,056 people voted, the TSE says, and Lobo received 1,213,695 votes. Even this number is too high, according to the resistance, which boycotted the elections and estimates that the actual turnout was much lower than the 49.9% claimed by the TSE [see Update #1017]. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 10/1/10; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 9/29/10; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 9/17/10; TSE website, accessed 10/3/10)
In other news, Marvin Ponce, a legislative deputy for the small center-left Democratic Unification (UD) party, said there was applause in the generally conservative National Congress at reports on Sept. 30 that a coup was taking place against the leftist government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. Many of the current members also supported the 2009 coup in Honduras.
On Oct. 1, after it was clear that Correa was still in office, the FNRP issued a statement congratulating the “heroic people of Ecuador” for their “triumph over the retrograde forces of the oligarchy and imperialism.” “We too will drive out the tyrants imposed by the force of arms,” the FNRP said. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 10/1/10, ___)
*2. Colombia: Inspector General Removes Senator Córdoba
On Sept. 27 Colombian inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado announced that he was removing Senator Piedad Córdoba from her position and barring her from public office for 18 years because of what he said were her links to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Córdoba, a member of the centrist Liberal Party, has mediated in negotiations which led to the release of 14 prisoners held by the FARC [see Updates #977, 1032]. She is also a member of Colombians for Peace, formed in 2008 by politicians, intellectuals, artists, journalists and former FARC prisoners to seek solutions to the armed conflicts in the country.
The move against Córdoba came four days after a leading FARC commander, Jorge Briceño Suárez ("Mono Jojoy"), was killed along with 20 other rebels in a bombing operation by the Colombian military [see WW4 Report 9/26/10].
Inspector General Ordóñez, who has the authority to remove elected officials, claimed that Córdoba had gone beyond her role as a negotiator by advising FARC commanders on how to handle hostage releases. The Colombian authorities said the charges against Córdoba are based on information found in computers used by FARC spokesperson and negotiator Raúl Reyes. The computers were seized in March 2008, when the Colombian military bombed and raided a FARC camp in Ecuador, killing Reyes and about 20 other people, and the Colombian government has been using information allegedly from the computers to attack its opponents on the left [see Update #958].
In response to her dismissal, Córdoba wrote that Ordóñez has been “seriously questioned for his activities against the rights of women and the LGBT population [and for] the illegal operations of the DAS”--the Administrative Department of Security, the political police--and is being “investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.” She called her removal “one more instance of the political persecution that has been carried out against me in the last 12 years,” including a kidnapping by rightwing paramilitaries. For a time she and her family had to live in exile to assure their safety. She said she was filing an appeal, but it has to be with the same office that removed her; there is no higher authority in these cases. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/28/10 from Reuters, DPA, AFP; Caracol Radio (Colombia) 9/28/10)
In an opinion piece published on Oct. 1, former Cuba president Fidel Castro Ruz praised Córdoba, mentioning that she and several others had met with him in Cuba a few weeks earlier. He noted their “profound desire to seek peace for their country.” “However, I’m not surprised by the decision taken by the inspector general, which follows the official policy of a country virtually occupied by Yankee troops.” (LJ 10/1/10)
*3. Argentina: Chilean Rebel Gets Asylum
On Sept. 30 the National Refugee Commission of Argentina (Conare) granted political asylum to Sergio Galvarino Apablaza Guerra, a former leader of Chile’s rebel Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Chile is seeking Apablaza’s extradition to stand trial for the assassination of Chilean senator Jaime Guzmán, a close ally of dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in 1991, a year after the end of Chile’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Apablaza is also charged with the 1991 kidnapping of Cristián Edwards del Río, the son of one of the owners of the Santiago daily El Mercurio.
Apablaza has lived in Argentina since 1993. Argentine police arrested him in 2004 on the Chilean charges; Apablaza claimed at the time that the FPMR had split and that he did not belong to the faction that carried out the attacks. An Argentine judge released him on bond in 2005, ruling that the Chilean charges were political and that Chile had denied Apablaza due process [see Update #806]. Chile appealed to Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice, which ruled in favor of the extradition request on Sept. 14 of this year.
According to a source in the Argentine government, Conare granted Apablaza asylum because he was "a political activist, a fighter against the dictatorship.” “He isn’t a common citizen,” the source said. The decision is causing tensions between Chile’s government and the center-left government of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. On Oct. 1 rightwing Chilean president Sebastián Piñera said Conare’s move “means a step backward for the cause of justice and human rights in my country.” (La Nación (Argentina) 10/1/10; EFE 10/3/10 via ABC (Spain))
*4. Guatemala: US Apologizes for Syphilis Experiment
US president Barack Obama personally apologized by phone to Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom on Oct. 1 shortly after the US revealed that the US Public Health Service had purposely infected Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and gonorrhea in a 1946-48 experiment to test the effectiveness of penicillin in fighting sexually transmitted diseases. The program exposed some 1,500 Guatemalans to the diseases, and 696 were reportedly infected. It is not clear how many of them received medical treatment.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB), the predecessor of the current Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), financed the experiment, which was carried out under the government of Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, although apparently there was some deception of Guatemalan officials. The program was directed by Dr. John Cutler of the US Public Health Service; Cutler was later involved in the notorious 1932-1972 study in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which African-American men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated. The Guatemalan experiment only came to light now because of independent research by Wellesley College professor Susan M. Reverby.
At an Oct. 1 press conference President Colom called the experiment a “crime against humanity” and said his government “reserves the right to file a complaint.” Nery Rodenas Paredes, head of the Guatemalan Archdiocese’s human rights office, said that “it’s not enough to ask for pardon,” the US needs to pay compensation to the victims’ families.
Dr. Mark Siegler, director of the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago’s medical school, told the New York Times: “It’s ironic—no, it’s worse than that, it’s appalling—that, at the same time as the United States was prosecuting Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity, the US government was supporting research that placed human subjects at enormous risk.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/2/10 from correspondent, 10/2/10 from AFP, Notimex; NYT 10/2/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Amazonia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Long Standing Impunity Challenges Argentina: 4 Years Without Julio Lopez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2709-long-standing-impunity-challenges-argentina-4-years-without-julio-lopez
Indigenous organizations declare "emergency" in Amazonia
http://ww4report.com/node/9156
Coup d'etat underway in Ecuador?
http://ww4report.com/node/9157
Ecuador: The President "Is Going to Pay for What He's Done"
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53024
Ecuador: army rescues Correa from hospital
http://ww4report.com/node/9158
No Room For Ambivalence: Support President Rafael Correa and Ecuadorean Democracy
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3285
CONAIE on the Attempted Coup in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2717-conaie-on-the-attempted-coup-in-ecuador
Report from Ecuador: Democracy Under Threat
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/component/content/article/2720-report-from-ecuador-democracy-under-threat-
Colombia: The Significance of the Killing of FARC Leader “Mono Jojoy”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2708-the-significance-of-the-killing-of-farc-leader-mono-jojoy
Colombia’s Senator Cordoba Booted For Alleged FARC Links
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/28/colombias-senator-cordoba-booted-for-alleged-farc-links/
150 Scholars Call on Georgetown to Fire Álvaro Uribe (Colombia)
https://nacla.org/node/6759
Venezuelan Elections: Socialists Advance, Opposition Loses Ground Compared to 2000 Elections
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5666
A New Opportunity for Venezuela’s Socialists
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5683
Repression's Reward in Honduras? Dinner with Obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-frank/repressions-reward-in-hon_b_738620.html
U.S. 'Democracy Promotion' in Honduras
https://nacla.org/node/6761
Guatemala, in the Sights of the Zetas
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3279
Mexico: youths lynched in Chihuahua kidnapping
http://ww4report.com/node/9155
Corruption And Deforestation Caused Oaxaca’s Mudslide Disaster
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2712-corruption-and-deforestation-caused-oaxacas-mudslide-disaster
Cuba Travel Legislation Vote Postponed; Not Likely To Be Taken Up Until After Midterm Elections
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/30/cuba-travel-legislation-vote-postponed-not-likely-to-be-taken-up-until-after-midterm-elections/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1051, October 3, 2010
1. Honduras: “What’s the Problem” With a Constituent Assembly?
2. Colombia: Inspector General Removes Senator Córdoba
3. Argentina: Chilean Rebel Gets Asylum
4. Guatemala: US Apologizes for Syphilis Experiment
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Amazonia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: “What’s the Problem” With a Constituent Assembly?
At a press conference in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 29, a reporter asked conservative Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa about calls from unions and grassroots organizations for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution. “But what’s the problem with that?” Lobo responded. “What’s the problem?” The president said he considered it his “moral duty…to invite the sectors that promote it to hold a dialogue…. Let’s sit down and discuss [these things]. That isn’t the problem.”
Lobo’s comment seemed to represent a break from the official policy of ignoring calls for rewriting the Constitution, a proposal which the Honduran elite vehemently opposes. An effort by former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) to hold a nonbinding plebiscite on calling a constituent assembly was one of the reasons given for the military coup d’état that removed him from office on June 28, 2009, the day the vote was to take place. Lobo--who was elected on Nov. 29, 2009, in elections organized by the de facto government installed by the coup--has made it clear that his government does not support a constituent assembly.
But it is now obvious that there is widespread support for the idea. On Sept. 15 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition of many different groups opposing the 2009 coup, concluded a campaign it started on Apr. 20 to gather 1.25 million signatures on a petition calling for a constituent assembly [see Update #1047]. The final count, according to the FNRP, was 1,342,876 signatures.
This is a significant number in a country with a total population of about eight million, and considerably higher than the number of votes Lobo received in last year’s elections. According to Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), there were 4,611,211 registered voters at the time of the elections; 2,300,056 people voted, the TSE says, and Lobo received 1,213,695 votes. Even this number is too high, according to the resistance, which boycotted the elections and estimates that the actual turnout was much lower than the 49.9% claimed by the TSE [see Update #1017]. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 10/1/10; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 9/29/10; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 9/17/10; TSE website, accessed 10/3/10)
In other news, Marvin Ponce, a legislative deputy for the small center-left Democratic Unification (UD) party, said there was applause in the generally conservative National Congress at reports on Sept. 30 that a coup was taking place against the leftist government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. Many of the current members also supported the 2009 coup in Honduras.
On Oct. 1, after it was clear that Correa was still in office, the FNRP issued a statement congratulating the “heroic people of Ecuador” for their “triumph over the retrograde forces of the oligarchy and imperialism.” “We too will drive out the tyrants imposed by the force of arms,” the FNRP said. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 10/1/10, ___)
*2. Colombia: Inspector General Removes Senator Córdoba
On Sept. 27 Colombian inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado announced that he was removing Senator Piedad Córdoba from her position and barring her from public office for 18 years because of what he said were her links to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Córdoba, a member of the centrist Liberal Party, has mediated in negotiations which led to the release of 14 prisoners held by the FARC [see Updates #977, 1032]. She is also a member of Colombians for Peace, formed in 2008 by politicians, intellectuals, artists, journalists and former FARC prisoners to seek solutions to the armed conflicts in the country.
The move against Córdoba came four days after a leading FARC commander, Jorge Briceño Suárez ("Mono Jojoy"), was killed along with 20 other rebels in a bombing operation by the Colombian military [see WW4 Report 9/26/10].
Inspector General Ordóñez, who has the authority to remove elected officials, claimed that Córdoba had gone beyond her role as a negotiator by advising FARC commanders on how to handle hostage releases. The Colombian authorities said the charges against Córdoba are based on information found in computers used by FARC spokesperson and negotiator Raúl Reyes. The computers were seized in March 2008, when the Colombian military bombed and raided a FARC camp in Ecuador, killing Reyes and about 20 other people, and the Colombian government has been using information allegedly from the computers to attack its opponents on the left [see Update #958].
In response to her dismissal, Córdoba wrote that Ordóñez has been “seriously questioned for his activities against the rights of women and the LGBT population [and for] the illegal operations of the DAS”--the Administrative Department of Security, the political police--and is being “investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.” She called her removal “one more instance of the political persecution that has been carried out against me in the last 12 years,” including a kidnapping by rightwing paramilitaries. For a time she and her family had to live in exile to assure their safety. She said she was filing an appeal, but it has to be with the same office that removed her; there is no higher authority in these cases. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/28/10 from Reuters, DPA, AFP; Caracol Radio (Colombia) 9/28/10)
In an opinion piece published on Oct. 1, former Cuba president Fidel Castro Ruz praised Córdoba, mentioning that she and several others had met with him in Cuba a few weeks earlier. He noted their “profound desire to seek peace for their country.” “However, I’m not surprised by the decision taken by the inspector general, which follows the official policy of a country virtually occupied by Yankee troops.” (LJ 10/1/10)
*3. Argentina: Chilean Rebel Gets Asylum
On Sept. 30 the National Refugee Commission of Argentina (Conare) granted political asylum to Sergio Galvarino Apablaza Guerra, a former leader of Chile’s rebel Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Chile is seeking Apablaza’s extradition to stand trial for the assassination of Chilean senator Jaime Guzmán, a close ally of dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in 1991, a year after the end of Chile’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Apablaza is also charged with the 1991 kidnapping of Cristián Edwards del Río, the son of one of the owners of the Santiago daily El Mercurio.
Apablaza has lived in Argentina since 1993. Argentine police arrested him in 2004 on the Chilean charges; Apablaza claimed at the time that the FPMR had split and that he did not belong to the faction that carried out the attacks. An Argentine judge released him on bond in 2005, ruling that the Chilean charges were political and that Chile had denied Apablaza due process [see Update #806]. Chile appealed to Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice, which ruled in favor of the extradition request on Sept. 14 of this year.
According to a source in the Argentine government, Conare granted Apablaza asylum because he was "a political activist, a fighter against the dictatorship.” “He isn’t a common citizen,” the source said. The decision is causing tensions between Chile’s government and the center-left government of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. On Oct. 1 rightwing Chilean president Sebastián Piñera said Conare’s move “means a step backward for the cause of justice and human rights in my country.” (La Nación (Argentina) 10/1/10; EFE 10/3/10 via ABC (Spain))
*4. Guatemala: US Apologizes for Syphilis Experiment
US president Barack Obama personally apologized by phone to Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom on Oct. 1 shortly after the US revealed that the US Public Health Service had purposely infected Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and gonorrhea in a 1946-48 experiment to test the effectiveness of penicillin in fighting sexually transmitted diseases. The program exposed some 1,500 Guatemalans to the diseases, and 696 were reportedly infected. It is not clear how many of them received medical treatment.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB), the predecessor of the current Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), financed the experiment, which was carried out under the government of Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, although apparently there was some deception of Guatemalan officials. The program was directed by Dr. John Cutler of the US Public Health Service; Cutler was later involved in the notorious 1932-1972 study in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which African-American men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated. The Guatemalan experiment only came to light now because of independent research by Wellesley College professor Susan M. Reverby.
At an Oct. 1 press conference President Colom called the experiment a “crime against humanity” and said his government “reserves the right to file a complaint.” Nery Rodenas Paredes, head of the Guatemalan Archdiocese’s human rights office, said that “it’s not enough to ask for pardon,” the US needs to pay compensation to the victims’ families.
Dr. Mark Siegler, director of the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago’s medical school, told the New York Times: “It’s ironic—no, it’s worse than that, it’s appalling—that, at the same time as the United States was prosecuting Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity, the US government was supporting research that placed human subjects at enormous risk.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/2/10 from correspondent, 10/2/10 from AFP, Notimex; NYT 10/2/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Amazonia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Long Standing Impunity Challenges Argentina: 4 Years Without Julio Lopez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2709-long-standing-impunity-challenges-argentina-4-years-without-julio-lopez
Indigenous organizations declare "emergency" in Amazonia
http://ww4report.com/node/9156
Coup d'etat underway in Ecuador?
http://ww4report.com/node/9157
Ecuador: The President "Is Going to Pay for What He's Done"
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53024
Ecuador: army rescues Correa from hospital
http://ww4report.com/node/9158
No Room For Ambivalence: Support President Rafael Correa and Ecuadorean Democracy
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3285
CONAIE on the Attempted Coup in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2717-conaie-on-the-attempted-coup-in-ecuador
Report from Ecuador: Democracy Under Threat
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/component/content/article/2720-report-from-ecuador-democracy-under-threat-
Colombia: The Significance of the Killing of FARC Leader “Mono Jojoy”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2708-the-significance-of-the-killing-of-farc-leader-mono-jojoy
Colombia’s Senator Cordoba Booted For Alleged FARC Links
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/28/colombias-senator-cordoba-booted-for-alleged-farc-links/
150 Scholars Call on Georgetown to Fire Álvaro Uribe (Colombia)
https://nacla.org/node/6759
Venezuelan Elections: Socialists Advance, Opposition Loses Ground Compared to 2000 Elections
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5666
A New Opportunity for Venezuela’s Socialists
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5683
Repression's Reward in Honduras? Dinner with Obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-frank/repressions-reward-in-hon_b_738620.html
U.S. 'Democracy Promotion' in Honduras
https://nacla.org/node/6761
Guatemala, in the Sights of the Zetas
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3279
Mexico: youths lynched in Chihuahua kidnapping
http://ww4report.com/node/9155
Corruption And Deforestation Caused Oaxaca’s Mudslide Disaster
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2712-corruption-and-deforestation-caused-oaxacas-mudslide-disaster
Cuba Travel Legislation Vote Postponed; Not Likely To Be Taken Up Until After Midterm Elections
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/30/cuba-travel-legislation-vote-postponed-not-likely-to-be-taken-up-until-after-midterm-elections/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
WNU #1050: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Haitians
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1050, September 26, 2010
1. Haiti: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive met in New York on Sept. 20 to discuss international efforts to help Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated much of the capital and nearby areas. About 1.3 million Haitians continue to live outdoors, mostly in some 1,300 improvised encampments, more than eight months after the quake and almost six months after international donors pledged $9.9 billion in aid [see Update #1028].
Bellerive noted that "impatience is increasing” in Haiti, but Clinton downplayed the complaints. “Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard,” she said. Kouchner agreed. “Some find that it's going slowly, very slowly, the reconstruction of Haiti,” he said. “And some are surprised that with so much money raised there is no really visible progress. It's because they have no idea of the immensity of the disaster. There's a lot of money, many things have been done, but that cannot be immediately visible.”
The main business of the meeting, which took place as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the current session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, was the signing of two memoranda of understanding, one for setting up an industrial zone expected to provide jobs for 10,000 Haitians, and one for financing the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince’s general hospital, the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH).
Bellerive and Hillary Clinton also signed an agreement with Woong-Ki Kim, chair of Seoul-based Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., to build garment assembly plants in Haiti, either near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien or in an undeveloped area north of Port-au-Prince—presumably at the government-organized camp for displaced persons at Corail-Cesselesse [see Update #1040]. "These are not just any jobs,” Clinton said about the employment the agreement is supposed to provide. “These are good jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards." The agreement shows that "Haiti is open for business again," she added.
In addition, Clinton, Kouchner and Bellerive participated in a meeting of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH). The group, set up to monitor recovery efforts, is co-chaired by Bellerive and Clinton’s husband, former US president (1993-2001) and current UN envoy Bill Clinton. (Agence France Presse 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group; Associated Press 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group)
The apparel jobs Hillary Clinton discussed would be in the tax-exempt assembly plants--known as maquiladoras in Latin America--where workers stitch together garments for export. Eddy Labossière, president of the Haitian Association of Economists (AEH), said on Sept. 23 that the assembly plant jobs, which are subject to a special lower minimum wage of about $3 a day, won’t be able to guarantee Haiti’s development. Labossière also expressed regret that plans for the reconstruction of the capital’s downtown area include a $295,000 contract, signed a few days earlier, with a British group, the Prince Charles Foundation, rather than with a Haitian firm. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 9/23/10)
Some 150-200 Haitian Americans and other activists demonstrated in New York on Sept. 25 to protest the slow pace of recovery. Chanting “Where’s the money?” and “Aid the people now” in Creole and English, the protesters marched from the Haitian consulate in the Midtown area to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN headquarters by the East River. The action was organized by the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East (HSNNE) and endorsed by a number of organizations. (Pavement Pieces blog 9/25/10; Weekly News Update eyewitness report)
*2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
Nadia Lochard, coordinator of Haiti’s Civil Protection agency, confirmed on Sept. 25 that five people had died and 57 were injured the day before when a violent storm hit Port-au-Prince and areas to the south, including Petit Goâve and Îles Cayimites. Lochard said most of the injuries and damage took place in the camps where some 1.3 million local residents have been living since they were displaced by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12.
According to news reports, the dead included a baby in the Caradeux camp in the northeastern Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, a 93-year-old woman in Camp Acra the capital’s Delmas section and a food vendor at Poste Marchand in the downtown area. Some 20 of the injuries reportedly resulted from a tree falling on the camp at the Pétionville Club at Delmas 48 street. Lochard said about 2,000 tents were damaged. Local local media specified that 1,000 tents were destroyed at Camp Acra, 1,000 in the huge, impoverished Cité Soleil neighborhood, and 100 at the camp at the Champ de Mars near the Presidential Palace. Camp Charbon, in Carrefour, southwest of the capital, where 500 people were living, was completely destroyed, according to Haiti’s Radio Kiskeya. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/25/10; Radio Kiskeya 9/24/10)
In other news, an angry crowd killed police agent Guilloteau Hubert and burned down the police station at the town of Cayes-Jacmel the night of Sept. 23. Witnesses said the crowd reacted when the agent arrested and then tried to kill a young man, Johnny Joseph. Joseph was reportedly hospitalized with three bullet wounds. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/24/10) [Cayes-Jacmel, near the city of Jacmel in the Southeast department, is in the zone that suffered heavy damage from the earthquake.]
*3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia, wrote in communiqués dated Sept. 22 and 24 that rightwing paramilitaries were continuing to attack and threaten its members. The community, which for 13 years has rejected the presence of all weapons and armed groups in its territory, charged the authorities with “complacency” regarding the paramilitary activity [see Update #1017].
According to the communiqués, a paramilitary known as “Berardo Tuberquia” accosted a peace community member in Dabeiba municipality and asked about various other community members. He said he had a list with the names of San José de Apartadó leaders and members who were going to be killed. That afternoon, two paramilitaries on a motorcycle fired on peace community members José David Graciano and Alonso Valle Guerra as they were walking home after going to a court hearing to deny charges of belonging to a militia. Both escaped, but Valle Guerra was hit in the leg. The peace community reported the incidents to the government’s human rights protection agency, but the agency supported claims by the local military unit that everything was “peaceful” at San José de Apartadó. (Adital (Brazil) 9/24/10; San José de Apartadó communiqués 9/22/10, 9/24/10)
The new incidents occurred just as a book was coming out about the peace community, Fusil o Toga, Toga y Fusil (“Rifle or Robe, Rifle and Robe,” referring to the use of violence and the court system to repress the community). The author, human rights activist and Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, said he’d written the work to fight against impunity by documenting abuses against the community, which has been attacked by the military, by rightwing paramilitaries and by leftist rebels. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 9/17/10) On Aug. 6 a judge in Medellín acquitted 10 soldiers of participating in a February 2005 in which eight San José de Apartadó residents, including three children, were killed with machetes. A captain had confessed to his role in the killings; several paramilitary members also confessed and said they had worked together with the military. (World War 4 Report 8/11/10)
*4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
On Sept. 24 Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), published an article describing policy changes intended to expand Cuba’s small private sector. The changes are part of a plan announced on Sept. 13 to lay off some half million public employees, about 10% of the total labor force, over the next six months; the government expects about 465,000 of the laid-off workers to move to the private sector or to form cooperatives, according to unofficial sources.
The plan is basically an expansion of the “self-employment” (TCP) policy instituted during the “special period” in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The government will now issue licenses for 178 job categories in the TCP--which includes small businesses in addition to actual self-employment. Most of these occupations were authorized in the 1990s, but some were closed off again in 2004, and there are currently just 143,000 licenses for TCP businesses, down from a high of 210,000 in 1995. Much of the work authorized under the new policy is currently done in the black market; the changes will bring these jobs into the tax and social security systems.
What is probably more important than the increased number of TCP occupations is the lifting of several restrictions on private activity. Some seem minor, such as raising the number of seats at family restaurants from 12 to 20, but others are substantive. A small business will no longer be limited to hiring workers who live with the owners or are family members, and businesses will be allowed to operate in more than one municipality. People will be able to rent out entire houses and apartments instead of just renting rooms in their own homes.
Granma described the new policy as “an attempt…to distance ourselves from those concepts that almost condemned self-employment to extinction and stigmatized those who decided to legally join that sector in the 1990s.”
Government economists are also looking at further changes to an economy that has been highly centralized on the Soviet model. Some of the new job categories, such as auto repair and some types of retail sales, will only be productive if there are wholesale markets, but the economic planners say it will take several years to institute these. (Granma Internacional (Cuba) 9/24/10, with English translation; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/25/10 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
At the Roots of Mapuche Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2700-at-the-roots-of-mapuche-resistance
Saving Their Seats for the Bicentennial (and Beyond): Ex-Political Prisoners of Chile’s National Stadium
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2707-saving-their-seats-for-the-bicentennial-and-beyond-ex-political-prisoners-of-chiles-national-stadium
Paraguayan Tribe’s SOS to Save Uncontacted Families from Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2705-paraguayan-tribes-sos-to-save-uncontacted-families-from-extinction
Peru: general strike against irrigation project shuts down Cusco
http://ww4report.com/node/9144
Ecuador: Small-Scale Miners Questioning Large-Scale Interests in Southern Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2703-ecuador-small-scale-miners-questioning-large-scale-interests-in-southern-amazon-
FARC Leader “Mono Jojoy” Killed In Colombian Military Strike
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/24/farc-leader-mono-jojoy-killed-in-colombian-military-strike/
FARC commander "Mono Jojoy" killed
http://ww4report.com/node/9143
Indigenous Resistance, from Colombia to Palestine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2706-indigenous-resistance-from-colombia-to-palestine-
Giving Colombia a Free Pass: State Department Ignores Abuses of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2704-giving-colombia-a-free-pass-state-department-ignores-abuses-of-afro-colombian-and-indigenous-rights
FBI raids homes of anti-war activists (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/9142
Venezuela Deports Two Drug Kingpins, Calls US Drug Blacklist “Abusive and Interventionist”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5651
Venezuelan Oil Minister: $100 Fair Price for Oil Barrel
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5648
An FMLN Woman’s Story of Courage and Conviction, 20 Years Later
https://nacla.org/node/6750
Honduras: Resistance Front protests Porfirio Lobo's presence at UN
http://ww4report.com/node/9145
Mexico: another mayor assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/9138
Autonomous Authorities Order Total Evacuation of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2702-autonomous-authorities-order-total-evacuation-of-san-juan-copala-oaxaca
Mexico: Juárez police evict family at contested Lomas de Poleo lands
http://ww4report.com/node/9146
Is the Fuse Lit? Uprising/Lynching in Chihuahua
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2010/09/22/is-the-fuse-lit-uprisinglynching-in-chihuahua/
Mexico: Abuses Against U.S. Bound Migrant Workers
https://nacla.org/node/6753
The Forever Fidel Obsession
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_forever_fidel_obsession_20100919/
Haitian Women Struggle to Keep Hope Alive
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2701-haitian-women-struggle-to-keep-hope-alive
Silent Coup in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2699-silent-coup-in-haiti
United Nations Summit Addresses Poverty; Latin American Leaders Call For Change
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/22/united-nations-summit-addresses-poverty-latin-american-leaders-call-for-change/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1050, September 26, 2010
1. Haiti: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive met in New York on Sept. 20 to discuss international efforts to help Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated much of the capital and nearby areas. About 1.3 million Haitians continue to live outdoors, mostly in some 1,300 improvised encampments, more than eight months after the quake and almost six months after international donors pledged $9.9 billion in aid [see Update #1028].
Bellerive noted that "impatience is increasing” in Haiti, but Clinton downplayed the complaints. “Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard,” she said. Kouchner agreed. “Some find that it's going slowly, very slowly, the reconstruction of Haiti,” he said. “And some are surprised that with so much money raised there is no really visible progress. It's because they have no idea of the immensity of the disaster. There's a lot of money, many things have been done, but that cannot be immediately visible.”
The main business of the meeting, which took place as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the current session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, was the signing of two memoranda of understanding, one for setting up an industrial zone expected to provide jobs for 10,000 Haitians, and one for financing the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince’s general hospital, the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH).
Bellerive and Hillary Clinton also signed an agreement with Woong-Ki Kim, chair of Seoul-based Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., to build garment assembly plants in Haiti, either near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien or in an undeveloped area north of Port-au-Prince—presumably at the government-organized camp for displaced persons at Corail-Cesselesse [see Update #1040]. "These are not just any jobs,” Clinton said about the employment the agreement is supposed to provide. “These are good jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards." The agreement shows that "Haiti is open for business again," she added.
In addition, Clinton, Kouchner and Bellerive participated in a meeting of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH). The group, set up to monitor recovery efforts, is co-chaired by Bellerive and Clinton’s husband, former US president (1993-2001) and current UN envoy Bill Clinton. (Agence France Presse 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group; Associated Press 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group)
The apparel jobs Hillary Clinton discussed would be in the tax-exempt assembly plants--known as maquiladoras in Latin America--where workers stitch together garments for export. Eddy Labossière, president of the Haitian Association of Economists (AEH), said on Sept. 23 that the assembly plant jobs, which are subject to a special lower minimum wage of about $3 a day, won’t be able to guarantee Haiti’s development. Labossière also expressed regret that plans for the reconstruction of the capital’s downtown area include a $295,000 contract, signed a few days earlier, with a British group, the Prince Charles Foundation, rather than with a Haitian firm. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 9/23/10)
Some 150-200 Haitian Americans and other activists demonstrated in New York on Sept. 25 to protest the slow pace of recovery. Chanting “Where’s the money?” and “Aid the people now” in Creole and English, the protesters marched from the Haitian consulate in the Midtown area to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN headquarters by the East River. The action was organized by the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East (HSNNE) and endorsed by a number of organizations. (Pavement Pieces blog 9/25/10; Weekly News Update eyewitness report)
*2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
Nadia Lochard, coordinator of Haiti’s Civil Protection agency, confirmed on Sept. 25 that five people had died and 57 were injured the day before when a violent storm hit Port-au-Prince and areas to the south, including Petit Goâve and Îles Cayimites. Lochard said most of the injuries and damage took place in the camps where some 1.3 million local residents have been living since they were displaced by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12.
According to news reports, the dead included a baby in the Caradeux camp in the northeastern Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, a 93-year-old woman in Camp Acra the capital’s Delmas section and a food vendor at Poste Marchand in the downtown area. Some 20 of the injuries reportedly resulted from a tree falling on the camp at the Pétionville Club at Delmas 48 street. Lochard said about 2,000 tents were damaged. Local local media specified that 1,000 tents were destroyed at Camp Acra, 1,000 in the huge, impoverished Cité Soleil neighborhood, and 100 at the camp at the Champ de Mars near the Presidential Palace. Camp Charbon, in Carrefour, southwest of the capital, where 500 people were living, was completely destroyed, according to Haiti’s Radio Kiskeya. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/25/10; Radio Kiskeya 9/24/10)
In other news, an angry crowd killed police agent Guilloteau Hubert and burned down the police station at the town of Cayes-Jacmel the night of Sept. 23. Witnesses said the crowd reacted when the agent arrested and then tried to kill a young man, Johnny Joseph. Joseph was reportedly hospitalized with three bullet wounds. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/24/10) [Cayes-Jacmel, near the city of Jacmel in the Southeast department, is in the zone that suffered heavy damage from the earthquake.]
*3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia, wrote in communiqués dated Sept. 22 and 24 that rightwing paramilitaries were continuing to attack and threaten its members. The community, which for 13 years has rejected the presence of all weapons and armed groups in its territory, charged the authorities with “complacency” regarding the paramilitary activity [see Update #1017].
According to the communiqués, a paramilitary known as “Berardo Tuberquia” accosted a peace community member in Dabeiba municipality and asked about various other community members. He said he had a list with the names of San José de Apartadó leaders and members who were going to be killed. That afternoon, two paramilitaries on a motorcycle fired on peace community members José David Graciano and Alonso Valle Guerra as they were walking home after going to a court hearing to deny charges of belonging to a militia. Both escaped, but Valle Guerra was hit in the leg. The peace community reported the incidents to the government’s human rights protection agency, but the agency supported claims by the local military unit that everything was “peaceful” at San José de Apartadó. (Adital (Brazil) 9/24/10; San José de Apartadó communiqués 9/22/10, 9/24/10)
The new incidents occurred just as a book was coming out about the peace community, Fusil o Toga, Toga y Fusil (“Rifle or Robe, Rifle and Robe,” referring to the use of violence and the court system to repress the community). The author, human rights activist and Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, said he’d written the work to fight against impunity by documenting abuses against the community, which has been attacked by the military, by rightwing paramilitaries and by leftist rebels. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 9/17/10) On Aug. 6 a judge in Medellín acquitted 10 soldiers of participating in a February 2005 in which eight San José de Apartadó residents, including three children, were killed with machetes. A captain had confessed to his role in the killings; several paramilitary members also confessed and said they had worked together with the military. (World War 4 Report 8/11/10)
*4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
On Sept. 24 Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), published an article describing policy changes intended to expand Cuba’s small private sector. The changes are part of a plan announced on Sept. 13 to lay off some half million public employees, about 10% of the total labor force, over the next six months; the government expects about 465,000 of the laid-off workers to move to the private sector or to form cooperatives, according to unofficial sources.
The plan is basically an expansion of the “self-employment” (TCP) policy instituted during the “special period” in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The government will now issue licenses for 178 job categories in the TCP--which includes small businesses in addition to actual self-employment. Most of these occupations were authorized in the 1990s, but some were closed off again in 2004, and there are currently just 143,000 licenses for TCP businesses, down from a high of 210,000 in 1995. Much of the work authorized under the new policy is currently done in the black market; the changes will bring these jobs into the tax and social security systems.
What is probably more important than the increased number of TCP occupations is the lifting of several restrictions on private activity. Some seem minor, such as raising the number of seats at family restaurants from 12 to 20, but others are substantive. A small business will no longer be limited to hiring workers who live with the owners or are family members, and businesses will be allowed to operate in more than one municipality. People will be able to rent out entire houses and apartments instead of just renting rooms in their own homes.
Granma described the new policy as “an attempt…to distance ourselves from those concepts that almost condemned self-employment to extinction and stigmatized those who decided to legally join that sector in the 1990s.”
Government economists are also looking at further changes to an economy that has been highly centralized on the Soviet model. Some of the new job categories, such as auto repair and some types of retail sales, will only be productive if there are wholesale markets, but the economic planners say it will take several years to institute these. (Granma Internacional (Cuba) 9/24/10, with English translation; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/25/10 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
At the Roots of Mapuche Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2700-at-the-roots-of-mapuche-resistance
Saving Their Seats for the Bicentennial (and Beyond): Ex-Political Prisoners of Chile’s National Stadium
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2707-saving-their-seats-for-the-bicentennial-and-beyond-ex-political-prisoners-of-chiles-national-stadium
Paraguayan Tribe’s SOS to Save Uncontacted Families from Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2705-paraguayan-tribes-sos-to-save-uncontacted-families-from-extinction
Peru: general strike against irrigation project shuts down Cusco
http://ww4report.com/node/9144
Ecuador: Small-Scale Miners Questioning Large-Scale Interests in Southern Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2703-ecuador-small-scale-miners-questioning-large-scale-interests-in-southern-amazon-
FARC Leader “Mono Jojoy” Killed In Colombian Military Strike
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/24/farc-leader-mono-jojoy-killed-in-colombian-military-strike/
FARC commander "Mono Jojoy" killed
http://ww4report.com/node/9143
Indigenous Resistance, from Colombia to Palestine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2706-indigenous-resistance-from-colombia-to-palestine-
Giving Colombia a Free Pass: State Department Ignores Abuses of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2704-giving-colombia-a-free-pass-state-department-ignores-abuses-of-afro-colombian-and-indigenous-rights
FBI raids homes of anti-war activists (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/9142
Venezuela Deports Two Drug Kingpins, Calls US Drug Blacklist “Abusive and Interventionist”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5651
Venezuelan Oil Minister: $100 Fair Price for Oil Barrel
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5648
An FMLN Woman’s Story of Courage and Conviction, 20 Years Later
https://nacla.org/node/6750
Honduras: Resistance Front protests Porfirio Lobo's presence at UN
http://ww4report.com/node/9145
Mexico: another mayor assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/9138
Autonomous Authorities Order Total Evacuation of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2702-autonomous-authorities-order-total-evacuation-of-san-juan-copala-oaxaca
Mexico: Juárez police evict family at contested Lomas de Poleo lands
http://ww4report.com/node/9146
Is the Fuse Lit? Uprising/Lynching in Chihuahua
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2010/09/22/is-the-fuse-lit-uprisinglynching-in-chihuahua/
Mexico: Abuses Against U.S. Bound Migrant Workers
https://nacla.org/node/6753
The Forever Fidel Obsession
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_forever_fidel_obsession_20100919/
Haitian Women Struggle to Keep Hope Alive
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2701-haitian-women-struggle-to-keep-hope-alive
Silent Coup in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2699-silent-coup-in-haiti
United Nations Summit Addresses Poverty; Latin American Leaders Call For Change
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/22/united-nations-summit-addresses-poverty-latin-american-leaders-call-for-change/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
WNU #1049: Chilean Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1049, September 19, 2010
1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. The solidarity fasters included the presidents of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and the Federation of University of Santiago Students; the president of the Copper Workers Commission of the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Santiago Autonomous Mapuche (COOAMS) and the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. A number of leftists, unionists and artists expressed their solidarity with the fast, which was being held in the FECH offices in Santiago.
As of Sept. 14 there were 34 prisoners in six prisons--Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, Angol, Lebu and Chol Chol--taking part in the hunger strike. Many were suffering from heart and kidney problems and had lost more than 25% of their original weight, according to the Coordinating Committee of Relatives of Mapuche Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike. The action was started to protest Law No. 19.027, an “anti-terrorism” measure first enacted in 1984 under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; it treats illegal land occupations and attacks on the equipment or personnel of multinational companies as acts of terrorism and subjects those charged with the offenses to both civilian and military courts. Mapuche activists say that their land has been taken illegally and that the law criminalizes legitimate forms of protest [see Update #1008].
Chile’s rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11, has proposed modifications to the law and has brought in Concepción archbishop Ricardo Ezzati to serve as a mediator. On Sept. 14 the government authorized the release of two of the striking prisoners, Pablo Conio and Sergio Tralcal, on a bail of about $2,000. Conio and Tralcal said they would continue to participate in the hunger strike despite the release order. (Coordinación de Familiares de Presos Políticos Mapuche en Huelga de Hambre press release 9/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/15/10 from correspondent; Indian Country Today 9/14/10 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) announced on Sept. 13 that four soldiers would be arrested and charged with homicide for the killing of two civilians the night of Sept. 5 on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Apodaca municipality in the northern state of Nuevo León.
The soldiers, from the 7th Military Zone, opened fire on a car in which members of an extended family were driving home after a party. Vicente de León Ramírez and his 16-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were killed; three other family members were hit by bullets, and two children, 8 and 9, were injured by broken glass. The soldiers said they shot at the car because the driver, Vicente de León’s son-in-law, ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint. The family denied that there was a checkpoint and said they not been ordered to stop.
The killing was similar to an incident in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in Sinaloa state, the night of May 31-June 1, 2007, when soldiers fired on a family van, killing two women and three small children. The government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reports receiving almost 3,500 complaints of military abuses since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa deployed soldiers in a “war on drugs” shortly after taking office in December 2006. Recently the military has been attempting to improve its image by accepting its responsibility in some incidents, including the July 2006 rape of 13 (or 14) women in a dance hall in Castaños, Coahuila state, and the killing of two graduate students in Monterrey, Nuevo León, last March [see Updates #916, 1044]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/7/10; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 9/12/10, 9/14/10)
In other news, David García Ramírez, a resident of San Juan Copala, an autonomous municipality in the southern state of Oaxaca, was shot dead on Sept. 18 as he was attempting to leave the municipality. This was the latest killing in a campaign by two groups of indigenous Triqui, the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) and the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT), to drive members of a third Triqui group, the Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI), from the municipality. García Ramírez was reportedly a MULTI supporter, while the killers were said to be paramilitaries from the UBISORT, which is linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #810]. (LJ 9/19/10)
*3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
After three days of meetings at the Distinction Night Club in a suburb north of Port-au-Prince, on Sept. 16 four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28. The four coalitions--Alternative, Liberation, Rasanble (“Assemble”) and the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE)— said they were forming a “United Political Front” and expressed their lack of confidence in the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Instead of elections, the coalitions called for a “government of public safety” to take power after President René Garcia Préval’s term ends on Feb. 7 and carry out a transition to full democracy.
Maryse Narcisse, coordinator of Lavalas Family (FL), the party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), indicated that she supported the position of the four coalitions. “The conditions have not been met for organizing good elections in Haiti,” she explained. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste--the coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MMP), based in the Center department, and a longtime opponent of FL--also supported the coalitions’ call.
However, there was dissension within the coalitions themselves. Some have candidates on the ballot for the Nov. 28 elections, which are to select a new president, 11 of the 27 seats in the Senate and all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Former legislative deputy Steven Benoit, for example, said he was continuing to run for Senate on the Alternative line and that he was attending the event to persuade opposition leaders not to boycott the elections. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/15/10; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/16/10, 9/17/10; Agence Haïtienne de Presse, Haiti, 9/16/10)
Meanwhile, protests continued over the presence of the 9,000 international soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the failures of the government and international agencies to provide adequate relief after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
On Sept. 10 the Movement of Nationalist Youth (MJN) and other organizations marched to the MINUSTAH barracks in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien to protest the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles there on Aug. 17; MINUSTAH says his death was a suicide [see Update #1047].
Also on Sept. 10, some of the Port-au-Prince residents made homeless by the earthquake and forced to live in improvised camps demonstrated at the prime minister’s office in the downtown area to protest their conditions. Three days later, on Sept. 13, dozens of residents of the Canaan camp and the government-organized camp at Corail-Cesselesse, north of the capital, protested near the ruined National Palace, demanding new homes and asking how they could deal with the beginning of the school year on Oct. 4 [see Update #1046 for other protests by camp residents]. Meanwhile, the Platform of Victim Employees of Public Enterprises (PEVEP) was holding a demonstration at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to demand “back pay for employees unjustly dismissed.” (AHP 9/13/10, English translation from the Haiti Support Group (UK))
*4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
On Sept. 16 Miami federal district judge William Zloch sentenced former Guatemalan soldier Gilberto Jordán to 10 years in prison for concealing his role in a 1982 massacre when he applied for US citizenship. Jordán, a member of the notorious Kaibil counterinsurgency force, is one of 14 soldiers wanted in Guatemala for the brutal murder of some 250 campesinos in the village of Las Dos Erres, Sayaxche (or Libertad), in the northern department of Peten [see Update #786]. He moved to Miami in 1990 and became a US citizen in 1999. Arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on May 5 this year, he pleaded guilty in July to charges of lying on a citizenship application. Ten years is the maximum sentence for the offense.
Guatemala’s government human rights prosecutor Aura Marina Mancilla said that in August she made an initial application with Guatemalan courts for an extradition request so that Jordán could be tried in Guatemala. (Reuters 9/16/10; Argenpress (Argentina) 9/17/10 from Cerigua (Guatemala)) The Dos Erres massacre was part of a massive counterinsurgency campaign in the 1980s that was unofficially backed by the US government.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: student protests commemorate "Night of the Pencils"
http://ww4report.com/node/9116
Argentina: anarchist bomb blast protests Mapuche repression
http://ww4report.com/node/9117
Argentina's Media Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6744
Chile’s Ghosts: The Tyranny of Forgetting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2686-chiles-ghosts-the-tyranny-of-forgetting
From Rebellion to Reform: Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2694-from-rebellion-to-reform-bolivias-reconstituted-neoliberalism
Book Review on Bolivia - Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2693-book-review-dispersing-power-social-movements-as-anti-state-forces
U.S. Praise for Peru's Economy Misses the Mark
https://nacla.org/node/6739
U.N. Expert Concerned by "Climate of Impunity" in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2691-un-expert-concerned-by-qclimate-of-impunityq-in-peru
Quito denies Colombian guerillas launched attack from Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/9105
Colombia: riot squad represses student protests in Medellín
http://ww4report.com/node/9115
Colombian Paramilitaries Extradited To U.S., Where Cases Are Sealed
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/colombian-paramilitaries-extradited-to-u-s-where-cases-are-sealed/
U.S. Government and CNN Openly Protect and Support Venezuelan Terrorist
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5636
Venezuela's Chavez Hands out Property Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5643
Jewish Representatives Meet with Venezuelan President Chávez
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5645
US scientist charged with conspiracy to sell nuclear data to Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/9127
Honduras: Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mobilization-and-repression-on.html
Over 1,260,000 Hondurans Demand Refounding of Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2698-over-1260000-hondurans-demand-refounding-of-nation
Zapatista Supporters Attacked in Retaliation for Building an Autonomous School (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2687-zapatista-supporters-attacked-in-retaliation-for-building-an-autonomous-school
Mexico: Requiem for Triquis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2695-mexico-requiem-for-triquis
Reynosa jailbreak: inside job? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9104
Mexican bicentennial celebrations clouded by narco crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/9108
Matamoros mayhem goes unreported in Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/9109
Mexican News Photographer Shot Dead in Juárez
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/17/mexican-news-photographer-shot-dead-in-juarez/
Mexico: armed commando in deadly ambush of Guerrero police
http://ww4report.com/node/9126
Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state
Cuba to impose austerity on workers
http://ww4report.com/node/9106
Cuba Cuts 500,000 State Jobs; Plans to Reduce Private Business Restrictions
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/cuba-cuts-500000-state-jobs-plans-to-reduce-private-business-restrictions/
Cuban Union Calls for 'Unity' in Face of Job Reduction
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52817
Haiti's Disaster Capitalists Swoop In
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/haiti-refugee-work-camps
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1049, September 19, 2010
1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. The solidarity fasters included the presidents of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and the Federation of University of Santiago Students; the president of the Copper Workers Commission of the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Santiago Autonomous Mapuche (COOAMS) and the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. A number of leftists, unionists and artists expressed their solidarity with the fast, which was being held in the FECH offices in Santiago.
As of Sept. 14 there were 34 prisoners in six prisons--Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, Angol, Lebu and Chol Chol--taking part in the hunger strike. Many were suffering from heart and kidney problems and had lost more than 25% of their original weight, according to the Coordinating Committee of Relatives of Mapuche Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike. The action was started to protest Law No. 19.027, an “anti-terrorism” measure first enacted in 1984 under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; it treats illegal land occupations and attacks on the equipment or personnel of multinational companies as acts of terrorism and subjects those charged with the offenses to both civilian and military courts. Mapuche activists say that their land has been taken illegally and that the law criminalizes legitimate forms of protest [see Update #1008].
Chile’s rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11, has proposed modifications to the law and has brought in Concepción archbishop Ricardo Ezzati to serve as a mediator. On Sept. 14 the government authorized the release of two of the striking prisoners, Pablo Conio and Sergio Tralcal, on a bail of about $2,000. Conio and Tralcal said they would continue to participate in the hunger strike despite the release order. (Coordinación de Familiares de Presos Políticos Mapuche en Huelga de Hambre press release 9/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/15/10 from correspondent; Indian Country Today 9/14/10 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) announced on Sept. 13 that four soldiers would be arrested and charged with homicide for the killing of two civilians the night of Sept. 5 on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Apodaca municipality in the northern state of Nuevo León.
The soldiers, from the 7th Military Zone, opened fire on a car in which members of an extended family were driving home after a party. Vicente de León Ramírez and his 16-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were killed; three other family members were hit by bullets, and two children, 8 and 9, were injured by broken glass. The soldiers said they shot at the car because the driver, Vicente de León’s son-in-law, ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint. The family denied that there was a checkpoint and said they not been ordered to stop.
The killing was similar to an incident in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in Sinaloa state, the night of May 31-June 1, 2007, when soldiers fired on a family van, killing two women and three small children. The government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reports receiving almost 3,500 complaints of military abuses since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa deployed soldiers in a “war on drugs” shortly after taking office in December 2006. Recently the military has been attempting to improve its image by accepting its responsibility in some incidents, including the July 2006 rape of 13 (or 14) women in a dance hall in Castaños, Coahuila state, and the killing of two graduate students in Monterrey, Nuevo León, last March [see Updates #916, 1044]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/7/10; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 9/12/10, 9/14/10)
In other news, David García Ramírez, a resident of San Juan Copala, an autonomous municipality in the southern state of Oaxaca, was shot dead on Sept. 18 as he was attempting to leave the municipality. This was the latest killing in a campaign by two groups of indigenous Triqui, the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) and the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT), to drive members of a third Triqui group, the Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI), from the municipality. García Ramírez was reportedly a MULTI supporter, while the killers were said to be paramilitaries from the UBISORT, which is linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #810]. (LJ 9/19/10)
*3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
After three days of meetings at the Distinction Night Club in a suburb north of Port-au-Prince, on Sept. 16 four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28. The four coalitions--Alternative, Liberation, Rasanble (“Assemble”) and the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE)— said they were forming a “United Political Front” and expressed their lack of confidence in the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Instead of elections, the coalitions called for a “government of public safety” to take power after President René Garcia Préval’s term ends on Feb. 7 and carry out a transition to full democracy.
Maryse Narcisse, coordinator of Lavalas Family (FL), the party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), indicated that she supported the position of the four coalitions. “The conditions have not been met for organizing good elections in Haiti,” she explained. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste--the coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MMP), based in the Center department, and a longtime opponent of FL--also supported the coalitions’ call.
However, there was dissension within the coalitions themselves. Some have candidates on the ballot for the Nov. 28 elections, which are to select a new president, 11 of the 27 seats in the Senate and all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Former legislative deputy Steven Benoit, for example, said he was continuing to run for Senate on the Alternative line and that he was attending the event to persuade opposition leaders not to boycott the elections. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/15/10; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/16/10, 9/17/10; Agence Haïtienne de Presse, Haiti, 9/16/10)
Meanwhile, protests continued over the presence of the 9,000 international soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the failures of the government and international agencies to provide adequate relief after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
On Sept. 10 the Movement of Nationalist Youth (MJN) and other organizations marched to the MINUSTAH barracks in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien to protest the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles there on Aug. 17; MINUSTAH says his death was a suicide [see Update #1047].
Also on Sept. 10, some of the Port-au-Prince residents made homeless by the earthquake and forced to live in improvised camps demonstrated at the prime minister’s office in the downtown area to protest their conditions. Three days later, on Sept. 13, dozens of residents of the Canaan camp and the government-organized camp at Corail-Cesselesse, north of the capital, protested near the ruined National Palace, demanding new homes and asking how they could deal with the beginning of the school year on Oct. 4 [see Update #1046 for other protests by camp residents]. Meanwhile, the Platform of Victim Employees of Public Enterprises (PEVEP) was holding a demonstration at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to demand “back pay for employees unjustly dismissed.” (AHP 9/13/10, English translation from the Haiti Support Group (UK))
*4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
On Sept. 16 Miami federal district judge William Zloch sentenced former Guatemalan soldier Gilberto Jordán to 10 years in prison for concealing his role in a 1982 massacre when he applied for US citizenship. Jordán, a member of the notorious Kaibil counterinsurgency force, is one of 14 soldiers wanted in Guatemala for the brutal murder of some 250 campesinos in the village of Las Dos Erres, Sayaxche (or Libertad), in the northern department of Peten [see Update #786]. He moved to Miami in 1990 and became a US citizen in 1999. Arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on May 5 this year, he pleaded guilty in July to charges of lying on a citizenship application. Ten years is the maximum sentence for the offense.
Guatemala’s government human rights prosecutor Aura Marina Mancilla said that in August she made an initial application with Guatemalan courts for an extradition request so that Jordán could be tried in Guatemala. (Reuters 9/16/10; Argenpress (Argentina) 9/17/10 from Cerigua (Guatemala)) The Dos Erres massacre was part of a massive counterinsurgency campaign in the 1980s that was unofficially backed by the US government.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: student protests commemorate "Night of the Pencils"
http://ww4report.com/node/9116
Argentina: anarchist bomb blast protests Mapuche repression
http://ww4report.com/node/9117
Argentina's Media Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6744
Chile’s Ghosts: The Tyranny of Forgetting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2686-chiles-ghosts-the-tyranny-of-forgetting
From Rebellion to Reform: Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2694-from-rebellion-to-reform-bolivias-reconstituted-neoliberalism
Book Review on Bolivia - Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2693-book-review-dispersing-power-social-movements-as-anti-state-forces
U.S. Praise for Peru's Economy Misses the Mark
https://nacla.org/node/6739
U.N. Expert Concerned by "Climate of Impunity" in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2691-un-expert-concerned-by-qclimate-of-impunityq-in-peru
Quito denies Colombian guerillas launched attack from Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/9105
Colombia: riot squad represses student protests in Medellín
http://ww4report.com/node/9115
Colombian Paramilitaries Extradited To U.S., Where Cases Are Sealed
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/colombian-paramilitaries-extradited-to-u-s-where-cases-are-sealed/
U.S. Government and CNN Openly Protect and Support Venezuelan Terrorist
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5636
Venezuela's Chavez Hands out Property Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5643
Jewish Representatives Meet with Venezuelan President Chávez
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5645
US scientist charged with conspiracy to sell nuclear data to Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/9127
Honduras: Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mobilization-and-repression-on.html
Over 1,260,000 Hondurans Demand Refounding of Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2698-over-1260000-hondurans-demand-refounding-of-nation
Zapatista Supporters Attacked in Retaliation for Building an Autonomous School (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2687-zapatista-supporters-attacked-in-retaliation-for-building-an-autonomous-school
Mexico: Requiem for Triquis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2695-mexico-requiem-for-triquis
Reynosa jailbreak: inside job? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9104
Mexican bicentennial celebrations clouded by narco crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/9108
Matamoros mayhem goes unreported in Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/9109
Mexican News Photographer Shot Dead in Juárez
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/17/mexican-news-photographer-shot-dead-in-juarez/
Mexico: armed commando in deadly ambush of Guerrero police
http://ww4report.com/node/9126
Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state
Cuba to impose austerity on workers
http://ww4report.com/node/9106
Cuba Cuts 500,000 State Jobs; Plans to Reduce Private Business Restrictions
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/cuba-cuts-500000-state-jobs-plans-to-reduce-private-business-restrictions/
Cuban Union Calls for 'Unity' in Face of Job Reduction
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52817
Haiti's Disaster Capitalists Swoop In
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/haiti-refugee-work-camps
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
WNU #1048: Fighting Breaks Out at Mexican Copper Mine
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1048, September 12, 2010
1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Sept. 8. One of the injured, apparently a strikebreaker, was shot in the head but survived, despite initial reports that he had died.
Members of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have been on strike at the mine for three years. The owner, the powerful Grupo México corporation, regained control of the mine from the strikers after hundreds of police agents stormed the facility on June 6 [see Update #1037]. (As is traditional in Mexico, the strikers had been sitting in at the site.) The company then contracted workers from outside to get the mine back in operation. However, the union won a temporary court order on Aug. 12 allowing strikers to picket at the facility.
According to the state government’s account of the Sept. 8 events, strikers assaulted the contract workers and one striker, identified by the authorities as Jesús Gallegos Cabrera (“El Güero”), fired a gun at the strikebreakers, causing the worst injuries. Section 65 has become “a subversive, criminal group,” Sonora governor Guillermo Padrés Elías, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), charged on Sept. 11, adding that he would no longer negotiate with the strikers: “I have nothing to talk about with them.” The state had released four of the 26 arrested union members, the governor said, but had detained another, so that 23 were in detention as of Sept. 11.
The union and its supporters gave a different story. According to an alert from the nongovernmental Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PRODESC) and the US-based United Steelworkers (USW) union, a group of about 300 people in civilian clothes used stones and clubs to attack picketers at the mine’s Gate 2 on the afternoon of Sept. 7. The strikers retreated to Section 65’s union hall. The bloody Sept. 8 confrontation started when some 600 people attacked the strikers at the union hall at about 5:30am, according to this account. At a press conference shortly after the confrontation, Section 65 leaders charged that federal and state police dressed as civilians had joined strikebreakers, including workers from Central America, to attack the strikers. The leaders denied that a unionist could have fired the shots, since Section 65 workers, according to a union press release, “never go armed, following a union line, while the police and paramilitaries are armed.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/12/10; United Electrical Workers (UE) urgent action 9/9/10; Section 65 press releases 9/8/10, 9/12/10)
Representatives from a number of independent unions met at the headquarters of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in Mexico City on Sept. 9 to discuss plans to form a broad front “against the aggressions, murders and acts of repression.” The unions also called for a number of demonstrations and caravans on Sept. 14 and 15, as Mexicans mark the bicentennial of the start of the War of Independence from Spain on Sept. 15-16. (LJ 9/10/10) The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) asked for letters to President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx ), Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora (secretario@segob.gob.mx ), Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez (ofproc@pgr.gob.mx ) and others to demand protection for the striking miners and a thorough investigation of the Sept. 7-8 incidents. (UE urgent action 9/9/10)
*2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn’t set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. “The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans,” Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 9/10/10 from EFE)
The anti-crime push followed the killing of 17 workers at the Christopher Shoe Factory, in San Pedro Sula’s San Francisco neighborhood, on Sept. 7 by four or five armed men; several other workers were wounded. Police officials quickly attributed the killing to rivalry between two criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18. Relatives of the victims denied the police conclusion, noting that investigators had found no arms, drugs or gang insignia in the factory. “This is a lie,” said the factory’s owner, Miguel Alas, whose son was one of the victims. Opposition groups also questioned the government’s speed in blaming gang wars before the investigation was finished, and suggested that the government was taking advantage of the massacre to militarize the country. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Radio Progreso and ERIC-SJ (Honduras) 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
The massacre overshadowed a “civic strike” the three main labor federations and the opposition National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) held the same day to demand an increase in the minimum wage and the return of exiled opponents of the June 2009 military coup against former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) [see Update #1047]. Thousands of workers, students and teachers marched from the east of Tegucigalpa to the center of the city; the demonstration ended with a vigil at the Chilean embassy in solidarity with indigenous Mapuche political prisoners in Chile. During the march one group of protesters threw rocks at the buildings of two television companies, Channel 10 and Televicentro, and at the office of government human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio. “People are indignant with these media that aren’t impartial and objective,” Rafael Alegría, an FNRP coordinator, explained. “And the commissioner…well, you know,” Alegría added, referring to Custodio’s support for the coup [see Update #1029]. (AFP 9/7/10 via Univision; Vos el Soberano 9/9/10)
In other news, on Sept. 10 a group of men shot and killed campesino Francisco Miranda as he headed towards the La Aurora encampment, where he lived, near the city of Tocoa in the northern department of Colón. Miranda was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which represents thousands of campesinos in a land dispute in the Aguán River Valley. He is reportedly the 12th campesino to be murdered since December 2009. On Aug. 17 campesinos Víctor Manuel Mata Oliva, Sergio Magdiel Amaya and Rodving Omar Villegas, all MUCA members, were murdered as they were going from Tocoa to the community of Panamá. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
*3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.
Przemeck Gajdeczka, who headed the IMF’s delegation to Tegucigalpa, said the Honduran government had made a commitment to “improve the administration and collection of taxes; monitor expenses, including salaries; focus social spending on the poorest; and improve the financial position of the main public enterprises and the pension funds.”
The last standby loan agreement was made with former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) on Apr. 8, 2008, but the Zelaya government failed to comply with the agreement’s requirement to cut public spending. Along with other international institutions, the IMF suspended loans to Honduras after Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009. The IMF loan is one of current president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa’s main successes in restoring relations with international groups since he took office on Jan. 27. Efforts to have Honduras readmitted to the Organization of American States (OAS) remain blocked by leftist and center-left Latin American governments. (El Universal (Caracas) 9/11/10 from AFP)
*4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a “legendary leader who fought for his ideals,” according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás “an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico,” while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: “Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example.”
Mari Brás founded the Pro Independence Movement (MPI) in 1959 and the leftist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in 1971. His son Santiago Mari Brás was murdered in 1976; many suspected that the killing was politically motivated. Juan Mari Brás continued to be active into his later years: in 1994 he renounced the US citizenship which people born in Puerto Rico receive automatically [see Update #437], and in 2002 he was arrested while protesting the US Navy’s testing grounds on the island of Vieques. (Prensa Latina 9/10/10; New York Times 9/11/10)
*5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
Walker was wounded in eastern Nicaragua in 1988 when US-backed contra rebels attacked a boat in which he was traveling with a fact-finding delegation; two civilians were killed in the attack. [Reuters reported in error that the attack was by government soldiers and that the US backed the Nicaraguan government.] Walker stepped up his solidarity work after the attacks, founding Pastors for Peace and leading 21 “Friendshipment” caravans to take humanitarian aid to Cuba [see Update #1000]. He also organized caravans to Central America and to the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, and in 1999 he led the first US delegation to meet with Lori Berenson, a US citizen imprisoned for leftist activities in Peru [see Update #1045].
On Sept. 8 Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, called Walker an “insuperable example of solidarity and love of one’s neighbor.” Alarcón, who knew Walker from his time serving as a diplomat in New York, said the minister’s “life was an authentic realization of the true Christian spirit.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/8/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 9/8/10; New York Times 9/12/10 from Reuters)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Border Mining Projects in Latin America Before Ethics Tribunal (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2685-border-mining-projects-in-latin-america-before-ethics-tribunal
Chilean miners won't get paid while they're buried alive
http://ww4report.com/node/9092
No Dialogue in Mapuche Conflict in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2683-no-dialogue-in-mapuche-conflict-in-chile
Bolivia: The Lessons of Potosí
https://nacla.org/node/6731
El buen vivir: Peruvian Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios
https://nacla.org/node/6734
US military pact with Colombia dealt setback
http://ww4report.com/node/9084
Indigenous Colombians Face Possibility Of Extinction, U.N. Report Says
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/10/indigenous-colombians-face-extinction-u-n-report-says/
UN Report: Thirty-four Colombian Tribes Face Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2679-un-report-thirty-four-colombian-tribes-face-extinction
Venezuela Elections Too Close to Call
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5521&updaterx=2010-09-07+19%3A45%3A33
Venezuela: Voices on the Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2674-venezuela-voices-on-the-struggle
Venezuela: Crime in the Context of a Democratizing Process
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2678-venezuela-crime-in-the-context-of-a-democratising-process
Venezuelan Private Gas Company Workers Demand Nationalization
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5622
Chavez Allowed to Campaign Says Venezuelan Electoral Council
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5627
Devastating floods hit Central America —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9089
Honduras: drug gang behind factory massacre?
http://ww4report.com/node/9088
Guatemala: judge orders soldiers to stand trial for peasant massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/9087
Clinton: Mexico needs "equivalent" of Plan Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/9090
A Plan Colombia for Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3202
Mexican Military Launches Investigation Into Killing Of Civilians
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/08/mexican-military-launches-investigation-into-killing-of-civilians/
Oil Companies: Under No Obligation to Report Exploratory Pollution (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3191
Pollution Knows no Borders (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3171
Mexico: Unending Violence for the Indigenous People of San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2684-unending-violence-for-the-indigenous-people-of-san-juan-copala
Fidel to Ahmadinejad: "Stop slandering the Jews" (Cuba)
http://ww4report.com/node/9093
Education and the Cataclysm in Haiti: An Interview with Rea Dol
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2682-education-and-the-cataclysm-in-haiti-an-interview-with-rea-dol
Haitian refugee camps model future society
http://www.haitisupportgroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=396:haitian-refugee-camps-model-future-society&catid=99:analysis&Itemid=256
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1048, September 12, 2010
1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Sept. 8. One of the injured, apparently a strikebreaker, was shot in the head but survived, despite initial reports that he had died.
Members of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have been on strike at the mine for three years. The owner, the powerful Grupo México corporation, regained control of the mine from the strikers after hundreds of police agents stormed the facility on June 6 [see Update #1037]. (As is traditional in Mexico, the strikers had been sitting in at the site.) The company then contracted workers from outside to get the mine back in operation. However, the union won a temporary court order on Aug. 12 allowing strikers to picket at the facility.
According to the state government’s account of the Sept. 8 events, strikers assaulted the contract workers and one striker, identified by the authorities as Jesús Gallegos Cabrera (“El Güero”), fired a gun at the strikebreakers, causing the worst injuries. Section 65 has become “a subversive, criminal group,” Sonora governor Guillermo Padrés Elías, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), charged on Sept. 11, adding that he would no longer negotiate with the strikers: “I have nothing to talk about with them.” The state had released four of the 26 arrested union members, the governor said, but had detained another, so that 23 were in detention as of Sept. 11.
The union and its supporters gave a different story. According to an alert from the nongovernmental Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PRODESC) and the US-based United Steelworkers (USW) union, a group of about 300 people in civilian clothes used stones and clubs to attack picketers at the mine’s Gate 2 on the afternoon of Sept. 7. The strikers retreated to Section 65’s union hall. The bloody Sept. 8 confrontation started when some 600 people attacked the strikers at the union hall at about 5:30am, according to this account. At a press conference shortly after the confrontation, Section 65 leaders charged that federal and state police dressed as civilians had joined strikebreakers, including workers from Central America, to attack the strikers. The leaders denied that a unionist could have fired the shots, since Section 65 workers, according to a union press release, “never go armed, following a union line, while the police and paramilitaries are armed.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/12/10; United Electrical Workers (UE) urgent action 9/9/10; Section 65 press releases 9/8/10, 9/12/10)
Representatives from a number of independent unions met at the headquarters of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in Mexico City on Sept. 9 to discuss plans to form a broad front “against the aggressions, murders and acts of repression.” The unions also called for a number of demonstrations and caravans on Sept. 14 and 15, as Mexicans mark the bicentennial of the start of the War of Independence from Spain on Sept. 15-16. (LJ 9/10/10) The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) asked for letters to President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx ), Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora (secretario@segob.gob.mx ), Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez (ofproc@pgr.gob.mx ) and others to demand protection for the striking miners and a thorough investigation of the Sept. 7-8 incidents. (UE urgent action 9/9/10)
*2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn’t set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. “The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans,” Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 9/10/10 from EFE)
The anti-crime push followed the killing of 17 workers at the Christopher Shoe Factory, in San Pedro Sula’s San Francisco neighborhood, on Sept. 7 by four or five armed men; several other workers were wounded. Police officials quickly attributed the killing to rivalry between two criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18. Relatives of the victims denied the police conclusion, noting that investigators had found no arms, drugs or gang insignia in the factory. “This is a lie,” said the factory’s owner, Miguel Alas, whose son was one of the victims. Opposition groups also questioned the government’s speed in blaming gang wars before the investigation was finished, and suggested that the government was taking advantage of the massacre to militarize the country. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Radio Progreso and ERIC-SJ (Honduras) 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
The massacre overshadowed a “civic strike” the three main labor federations and the opposition National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) held the same day to demand an increase in the minimum wage and the return of exiled opponents of the June 2009 military coup against former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) [see Update #1047]. Thousands of workers, students and teachers marched from the east of Tegucigalpa to the center of the city; the demonstration ended with a vigil at the Chilean embassy in solidarity with indigenous Mapuche political prisoners in Chile. During the march one group of protesters threw rocks at the buildings of two television companies, Channel 10 and Televicentro, and at the office of government human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio. “People are indignant with these media that aren’t impartial and objective,” Rafael Alegría, an FNRP coordinator, explained. “And the commissioner…well, you know,” Alegría added, referring to Custodio’s support for the coup [see Update #1029]. (AFP 9/7/10 via Univision; Vos el Soberano 9/9/10)
In other news, on Sept. 10 a group of men shot and killed campesino Francisco Miranda as he headed towards the La Aurora encampment, where he lived, near the city of Tocoa in the northern department of Colón. Miranda was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which represents thousands of campesinos in a land dispute in the Aguán River Valley. He is reportedly the 12th campesino to be murdered since December 2009. On Aug. 17 campesinos Víctor Manuel Mata Oliva, Sergio Magdiel Amaya and Rodving Omar Villegas, all MUCA members, were murdered as they were going from Tocoa to the community of Panamá. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
*3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.
Przemeck Gajdeczka, who headed the IMF’s delegation to Tegucigalpa, said the Honduran government had made a commitment to “improve the administration and collection of taxes; monitor expenses, including salaries; focus social spending on the poorest; and improve the financial position of the main public enterprises and the pension funds.”
The last standby loan agreement was made with former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) on Apr. 8, 2008, but the Zelaya government failed to comply with the agreement’s requirement to cut public spending. Along with other international institutions, the IMF suspended loans to Honduras after Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009. The IMF loan is one of current president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa’s main successes in restoring relations with international groups since he took office on Jan. 27. Efforts to have Honduras readmitted to the Organization of American States (OAS) remain blocked by leftist and center-left Latin American governments. (El Universal (Caracas) 9/11/10 from AFP)
*4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a “legendary leader who fought for his ideals,” according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás “an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico,” while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: “Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example.”
Mari Brás founded the Pro Independence Movement (MPI) in 1959 and the leftist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in 1971. His son Santiago Mari Brás was murdered in 1976; many suspected that the killing was politically motivated. Juan Mari Brás continued to be active into his later years: in 1994 he renounced the US citizenship which people born in Puerto Rico receive automatically [see Update #437], and in 2002 he was arrested while protesting the US Navy’s testing grounds on the island of Vieques. (Prensa Latina 9/10/10; New York Times 9/11/10)
*5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
Walker was wounded in eastern Nicaragua in 1988 when US-backed contra rebels attacked a boat in which he was traveling with a fact-finding delegation; two civilians were killed in the attack. [Reuters reported in error that the attack was by government soldiers and that the US backed the Nicaraguan government.] Walker stepped up his solidarity work after the attacks, founding Pastors for Peace and leading 21 “Friendshipment” caravans to take humanitarian aid to Cuba [see Update #1000]. He also organized caravans to Central America and to the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, and in 1999 he led the first US delegation to meet with Lori Berenson, a US citizen imprisoned for leftist activities in Peru [see Update #1045].
On Sept. 8 Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, called Walker an “insuperable example of solidarity and love of one’s neighbor.” Alarcón, who knew Walker from his time serving as a diplomat in New York, said the minister’s “life was an authentic realization of the true Christian spirit.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/8/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 9/8/10; New York Times 9/12/10 from Reuters)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Border Mining Projects in Latin America Before Ethics Tribunal (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2685-border-mining-projects-in-latin-america-before-ethics-tribunal
Chilean miners won't get paid while they're buried alive
http://ww4report.com/node/9092
No Dialogue in Mapuche Conflict in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2683-no-dialogue-in-mapuche-conflict-in-chile
Bolivia: The Lessons of Potosí
https://nacla.org/node/6731
El buen vivir: Peruvian Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios
https://nacla.org/node/6734
US military pact with Colombia dealt setback
http://ww4report.com/node/9084
Indigenous Colombians Face Possibility Of Extinction, U.N. Report Says
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/10/indigenous-colombians-face-extinction-u-n-report-says/
UN Report: Thirty-four Colombian Tribes Face Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2679-un-report-thirty-four-colombian-tribes-face-extinction
Venezuela Elections Too Close to Call
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5521&updaterx=2010-09-07+19%3A45%3A33
Venezuela: Voices on the Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2674-venezuela-voices-on-the-struggle
Venezuela: Crime in the Context of a Democratizing Process
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2678-venezuela-crime-in-the-context-of-a-democratising-process
Venezuelan Private Gas Company Workers Demand Nationalization
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5622
Chavez Allowed to Campaign Says Venezuelan Electoral Council
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5627
Devastating floods hit Central America —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9089
Honduras: drug gang behind factory massacre?
http://ww4report.com/node/9088
Guatemala: judge orders soldiers to stand trial for peasant massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/9087
Clinton: Mexico needs "equivalent" of Plan Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/9090
A Plan Colombia for Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3202
Mexican Military Launches Investigation Into Killing Of Civilians
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/08/mexican-military-launches-investigation-into-killing-of-civilians/
Oil Companies: Under No Obligation to Report Exploratory Pollution (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3191
Pollution Knows no Borders (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3171
Mexico: Unending Violence for the Indigenous People of San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2684-unending-violence-for-the-indigenous-people-of-san-juan-copala
Fidel to Ahmadinejad: "Stop slandering the Jews" (Cuba)
http://ww4report.com/node/9093
Education and the Cataclysm in Haiti: An Interview with Rea Dol
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2682-education-and-the-cataclysm-in-haiti-an-interview-with-rea-dol
Haitian refugee camps model future society
http://www.haitisupportgroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=396:haitian-refugee-camps-model-future-society&catid=99:analysis&Itemid=256
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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