Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1141, August 19, 2012
1. Mexico: Now Wal-Mart Faces a Money Laundering Scandal
2. Chile: Students Reject Government's New Tax Law
3. Colombia: Fired GM Workers Go on Hunger Strike
4. Guatemala: Military Removes Squatters in Capital, Twice
5. Dominican Republic: “Haitians” Arrested for Demonstrating
6. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Guyana
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Now Wal-Mart Faces a Money Laundering Scandal
According to two members of the US Congress, Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), there is evidence that the US-based retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., didn’t take legally required steps to prevent money laundering and tax evasion through its Mexican subsidiary, Wal-Mart de México. The allegation appears in an Aug. 14 letter the two legislators wrote to Wal-Mart Stores CEO Michael Duke complaining that the company has failed to cooperate with their investigation of a $24 million bribery scandal that emerged in April [see Update #1127 and World War 4 Report 8/12/12].
“[A]lthough you have stated on multiple occasions that you intend to cooperate with our investigation,” Cummings and Waxman wrote, “you have failed to provide the documents we requested, and you continue to deny us access to key witnesses.” Despite the lack of cooperation from Wal-Mart, the Congress members said they had “obtained internal company documents, including internal audit reports, from other sources suggesting that Wal-Mart may have had compliance issues relating not only to bribery, but also to ‘questionable financial behavior’ including tax evasion and money laundering in Mexico.” They added that their concerns about Wal-Mart’s practices weren’t limited to Mexico.
The letter gave no specifics about the compliance issues, but Wal-Mart de México operates a bank which accepts deposits and issues credit and debit cards. The subsidiary’s stocks fell by 5.95% on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) on Aug. 15, the day Cummings and Waxman made their letter public.
This is the third time in one month that foreign corporations have been linked to the laundering of money from Mexico. In July a US Senate subcommittee reported on compliance violations by the London-based corporation HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, and in early August US media reported on an investigation of possible violations by rightwing US billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino company [see Updates #1137, 1140]. Mexican regulators fined HSBC $28 million in July for its failure to prevent money laundering through its Mexican subsidiary. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/15/12 from correspondent, 8/16/12; Associated Press 8/15/12 via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Wal-Mart may benefit from having good connections across the political spectrum in Mexico. According to the Mexican-based Reporte Indigo website, a Wal-Mart de México vice president, Álvaro Arrigunaga Gómez del Campo, is a cousin of Margarita Zavala Gómez del Campo, the wife of Mexico’s current president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, who is a leader of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Another Wal-Mart vice president is Alberto Ebrard Casaubón, brother of Marcelo Ebrard, head of government of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and one of the most popular politicians in the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). A second brother, Eugenio Ebrard, worked for the firm from the 1990s until 2010. (Poder Ciudadano (Ciudad de Puebla) 4/25/12)
*2. Chile: Students Reject Government's New Tax Law
Chilean high school students occupied two important schools in Santiago on Aug. 13, after taking over at least eight public high schools the week before in a continuation of protests for educational reform that started more than a year ago [see Update #1140]. The students occupied the Barros Arana National Boarding School (INBA) and the prestigious High School of Implementation. They also tried to take over the José Miguel Carrera National Institute but gave up when police contingents arrived. Agents arrested 14 youths allegedly involved in the actions, which were supported by hundreds of students.
“We decided to give up on the takeover because of the police presence,” INBA student Diego Mellado said, “but if we have to go back to take over the school, we’re going to do it.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/14/12 from correspondent)
The student movement is demanding a reversal of the privatization of education that began during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Rightwing president Sebastián Piñera has responded to the students by proposing legislation that would raise corporate tax rates as part of a fiscal overhaul allowing the government to provide low-interest student loans [see Update #1127]. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure during the second week of August with the support of some legislators from opposition parties, despite promises the parties’ leaders had made to students that they would vote against the bill. The bill still requires approval from the Senate. The student movement opposes Piñera’s “supposed education reform,” Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) vice president Camila Vallejo wrote in an open letter to the senators, because “it simply maintains the commercial, privatizing and discriminatory logic of the current educational system.” (Prensa Latina 8/14/12 via Adital (Brazil))
Carabineros militarized police succeeded in ending three of the high school occupations on Aug. 16. Using tear gas and with the support of vehicles with water cannons, the agents stormed the Darío Salas, Miguel de Cervantes and Swiss Confederation schools. The Darío Salas occupiers left the building when the police arrived, but students in the other two schools resisted. Police arrested 132 people in the buildings and seven outside. Students reportedly occupied three other schools while the police operation was going on at Darío Salas, Miguel de Cervantes and Swiss Confederation. (EFE 8/16/12 via Fox News Latina; LJ 8/17/12 from correspondent)
*3. Colombia: Fired GM Workers Go on Hunger Strike
As of Aug. 15 a total of 13 former employees of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), were continuing a liquids-only hunger strike they began on Aug. 1 to demand reinstatement and compensation for injuries they say they received on the job. According to the protesters, the company fired them after they received disabling injuries at the Colmotores factory, which employs about 1,800 workers just outside Bogotá. The company denies the workers’ accusations.
A group of the laid-off workers formed the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol) last year and set up an encampment in front of the US embassy in Bogotá on Aug. 1, 2011 to push their demands. They decided to go on hunger strike after protesting for one year without results. Seven have sewn their mouths shut as part of the protest, and more plan to take this step in the future.
According to the US-based human rights organization Witness for Peace, US labor activists fasted on Aug. 15 in at least 20 states in solidarity with the Colombian hunger strikers; there was also a demonstration outside GM headquarters in Detroit.
In recent years the US government has pushed Colombia to improve its record on labor rights in order to win approval from the US Congress for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), but activists say violations have remained common since Congress ratified the FTA last October [see Update #1104]. The case of GM Colmotores is especially striking because the company is owned by a US corporation which itself is partly owned by the US government. The US Treasury bought GM stock worth billions of dollars to bail the company out of bankruptcy in 2009. According to BusinessWeek, the US government remains GM’s largest shareholder, with 32% of the company’s stock. (AlterNet 8/13/12; Colombia Reports 8/15/12; BusinessWeek 8/9/12)
Colombian unionists are also asking for solidarity for two leaders in the National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL) in Barrancabermeja in the northern department of Santander. Local president William Mendoza and Executive Board member Juan Carlos Galvis were accused in 2008 of placing a bomb in a Coca Cola plant 10 years earlier. The case is only being activated now, and the two leaders, who represent workers at the local Coca-Cola plant, believe that if they are convicted, they will be murdered in jail.
Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for unionists, and rightwing paramilitaries have murdered or attempted to murder SINALTRAINAL members in the past. Mendoza and Galvis and their families have been targeted a number of times [see World War 4 Report 8/27/03 and 5/29/12]. “The judicial system in Colombia is now making its decisions based on politics, not the law,” Mendoza says. “We need you to send letters from members of Congress and from North American organizations protesting this prosecution against Juan Carlos Galvis and me.” Emails can be sent to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos Calderón (fsantos@presidencia.gov.co), Vice President Angelino Garzón (contactovicepresidencia@presidencia.gov.co) and the Attorney General’s Office (contacto@fiscalia.gov.co, denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co). (Portside 8/17/12 via Talking Union blog, where more information is available on the letters)
*4. Guatemala: Military Removes Squatters in Capital, Twice
After living on land in the center of Guatemala City since January, a group of about 100 impoverished families were forced to move at least twice during the week of Aug. 13 as the result of an eviction order obtained by the Defense Ministry, which claims the property. Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Erick Escobedo said the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction had mandated the eviction on the grounds that the land was unstable; the disaster agency didn’t return phone calls when the Associated Press wire service tried to confirm Escobedo’s statement.
The families had originally put up their houses near the La Asunción bridge in Zone 1, naming the settlement Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after a president deposed in 1954 in a military coup largely engineered by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The military removed the families peacefully from that land on Aug. 14, but the squatters then settled on nearby land also claimed by the military. Security forces evicted the families from the new settlement on Aug. 15, this time violently. Following the second removal, the families set up shelters on in the nearby Gerona neighborhood on land which may belong to the government. As of Aug. 16 they hadn’t been removed from the new location.
“We don’t have anywhere to go, and the only response we’ve gotten from the government is repression,” Vilma Rodríguez, one of the group’s leaders, told reporters. “We don’t make enough to rent a room or buy some land.” “Let the government tell us where, and we’ll go,” she added. According to official figures, more than a million families now live in settlements known as “poverty belts” that surround the country’s main cities. In January the Congress approved a National Housing Law to provide decent residences for impoverished Guatemalans, but the government has yet to allocate the resources to implement the legislation. (EFE 8/16/12 via Siglo 21 (Guatemala); Associated Press 8/16/12 via Miami Herald; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 8/17/12)
*5. Dominican Republic: “Haitians” Arrested for Demonstrating
Police agents stopped a group of Dominican youths of Haitian descent from marching on Aug. 13 in Monte Plata, in the central province of the same name, to demand that the government respect their rights as citizens. The protesters, members of the youth movement Reconoci.do, were trying to march from the city’s central part to the local Civil Status office, the registry for identification documents.
According to the group’s spokesperson, Ana María Belique, the protesters applied for a permit from the Monte Plata government but were turned down on the grounds that they weren’t Dominicans and had no right to demonstrate. When they attempted to march without a permit, a police contingent commanded by a Col. Antígua dispersed them with tear gas, arresting eight protesters. Three of those arrested were beaten by an agent from the robbery unit identified only as “Papo,” who told them to hold their demonstrations in “their country.”
Until 2010 the Dominican Constitution recognized everyone born in the Dominican Republic as a citizen, but in practice Dominicans with Haitian parents were frequently denied citizenship rights. The government responded to an unfavorable 2005 ruling by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), by amending the Constitution in 2010 to limit citizenship to people with Dominican parents. Since then government officials have tried to apply the measure retroactively, with the Central Electoral Council (JCE) and its president, Roberto Rosario, preventing Dominicans of Haitian descent from obtaining birth certificates and other legal documents and leaving them in effect stateless [see Update #1109].
Reconoci.do members were able demonstrate without problems in other parts of the country on Aug. 12 and 13. In San Pedro de Macorís they marched from Duarte Park to the San Pedro Apóstol Cathedral, where Catholic bishop Francisco Ozoria called for the youths to be given their papers. In Pedernales Reconoci.do members met with officials and with civil society organizations; in El Seibo the group sponsored an artistic presentation. (El Masacre (Dajabón) 8/16/12; Otramérica website 8/5/12)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Guyana
Paraguay: Why the Canadian Government Supports the Ouster of Lugo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3814-paraguay-why-the-canadian-government-supports-the-ouster-of-lugo
Paraguay: Spanish Tycoon’s Role in Destruction of ‘Hiding Tribe’s’ Forest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3811-paraguay-spanish-tycoons-role-in-destruction-of-hiding-tribes-forest
Brazilian appeals court suspends Belo Monte dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11386
Belo Monte Dam Suspended by Brazilian Appeals Court
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3813-belo-monte-dam-suspended-by-brazilian-appeals-court
Bolivia: judicial crisis over Amazon road project
http://ww4report.com/node/11388
Women In the Forefront of Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/17/women-forefront-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict
Peru: endgame in Cajamarca struggle?
http://ww4report.com/node/11387
Protests Could Derail Peru’s Giant Conga Mine
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7741
Peru: Shining Path control outlaw gold operations?
http://ww4report.com/node/11404
Peru: peasants protest Chinese mining project
http://ww4report.com/node/11405
Inter-American Court rules for Amazon people in Ecuador case
http://ww4report.com/node/11392
Ecuador indigenous movement on Assange asylum: "democracy begins at home"
http://ww4report.com/node/11409
Andean indigenous movements meet in Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/11389
Colombia: war, illegal mining encroach on indigenous communities
http://ww4report.com/node/11390
Colombia: San José de Apartadó Peace Community under attack again
http://ww4report.com/node/11391
Indigenous Nasa Resists Militarization in Cauca, Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/11396
Striking Rail Workers Affect Coal Production in Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/14/striking-rail-workers-affect-coal-production-colombia
Act Now! General Motors Workers on Hunger Strike in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3812-act-now-general-motors-workers-on-hunger-strike-in-colombia
Ex-President Uribe of Colombia Reveals He Wanted a Military Intervention in Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7171
“Honey of the Revolution” – An Interview with Rosangela Orozco, Member of the Alexis Lives Foundation (Fundación Alexis Vive) in Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/3809-honey-of-the-revolution-an-interview-with-rosangela-orozco-member-of-the-alexis-lives-foundation-fundacion-alexis-vive
US State Department Blinks on Honduran Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3810-us-state-department-blinks-on-honduran-security-
Honduran Media Emphasize Role of DEA in Miskitu Killings
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/08/ngo-report-implicates-dea-in-miskitu.html
How Walmart, Chiquita avoid labor oversight in Honduras
http://www.minnpost.com/global-post/2012/08/how-walmart-chiquita-avoid-labor-oversight-honduras
'Yo Soy 132' Mexican student movement looks to the future
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3818-mexican-student-movement-looks-to-the-future
Mexico: Concessions Continue in Wirikuta, Despite Government Ruse
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3817-mexico-concessions-continue-in-wirikuta-despite-government-ruse-
In Mexico, You Can’t Escape the Tri!
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/16/mexico-you-can%E2%80%99t-escape-tri
Join the U.S. Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity!
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7746
Police Killings Spark Crisis in Guyana
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/16/police-killings-spark-crisis-guyana
Obama, Upset by Latin America Criticism, Replaces an Advisor (US/policy)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7717
Fuerza!: The Fight Against SB 1070 and the Prison Industry in Arizona (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/14/fuerza-fights-against-sb-1070-and-prison-industry-arizona
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
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Monday, August 20, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
WNU #1140: New Puerto Rican Law to “Intimidate” Activists
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1140, August 12, 2012
1. Puerto Rico: New Law to "Intimidate" Unions and Students
2. Chile: High Students Occupy Schools to Demand Reform
3. Dominican Republic: Residents Protest New Barrick Gold Mine
4. Mexico: Did Romney Donor’s Casino Launder Drug Money?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Mercosur, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Puerto Rico: New Law to "Intimidate" Unions and Students
On July 30 Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño signed into law a new Penal Code that he and legislators said would counter a recent rise in crime [see Update #1111] by imposing much stiffer prison sentences for a wide range of crimes. The new law, which replaces the Penal Code of 2004, also defines the seduction of minors through the internet as a criminal offense and gives the government the power to fire any public employee who commits a crime while carrying out a public function. “We’re not going to let the criminals take over Puerto Rico,” Fortuño said at the signing ceremony.
Fortuño insisted that the new code wouldn’t limit rights of free expression. But Puerto Rican legal experts noted that the revisions dramatically increased penalties for civil disobedience. For example, participating in a protest on the steps of the Capitol building that impedes the work of Puerto Rico’s legislature—like one carried out by students in June 2010 [see Updates #1039, 1100]--could now be punished with three years in prison, while in the 2004 Penal Code the penalty only applied if legislative work was interrupted through “intimidation, violence or fraud,” language which was removed in the new law.
Attorney César Rosado, a human and civil rights specialist who represents several unions, told the Puerto Rican daily El Nuevo Día that the new law “tries to intimidate the unions and other pressure groups—like the student movement—which historically have distinguished themselves by presenting resistance to any measure they consider unjust. Establishing a three-year sentence is a big deterrent for protest.” Activists have frequently used nonviolent civil disobedience as a form of protest in Puerto Rico, most famously in the mass arrests that led to the removal of the US Navy proving grounds from the small island of Vieques in 2003. “In democracy it’s important to allow activism,” constitutional law professor Hiram Meléndez Juarbe told the newspaper, “even if at times it’s inconvenient for the government.” (END 7/30/12, 7/31/12)
In the US the maximum penalty for interrupting a session of Congress is six months in prison and/or a $500 fine. El Nuevo Día noted that the punishment for six Puerto Rican independence activists who interrupted Congress by singing patriotic hymns on May 6, 2009, was a fine. (END 7/31/12)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Aug. 7 challenging the new law. The challenge was presented as an amendment to a complaint the ACLU filed against the Puerto Rico Police Department on June 27 alleging that the department violated the rights of protesters [see World War 4 Report 6/28/12]. (Jurist 8/8/12)
*2. Chile: High Students Occupy Schools to Demand Reform
Students had occupied several of the public high schools in Santiago by the morning of Aug. 10 in the latest protest against the privatization of Chile’s educational system that started under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Chilean high school and university students launched a militant movement in the spring of 2011 to demand free, high-quality public education; current demands also include rejection of the so-called “Hinzpeter Law,” legislation proposed by rightwing president Sebastián Piñera last year to impose severe penalties on people who occupy schools or public or private buildings, or who cause damage in protests. Student actions included some 40 marches in 2011 and five so far this year [see Updates #1130, 1135].
Radio Bío Bío reported on Aug. 10 that Special Forces from the carabineros militarized police used tear gas to remove some 30 students who had been occupying the Santiago Superior Institute of Commerce. The students responded with “rocks, paint and eggs,” according to the radio station, and then “fled and took refuge in the Darío Salas High School,” which remained occupied.
Two days earlier, on Aug. 8, marches sponsored by the Secondary Students Coordinating Assembly (ACES), with support from university student federations, ended violently. Santiago authorities refused the high school students permission to march in the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue). When the crowd of 5,000-10,000 protesters tried to use the avenue, they were attacked with tear gas, a water cannon and mounted police. The youths threw rocks at police agents and built barricades; acts of vandalism included the burning of three buses. Some 75 protesters were arrested and 49 agents were reportedly injured. A demonstration in the seaside resort city of Viña del Mar ended with 11 people arrested and a pharmacy and supermarket destroyed. There were also marches in La Serena and Valdivia.
The student demonstrations have regularly ended with vandalism by hooded youths, and student organizers have sometimes suggested that infiltrators were behind the violence. After the Aug. 8 march ACES spokesperson Eloísa González said it was “quite suspicious” that with such a large police deployment it wasn’t possible to prevent the isolated activity of the people involved in setting vehicles on fire. Senator Guido Girardi, from the social democratic Party for Democracy (PPD), said there should be an investigation of why each demonstration involved people who “have the same interest as the government, that violence should be what occupies the pages [of the newspapers] and not the fundamental issue.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/9/12 from correspondent; EFE 8/9/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune; Prensa Latina 8/10/12)
*3. Dominican Republic: Residents Protest New Barrick Gold Mine
Residents of the area around the city of Cotuí, the capital of the Dominican Republic’s central province of Sánchez Ramírez, held a protest against the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation on Aug. 8, charging that the company’s giant Pueblo Viejo gold mine was contaminating drinking water and affecting residents’ health and their crops. The residents also complained that the company’s trucks had been causing accidents. The Pueblo Viejo, constructed on the site of a state-owned mine shut down in 1999, is scheduled to open this month [see Update #1139].
Barrick Gold is the largest open-pit gold mining company in the world; it maintains 27 mines, in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Tanzania and the US. (Adital (Brazil) 8/8/12 from TeleSUR; Prensa Latina 8/8/12)
The company has had two setbacks recently at its massive Pascua Lama mine in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile: dramatic cost overruns and an adverse decision from Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice [see Update #1138]. Former Barrick CEO Aaron Regent was fired at the beginning of July; his replacement, Jamie Sokalsky, is the company’s third CEO in less than four years.
Barrick’s problems are not unique. The gold mining industry has been expanding rapidly as the price of gold jumped to five times what it was 11 years ago—and protests about environmental damage have increased in parallel with the increase in mining. But gold’s price has only gone up 3.1% so far this year, and the New York Stock Exchange’s index of 16 gold-mining companies has fallen 17%, suggesting that the period of rapid expansion may be over. (BusinessWeek 7/27/12; Bloomberg News 8/7/12)
*4. Mexico: Did Romney Donor’s Casino Launder Drug Money?
According to an Aug. 4 report in the Wall Street Journal, the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles is investigating possible money laundering by Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon in the middle 2000s through the Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino company. The company, whose CEO and largest shareholder is US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to the Republican Party, reportedly failed to tell the authorities about suspicious money transfers by Ye Gon until the publication of a newspaper article about him in 2007. Adelson himself is apparently not being investigated at this point.
Ye Gon is in US custody awaiting extradition to Mexico on drug charges. He is accused of importing chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, and there are suspicions that he is connected with the Sinaloa drug cartel. In March 2007 police raided his Mexico City home and found almost $207 million in cash; the authorities described the raid as “the largest single drug cash seizure the world has ever seen.” Ye Gon reportedly transferred millions of dollars through Sands and was such a good customer at the company’s Venetian casino that he was given a Rolls Royce. He also transferred some $90 million through the Mexican subsidiary of the London-based corporation HSBC during the same period [see Update #1137].
Adelson was a major donor to former US House speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign to be the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate. When Gingrich dropped out of the race, the casino magnate switched to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is now considered certain to win the Republican nomination. Adelson plans to donate $100 million to this fall’s Republican campaigns. He is also a strong supporter of rightwing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was in Jerusalem in July when Romney and Netanyahu held a meeting there. (Reuters 8/4/12; Business Insider 8/7/12)
Adelson was having public relations problems even before the Ye Gon allegations appeared in the media. On Aug. 8 he filed a $60 million defamation suit against the Washington, DC-based National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). The group had quoted news reports carrying allegations by former Adelson employee Steven Jacobs that Adelson had approved of prostitution at his businesses in Macau, China.
“Referencing mainstream press accounts examining the conduct of a public figure and his business ventures--as we did--is wholly appropriate,” the NJDC said in response. “We know that we were well within our rights, and we will defend ourselves against this SLAPP [strategic lawsuit against public participation] suit as far and as long as necessary. We simply will not be bullied, and we will not be silenced.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency 8/8/12; The Jewish Week 8/9/12 from JTA)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Mercosur, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Americas: Governments Prioritize Profit over Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3807-americas-governments-prioritize-profit-over-indigenous-peoples-rights
From the Green Economy to Communality (South America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7690
Geopolitical Tsunami in the Southern Cone
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7698
The New York Times Publishes Misplaced Concerns Over Mercosur
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/6/new-york-times-publishes-misplaced-concerns-over-mercosur
Stolen As Infant, Argentine Man Reunites With Biological Family
http://latindispatch.com/2012/08/10/stolen-as-infant-argentine-man-reunites-with-biological-family/
In the Shadow of the Coup: Social Movements for Democracy Mobilize in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3801-in-the-shadow-of-the-coup-social-movements-for-democracy-mobilize-in-paraguay
Brazil mobilizes troops to southern borders in anti-narco drive
http://ww4report.com/node/11353
Bolivia: TIPNIS Communities Divided As Road Consultation Begins
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/5/bolivia-tipnis-communities-divided-road-consultation-begins
Peru: Cajamarca dialogue nears collapse
http://ww4report.com/node/11355
Peru: state of emergency extended in VRAE
http://ww4report.com/node/11358
Peru: more protests over mining, water
http://ww4report.com/node/11359
Ecuador to export via north Peru pipeline
http://ww4report.com/node/11354
Colombia: blows against narco-para network?
http://ww4report.com/node/11351
Colombia: UN calls for dialogue with indigenous movement
http://ww4report.com/node/11352
Colombia: Minga of Resistance Launched against Quimbo Dam and Other Resource Extraction Projects
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3797-colombia-minga-of-resistance-commences-aminga-of-resistance-launched-against-quimbo-dam-and-other-resource-extraction-projects-
Former GM Workers' Hunger Strike Grows in Colombia
http://nacla.org/news/2012/8/10/former-gm-workers-hunger-strike-grows-colombia
Venezuela with Two Months to Go till the Presidential Elections
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7161
Honduran President Puts “Tigers” Police Force on the Stree
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3802-honduran-president-puts-tigers-police-force-on-the-streets
Photo Essay: The "Caravan for Land and Territory" in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3798-photo-essay-the-qcaravan-for-land-and-territoryq-in-mexico
Mexican Communities Fight Mini-Dams
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3800-mexican-communities-fight-mini-dams
The Wal-Mart Corruption Case: Innocents Abroad? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11369
Mexican Mobility and Canada: Hardening Boundaries and Growing Resistance
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/8/mexican-mobility-and-canada-hardening-boundaries-and-growing-resistance
Mexico’s Peace Movement Heads to the US
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3806-mexicos-peace-movement-heads-to-the-us
The Mexican Diaspora Rises
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august062012/mexican-diaspora.php
Cholera Continues to Spread as Response and Surveillance Weaken (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
==> Be sure to check out World War 4 Report’s new and much improved format:
http://ww4report.com/node/
Issue #1140, August 12, 2012
1. Puerto Rico: New Law to "Intimidate" Unions and Students
2. Chile: High Students Occupy Schools to Demand Reform
3. Dominican Republic: Residents Protest New Barrick Gold Mine
4. Mexico: Did Romney Donor’s Casino Launder Drug Money?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Mercosur, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Puerto Rico: New Law to "Intimidate" Unions and Students
On July 30 Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño signed into law a new Penal Code that he and legislators said would counter a recent rise in crime [see Update #1111] by imposing much stiffer prison sentences for a wide range of crimes. The new law, which replaces the Penal Code of 2004, also defines the seduction of minors through the internet as a criminal offense and gives the government the power to fire any public employee who commits a crime while carrying out a public function. “We’re not going to let the criminals take over Puerto Rico,” Fortuño said at the signing ceremony.
Fortuño insisted that the new code wouldn’t limit rights of free expression. But Puerto Rican legal experts noted that the revisions dramatically increased penalties for civil disobedience. For example, participating in a protest on the steps of the Capitol building that impedes the work of Puerto Rico’s legislature—like one carried out by students in June 2010 [see Updates #1039, 1100]--could now be punished with three years in prison, while in the 2004 Penal Code the penalty only applied if legislative work was interrupted through “intimidation, violence or fraud,” language which was removed in the new law.
Attorney César Rosado, a human and civil rights specialist who represents several unions, told the Puerto Rican daily El Nuevo Día that the new law “tries to intimidate the unions and other pressure groups—like the student movement—which historically have distinguished themselves by presenting resistance to any measure they consider unjust. Establishing a three-year sentence is a big deterrent for protest.” Activists have frequently used nonviolent civil disobedience as a form of protest in Puerto Rico, most famously in the mass arrests that led to the removal of the US Navy proving grounds from the small island of Vieques in 2003. “In democracy it’s important to allow activism,” constitutional law professor Hiram Meléndez Juarbe told the newspaper, “even if at times it’s inconvenient for the government.” (END 7/30/12, 7/31/12)
In the US the maximum penalty for interrupting a session of Congress is six months in prison and/or a $500 fine. El Nuevo Día noted that the punishment for six Puerto Rican independence activists who interrupted Congress by singing patriotic hymns on May 6, 2009, was a fine. (END 7/31/12)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Aug. 7 challenging the new law. The challenge was presented as an amendment to a complaint the ACLU filed against the Puerto Rico Police Department on June 27 alleging that the department violated the rights of protesters [see World War 4 Report 6/28/12]. (Jurist 8/8/12)
*2. Chile: High Students Occupy Schools to Demand Reform
Students had occupied several of the public high schools in Santiago by the morning of Aug. 10 in the latest protest against the privatization of Chile’s educational system that started under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Chilean high school and university students launched a militant movement in the spring of 2011 to demand free, high-quality public education; current demands also include rejection of the so-called “Hinzpeter Law,” legislation proposed by rightwing president Sebastián Piñera last year to impose severe penalties on people who occupy schools or public or private buildings, or who cause damage in protests. Student actions included some 40 marches in 2011 and five so far this year [see Updates #1130, 1135].
Radio Bío Bío reported on Aug. 10 that Special Forces from the carabineros militarized police used tear gas to remove some 30 students who had been occupying the Santiago Superior Institute of Commerce. The students responded with “rocks, paint and eggs,” according to the radio station, and then “fled and took refuge in the Darío Salas High School,” which remained occupied.
Two days earlier, on Aug. 8, marches sponsored by the Secondary Students Coordinating Assembly (ACES), with support from university student federations, ended violently. Santiago authorities refused the high school students permission to march in the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue). When the crowd of 5,000-10,000 protesters tried to use the avenue, they were attacked with tear gas, a water cannon and mounted police. The youths threw rocks at police agents and built barricades; acts of vandalism included the burning of three buses. Some 75 protesters were arrested and 49 agents were reportedly injured. A demonstration in the seaside resort city of Viña del Mar ended with 11 people arrested and a pharmacy and supermarket destroyed. There were also marches in La Serena and Valdivia.
The student demonstrations have regularly ended with vandalism by hooded youths, and student organizers have sometimes suggested that infiltrators were behind the violence. After the Aug. 8 march ACES spokesperson Eloísa González said it was “quite suspicious” that with such a large police deployment it wasn’t possible to prevent the isolated activity of the people involved in setting vehicles on fire. Senator Guido Girardi, from the social democratic Party for Democracy (PPD), said there should be an investigation of why each demonstration involved people who “have the same interest as the government, that violence should be what occupies the pages [of the newspapers] and not the fundamental issue.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/9/12 from correspondent; EFE 8/9/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune; Prensa Latina 8/10/12)
*3. Dominican Republic: Residents Protest New Barrick Gold Mine
Residents of the area around the city of Cotuí, the capital of the Dominican Republic’s central province of Sánchez Ramírez, held a protest against the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation on Aug. 8, charging that the company’s giant Pueblo Viejo gold mine was contaminating drinking water and affecting residents’ health and their crops. The residents also complained that the company’s trucks had been causing accidents. The Pueblo Viejo, constructed on the site of a state-owned mine shut down in 1999, is scheduled to open this month [see Update #1139].
Barrick Gold is the largest open-pit gold mining company in the world; it maintains 27 mines, in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Tanzania and the US. (Adital (Brazil) 8/8/12 from TeleSUR; Prensa Latina 8/8/12)
The company has had two setbacks recently at its massive Pascua Lama mine in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile: dramatic cost overruns and an adverse decision from Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice [see Update #1138]. Former Barrick CEO Aaron Regent was fired at the beginning of July; his replacement, Jamie Sokalsky, is the company’s third CEO in less than four years.
Barrick’s problems are not unique. The gold mining industry has been expanding rapidly as the price of gold jumped to five times what it was 11 years ago—and protests about environmental damage have increased in parallel with the increase in mining. But gold’s price has only gone up 3.1% so far this year, and the New York Stock Exchange’s index of 16 gold-mining companies has fallen 17%, suggesting that the period of rapid expansion may be over. (BusinessWeek 7/27/12; Bloomberg News 8/7/12)
*4. Mexico: Did Romney Donor’s Casino Launder Drug Money?
According to an Aug. 4 report in the Wall Street Journal, the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles is investigating possible money laundering by Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon in the middle 2000s through the Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino company. The company, whose CEO and largest shareholder is US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to the Republican Party, reportedly failed to tell the authorities about suspicious money transfers by Ye Gon until the publication of a newspaper article about him in 2007. Adelson himself is apparently not being investigated at this point.
Ye Gon is in US custody awaiting extradition to Mexico on drug charges. He is accused of importing chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, and there are suspicions that he is connected with the Sinaloa drug cartel. In March 2007 police raided his Mexico City home and found almost $207 million in cash; the authorities described the raid as “the largest single drug cash seizure the world has ever seen.” Ye Gon reportedly transferred millions of dollars through Sands and was such a good customer at the company’s Venetian casino that he was given a Rolls Royce. He also transferred some $90 million through the Mexican subsidiary of the London-based corporation HSBC during the same period [see Update #1137].
Adelson was a major donor to former US House speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign to be the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate. When Gingrich dropped out of the race, the casino magnate switched to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is now considered certain to win the Republican nomination. Adelson plans to donate $100 million to this fall’s Republican campaigns. He is also a strong supporter of rightwing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was in Jerusalem in July when Romney and Netanyahu held a meeting there. (Reuters 8/4/12; Business Insider 8/7/12)
Adelson was having public relations problems even before the Ye Gon allegations appeared in the media. On Aug. 8 he filed a $60 million defamation suit against the Washington, DC-based National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). The group had quoted news reports carrying allegations by former Adelson employee Steven Jacobs that Adelson had approved of prostitution at his businesses in Macau, China.
“Referencing mainstream press accounts examining the conduct of a public figure and his business ventures--as we did--is wholly appropriate,” the NJDC said in response. “We know that we were well within our rights, and we will defend ourselves against this SLAPP [strategic lawsuit against public participation] suit as far and as long as necessary. We simply will not be bullied, and we will not be silenced.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency 8/8/12; The Jewish Week 8/9/12 from JTA)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Mercosur, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Americas: Governments Prioritize Profit over Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3807-americas-governments-prioritize-profit-over-indigenous-peoples-rights
From the Green Economy to Communality (South America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7690
Geopolitical Tsunami in the Southern Cone
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7698
The New York Times Publishes Misplaced Concerns Over Mercosur
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/6/new-york-times-publishes-misplaced-concerns-over-mercosur
Stolen As Infant, Argentine Man Reunites With Biological Family
http://latindispatch.com/2012/08/10/stolen-as-infant-argentine-man-reunites-with-biological-family/
In the Shadow of the Coup: Social Movements for Democracy Mobilize in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3801-in-the-shadow-of-the-coup-social-movements-for-democracy-mobilize-in-paraguay
Brazil mobilizes troops to southern borders in anti-narco drive
http://ww4report.com/node/11353
Bolivia: TIPNIS Communities Divided As Road Consultation Begins
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/5/bolivia-tipnis-communities-divided-road-consultation-begins
Peru: Cajamarca dialogue nears collapse
http://ww4report.com/node/11355
Peru: state of emergency extended in VRAE
http://ww4report.com/node/11358
Peru: more protests over mining, water
http://ww4report.com/node/11359
Ecuador to export via north Peru pipeline
http://ww4report.com/node/11354
Colombia: blows against narco-para network?
http://ww4report.com/node/11351
Colombia: UN calls for dialogue with indigenous movement
http://ww4report.com/node/11352
Colombia: Minga of Resistance Launched against Quimbo Dam and Other Resource Extraction Projects
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3797-colombia-minga-of-resistance-commences-aminga-of-resistance-launched-against-quimbo-dam-and-other-resource-extraction-projects-
Former GM Workers' Hunger Strike Grows in Colombia
http://nacla.org/news/2012/8/10/former-gm-workers-hunger-strike-grows-colombia
Venezuela with Two Months to Go till the Presidential Elections
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7161
Honduran President Puts “Tigers” Police Force on the Stree
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3802-honduran-president-puts-tigers-police-force-on-the-streets
Photo Essay: The "Caravan for Land and Territory" in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3798-photo-essay-the-qcaravan-for-land-and-territoryq-in-mexico
Mexican Communities Fight Mini-Dams
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3800-mexican-communities-fight-mini-dams
The Wal-Mart Corruption Case: Innocents Abroad? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11369
Mexican Mobility and Canada: Hardening Boundaries and Growing Resistance
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/8/mexican-mobility-and-canada-hardening-boundaries-and-growing-resistance
Mexico’s Peace Movement Heads to the US
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3806-mexicos-peace-movement-heads-to-the-us
The Mexican Diaspora Rises
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august062012/mexican-diaspora.php
Cholera Continues to Spread as Response and Surveillance Weaken (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
==> Be sure to check out World War 4 Report’s new and much improved format:
http://ww4report.com/node/
Monday, August 6, 2012
WNU #1139: Chilean Mine Workers Occupy Church in Protest
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1139, August 5, 2012
1. Chile: Pascua Lama Workers Occupy Church in Protest
2. Dominican Republic: Barrick Set to Open Giant Gold Mine
3. Mexico: Six Killed in Latest Mining Disaster
4. Guatemala: Students Resist Teacher Education “Reform”
5. Honduras: Students Demand Transportation Subsidy
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras,Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/media
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Pascua Lama Workers Occupy Church in Protest
A group of 23 contract workers occupied the San Ambrosio Church in Vallenar, capital of the northern Chilean province of Huasco, on the morning of Aug. 4 to protest labor conditions at Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold, silver and copper mine being built in the Andes at the border between Argentina and Chile. Eight of the protesters took over the bell tower, where they shouted and banged on the metal structure to draw attention to their complaints against the mine’s operator, the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation.
The main motive for the protest, according to Ricardo Véliz, regional coordinator of the National Mining Union ((Sinami), which represents the contract workers, “is to let the community know…about the bad living conditions which the workers who provide their services in Pascua Lama are experiencing.” Several workers had to transferred out on an emergency basis because they had symptoms of hypothermia, Véliz said. The mine is at an altitude of some 4,500 meters above sea level, and temperatures go down to –20º C (-4º F). Rafael Castillo, the vice president of a workers’ group, told Radio Bío Bío that workers die every year for lack of medical attention at the site. The protesters said they wouldn’t leave the church until the authorities listened to their complaints. (Radio Universidad de Chile 8/4/12; lainformacion.com 8/4/12)
The $8 billion Pascua Lama project, which is expected to be one of the world’s largest gold mines when it opens in 2014, has sparked protests by environmentalists and others in both Chile and Argentina. On July 26 the company acknowledged that technical and other problems were delaying the mine’s opening [see Update #1138].
*2. Dominican Republic: Barrick Set to Open Giant Gold Mine
The Pueblo Viejo gold mine in Cotuí in the Dominican Republic’s central province of Sánchez Ramírez is starting operations this August, Jamie Sokalsky, CEO of the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, told investors on July 26. The new mine, on a site abandoned by the state enterprise Rosario Dominicana in 1999, will produce up to 125,000 ounces of gold this year and reach full capacity during 2013, Sokalsky said. The project, a joint venture with the Vancouver-based multinational Goldcorp Inc., has cost about $3.8 billion so far; this is said to be the largest private investment ever made in the Dominican Republic. (AP 7/26/12 via NBC 29 (Charlottesville, Virginia))
The project has stirred up protests in the past, because of what activists said were irregularities in the government’s contract with the Canadian companies, and because of potential damage to the environment and to archeological sites [see Update #1027]. Barrick plans to use 24 tons of cyanide a day, Virginia Rodríguez, a coordinator for the local nongovernmental organization SalvaTierra (“Save the Earth”), told the Associated Press wire service. “There is a very high risk, especially with an island like ours with a very fragile ecosystem,” she said. The mine is located in a mountainous region, the source of some of the country's most important rivers.
Barrick Gold has been working to counter these complaints. The old Pueblo Viejo mine caused extensive environmental damage, but Barrick insists that this was the fault of Rosario Dominicana. The Canadian company says it will protect the environment by applying “the industry’s highest international standards to bring about an operation based on responsible mining.” Even the damage from the old mine has mostly been eliminated by natural processes, according to Carlos Tamayo, a Mexican national who directs Barrick’s local environmental department. “[T]ime has been the best ally for improving the situation,” he told the Dominican daily Hoy. “The environment is very wise. It’s like when someone’s sick, and the body often creates its own self-defense mechanisms to be able to cure itself naturally.” (AP 7/5/12 via Tampa Bay (Florida) Times; Hoy Digital 7/18/12)
*3. Mexico: Six Killed in Latest Mining Disaster
Six Mexican coal miners were killed on Aug. 3 when some 100 tons of coal and rock collapsed in a mine operated by Altos Hornos de México S.A. de C.V. (AHMSA) in Barroterán community, Progreso municipality, in the northern state of Coahuila. One miner was trapped but survived with minor injuries; he was rescued about an hour after the collapse. The other 287 workers in the mine escaped without injuries. Some workers thought a methane explosion caused the accident, but management attributed it to “a pocket of methane gas,” not an explosion.
The latest disaster came just nine days after seven workers were killed, all members of the same family, in a methane explosion on July 25 in Múzquiz, Coahuila, 40 km from the AHMSA mine. In a press conference on Aug. 3, Coahuila governor Rubén Moreira Valdez discounted the possibility of suspending mining operations in the state, saying that Coahuila’s mining industry directly generates more than 20,000 jobs and produces 8 to 11% of Mexico’s electric power. Instead, he called for finding a way to locate and remove methane gas from the mines.
On Aug. 4 several labor rights organizations issued a communiqué demanding that coal mine operators “invest in the application of existing technology to guarantee miners’ lives.” The groups—which included the Pasta de Conchos Family, an organization of relatives of 65 coal miners killed in a methane explosion in Coahuila in February 2006 [see Update #1037]--said it was “not acceptable, in any manner or by any argument, that this investment be conditioned on the gaining of profits.”
Eleven miners were killed in a methane explosion in a Coahuila mine in May of 2011, according to labor rights groups, and a total of 30 miners died in accidents in the state that year. The groups say the majority of the state’s miners are paid from 70 a 150 pesos (about US$ 5.39-11.44) a day. (BBC News 8/3/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/4/12; AFP 8/4/12 via Terra.com)
*4. Guatemala: Students Resist Teacher Education “Reform”
An agent of Guatemala’s National Civilian Police and two students were injured in a confrontation July 30 between riot police and students outside the Teachers School for Men in the south of Guatemala City; three students and a teacher were arrested for alleged attacks on security forces. The clash came after hundreds of students occupied eight schools, one in the capital and seven in other parts of the country, to protest proposed changes in the national teacher certification program. Security forces prevented the takeover of two other schools.
Students also reportedly blocked various highways in the northern and northeastern parts of the country, but apparently without any confrontations with the police. (EFE 7/30/12 via La Raza (Chicago))
The students were protesting plans by the government of rightwing president Otto Pérez Molina to expand the certification program for primary school teachers from three to five years and to require a university degree. The students argue that the teaching program is one of the few educational programs open to indigenous youth and other impoverished Guatemalans, and many of these students will be unable to afford two extra years of study and a university degree unless they receive a subsidy. Currently only 2% of the population have university degrees, and only 20% of the high school-age population attends high school. As in many other Latin American countries, the students suspect that the educational “reforms” are meant to open the way to privatization of public education [see Update #1105].
The students carried out similar occupations at the end of June and the beginning of July; these also ended in clashes with the police. In the following weeks, after mediation by legislators from Congress, the Education Ministry held meetings with various groups of students, teachers, parents, academics and specialists and heard 83 proposals. But the students remained opposed to the government’s plan. On July 26 they held a peaceful march in the capital from the Central America Teachers Institute (Inca) to the Education Ministry to demonstrate their continued opposition to the proposal and to the measures taken against students and teachers involved in the earlier protests. (Upside Down World 7/5/12; Americas Quarterly 7/7/12; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 7/26/12; EFE 7/30/12 via La Raza (Chicago)
*5. Honduras: Students Demand Transportation Subsidy
A total of 25 high school students from the Honduras Technical Institute in Tegucigalpa were arrested on July 30 when the National Police broke up a protest by about 100 students on the Armed Forces Boulevard in the Villas del Sol neighborhood. The protesters were demanding that the government pay out a promised transportation subsidy. When police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to disperse the demonstration, the students reportedly responded by throwing rocks. Some shops were damaged, along with a patrol car, but according to police spokesperson Desire Martínez “no students or police were injured.”
Jorge Jiménez, a student leader, told reporters that the government had failed to comply with an agreement it had signed after negotiations. The students’ goal was a transportation subsidy of 600 lempiras (US$31.58) for the 180,000 students in the country’s 422 secondary schools. Other demands included an end to repression and reforms to the Fundamental Education Law. The government said it had already started paying out the subsidy and would finish by Aug. 28.
The protests continued through the week. On Aug. 2 students blocked traffic in the El Obelisco area of Comayagüela, Tegucigalpa’s sister city. On Aug. 3, a group of students carried out a similar protest in the Germania neighborhood. With the support of some adults who live in the area, the youths burned tires in the street, tying up vehicles on the highway to the south for several hours.
The student protests coincided with a series of job actions by public school teachers in each of the country’s 18 departments to protest the Supreme Court’s rejection of complaints by various groups against legislation that they said would harm teachers’ rights. Educators walked off the job in Francisco Morazán department on July 30 and planned to suspend classes in Copan, Comayagua and Atlántida departments on Aug. 1. Further job actions were to come in Lempira, La Paz and Yoro on Aug. 2 and Intibucá, Islas de la Bahía and Gracias a Dios on Aug. 3; teachers were to stage actions in the remaining departments the week of Aug. 6-10. (Prensa Latina 7/30/12; TeleSUR 7/30/12 from staff, PL, La Tribuna, El Heraldo; Kaos en la Red 8/2/12 from Defensores en Línea; La Tribuna (Honduras) 8/3/12)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras,Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/media
Latin America in the New Global Capitalism
http://nacla.org/news/2012/8/3/latin-america-new-global-capitalism
Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements - Excerpt From Book
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3795-excerpt-territories-in-resistance-a-cartography-of-latin-american-social-movements
Revealed: Secret Agenda of Ranchers to Steal Uncontacted Tribe’s Land in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3792-revealed-secret-agenda-of-ranchers-to-steal-uncontacted-tribes-land-in-paraguay
Brazil: court orders Chevron to suspend drilling
http://ww4report.com/node/11327
Bolivia Pushes Back Against Glencore
http://ww4report.com/node/11319
Peru: toxic mining spill sickens villagers, Anonymous hacks back
http://ww4report.com/node/11326
The War System Dynamics in Colombia : A 2012 Assessment
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/31/war-system-dynamics-colombia-2012-assessment
Colombia: Indigenous Nasa Resist Militarization in Cauca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3790-colombia-indigenous-nasa-resist-militarization-in-cauca
Venezuela’s Full Membership of Mercosur Converts the Bloc into “Fifth World Power”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7142
"Tigres" Are Honduras' New Battalion 3-16
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3791-qtigresq-are-honduras-new-battalion-3-16
The Grave Risks for Journalists and Those Who Stand for Freedom of Expression in Honduras
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/moreno260712.html
Divide and Rule in the Land of Gold (Guatemala)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11335
Mexico’s Movement for Real Democracy
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7675
Mexico: The Campaign Continues
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/31/mexico-campaign-continues
Photo Essay: National March Against the Imposition of Nieto as President in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3786-photo-essay-national-march-against-the-imposition-of-nieto-as-president-in-mexico
International Call for Solidarity with Zapatista Support Bases of San Marcos Aviles (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3793-international-call-for-solidarity-with-zapatista-support-bases-of-san-marcos-aviles
Coastal Development Threatens Mexican Reef
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7685
Mexican Truckers Stage National Protest
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/08/03/mexican-truckers-stage-national-protest/
Special Report: The Massacre of Miners Continues
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=203#1484
FAT Affiliate Wins Second Election at DMI (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=203#1479
Brazil And Ecuador To Help Rebuild Haitian Army
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/31/brazil-and-ecuador-to-help-rebuild-haitian-army/
AP Investigation Finds Lack of Results and Transparency in Haiti’s Reconstruction
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/ap-investigation-finds-lack-of-results-and-transparency-in-haitis-reconstruction
A Closer Look at USAID Food Aid Programs in Haiti
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
The Washington Post Ignores Coups in Article on Threats to Latin American Democracy (US/media)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/30/washington-post-ignores-coups-article-threats-latin-american-democracy
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1139, August 5, 2012
1. Chile: Pascua Lama Workers Occupy Church in Protest
2. Dominican Republic: Barrick Set to Open Giant Gold Mine
3. Mexico: Six Killed in Latest Mining Disaster
4. Guatemala: Students Resist Teacher Education “Reform”
5. Honduras: Students Demand Transportation Subsidy
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras,Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/media
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Pascua Lama Workers Occupy Church in Protest
A group of 23 contract workers occupied the San Ambrosio Church in Vallenar, capital of the northern Chilean province of Huasco, on the morning of Aug. 4 to protest labor conditions at Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold, silver and copper mine being built in the Andes at the border between Argentina and Chile. Eight of the protesters took over the bell tower, where they shouted and banged on the metal structure to draw attention to their complaints against the mine’s operator, the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation.
The main motive for the protest, according to Ricardo Véliz, regional coordinator of the National Mining Union ((Sinami), which represents the contract workers, “is to let the community know…about the bad living conditions which the workers who provide their services in Pascua Lama are experiencing.” Several workers had to transferred out on an emergency basis because they had symptoms of hypothermia, Véliz said. The mine is at an altitude of some 4,500 meters above sea level, and temperatures go down to –20º C (-4º F). Rafael Castillo, the vice president of a workers’ group, told Radio Bío Bío that workers die every year for lack of medical attention at the site. The protesters said they wouldn’t leave the church until the authorities listened to their complaints. (Radio Universidad de Chile 8/4/12; lainformacion.com 8/4/12)
The $8 billion Pascua Lama project, which is expected to be one of the world’s largest gold mines when it opens in 2014, has sparked protests by environmentalists and others in both Chile and Argentina. On July 26 the company acknowledged that technical and other problems were delaying the mine’s opening [see Update #1138].
*2. Dominican Republic: Barrick Set to Open Giant Gold Mine
The Pueblo Viejo gold mine in Cotuí in the Dominican Republic’s central province of Sánchez Ramírez is starting operations this August, Jamie Sokalsky, CEO of the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, told investors on July 26. The new mine, on a site abandoned by the state enterprise Rosario Dominicana in 1999, will produce up to 125,000 ounces of gold this year and reach full capacity during 2013, Sokalsky said. The project, a joint venture with the Vancouver-based multinational Goldcorp Inc., has cost about $3.8 billion so far; this is said to be the largest private investment ever made in the Dominican Republic. (AP 7/26/12 via NBC 29 (Charlottesville, Virginia))
The project has stirred up protests in the past, because of what activists said were irregularities in the government’s contract with the Canadian companies, and because of potential damage to the environment and to archeological sites [see Update #1027]. Barrick plans to use 24 tons of cyanide a day, Virginia Rodríguez, a coordinator for the local nongovernmental organization SalvaTierra (“Save the Earth”), told the Associated Press wire service. “There is a very high risk, especially with an island like ours with a very fragile ecosystem,” she said. The mine is located in a mountainous region, the source of some of the country's most important rivers.
Barrick Gold has been working to counter these complaints. The old Pueblo Viejo mine caused extensive environmental damage, but Barrick insists that this was the fault of Rosario Dominicana. The Canadian company says it will protect the environment by applying “the industry’s highest international standards to bring about an operation based on responsible mining.” Even the damage from the old mine has mostly been eliminated by natural processes, according to Carlos Tamayo, a Mexican national who directs Barrick’s local environmental department. “[T]ime has been the best ally for improving the situation,” he told the Dominican daily Hoy. “The environment is very wise. It’s like when someone’s sick, and the body often creates its own self-defense mechanisms to be able to cure itself naturally.” (AP 7/5/12 via Tampa Bay (Florida) Times; Hoy Digital 7/18/12)
*3. Mexico: Six Killed in Latest Mining Disaster
Six Mexican coal miners were killed on Aug. 3 when some 100 tons of coal and rock collapsed in a mine operated by Altos Hornos de México S.A. de C.V. (AHMSA) in Barroterán community, Progreso municipality, in the northern state of Coahuila. One miner was trapped but survived with minor injuries; he was rescued about an hour after the collapse. The other 287 workers in the mine escaped without injuries. Some workers thought a methane explosion caused the accident, but management attributed it to “a pocket of methane gas,” not an explosion.
The latest disaster came just nine days after seven workers were killed, all members of the same family, in a methane explosion on July 25 in Múzquiz, Coahuila, 40 km from the AHMSA mine. In a press conference on Aug. 3, Coahuila governor Rubén Moreira Valdez discounted the possibility of suspending mining operations in the state, saying that Coahuila’s mining industry directly generates more than 20,000 jobs and produces 8 to 11% of Mexico’s electric power. Instead, he called for finding a way to locate and remove methane gas from the mines.
On Aug. 4 several labor rights organizations issued a communiqué demanding that coal mine operators “invest in the application of existing technology to guarantee miners’ lives.” The groups—which included the Pasta de Conchos Family, an organization of relatives of 65 coal miners killed in a methane explosion in Coahuila in February 2006 [see Update #1037]--said it was “not acceptable, in any manner or by any argument, that this investment be conditioned on the gaining of profits.”
Eleven miners were killed in a methane explosion in a Coahuila mine in May of 2011, according to labor rights groups, and a total of 30 miners died in accidents in the state that year. The groups say the majority of the state’s miners are paid from 70 a 150 pesos (about US$ 5.39-11.44) a day. (BBC News 8/3/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/4/12; AFP 8/4/12 via Terra.com)
*4. Guatemala: Students Resist Teacher Education “Reform”
An agent of Guatemala’s National Civilian Police and two students were injured in a confrontation July 30 between riot police and students outside the Teachers School for Men in the south of Guatemala City; three students and a teacher were arrested for alleged attacks on security forces. The clash came after hundreds of students occupied eight schools, one in the capital and seven in other parts of the country, to protest proposed changes in the national teacher certification program. Security forces prevented the takeover of two other schools.
Students also reportedly blocked various highways in the northern and northeastern parts of the country, but apparently without any confrontations with the police. (EFE 7/30/12 via La Raza (Chicago))
The students were protesting plans by the government of rightwing president Otto Pérez Molina to expand the certification program for primary school teachers from three to five years and to require a university degree. The students argue that the teaching program is one of the few educational programs open to indigenous youth and other impoverished Guatemalans, and many of these students will be unable to afford two extra years of study and a university degree unless they receive a subsidy. Currently only 2% of the population have university degrees, and only 20% of the high school-age population attends high school. As in many other Latin American countries, the students suspect that the educational “reforms” are meant to open the way to privatization of public education [see Update #1105].
The students carried out similar occupations at the end of June and the beginning of July; these also ended in clashes with the police. In the following weeks, after mediation by legislators from Congress, the Education Ministry held meetings with various groups of students, teachers, parents, academics and specialists and heard 83 proposals. But the students remained opposed to the government’s plan. On July 26 they held a peaceful march in the capital from the Central America Teachers Institute (Inca) to the Education Ministry to demonstrate their continued opposition to the proposal and to the measures taken against students and teachers involved in the earlier protests. (Upside Down World 7/5/12; Americas Quarterly 7/7/12; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 7/26/12; EFE 7/30/12 via La Raza (Chicago)
*5. Honduras: Students Demand Transportation Subsidy
A total of 25 high school students from the Honduras Technical Institute in Tegucigalpa were arrested on July 30 when the National Police broke up a protest by about 100 students on the Armed Forces Boulevard in the Villas del Sol neighborhood. The protesters were demanding that the government pay out a promised transportation subsidy. When police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to disperse the demonstration, the students reportedly responded by throwing rocks. Some shops were damaged, along with a patrol car, but according to police spokesperson Desire Martínez “no students or police were injured.”
Jorge Jiménez, a student leader, told reporters that the government had failed to comply with an agreement it had signed after negotiations. The students’ goal was a transportation subsidy of 600 lempiras (US$31.58) for the 180,000 students in the country’s 422 secondary schools. Other demands included an end to repression and reforms to the Fundamental Education Law. The government said it had already started paying out the subsidy and would finish by Aug. 28.
The protests continued through the week. On Aug. 2 students blocked traffic in the El Obelisco area of Comayagüela, Tegucigalpa’s sister city. On Aug. 3, a group of students carried out a similar protest in the Germania neighborhood. With the support of some adults who live in the area, the youths burned tires in the street, tying up vehicles on the highway to the south for several hours.
The student protests coincided with a series of job actions by public school teachers in each of the country’s 18 departments to protest the Supreme Court’s rejection of complaints by various groups against legislation that they said would harm teachers’ rights. Educators walked off the job in Francisco Morazán department on July 30 and planned to suspend classes in Copan, Comayagua and Atlántida departments on Aug. 1. Further job actions were to come in Lempira, La Paz and Yoro on Aug. 2 and Intibucá, Islas de la Bahía and Gracias a Dios on Aug. 3; teachers were to stage actions in the remaining departments the week of Aug. 6-10. (Prensa Latina 7/30/12; TeleSUR 7/30/12 from staff, PL, La Tribuna, El Heraldo; Kaos en la Red 8/2/12 from Defensores en Línea; La Tribuna (Honduras) 8/3/12)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras,Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/media
Latin America in the New Global Capitalism
http://nacla.org/news/2012/8/3/latin-america-new-global-capitalism
Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements - Excerpt From Book
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3795-excerpt-territories-in-resistance-a-cartography-of-latin-american-social-movements
Revealed: Secret Agenda of Ranchers to Steal Uncontacted Tribe’s Land in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3792-revealed-secret-agenda-of-ranchers-to-steal-uncontacted-tribes-land-in-paraguay
Brazil: court orders Chevron to suspend drilling
http://ww4report.com/node/11327
Bolivia Pushes Back Against Glencore
http://ww4report.com/node/11319
Peru: toxic mining spill sickens villagers, Anonymous hacks back
http://ww4report.com/node/11326
The War System Dynamics in Colombia : A 2012 Assessment
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/31/war-system-dynamics-colombia-2012-assessment
Colombia: Indigenous Nasa Resist Militarization in Cauca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3790-colombia-indigenous-nasa-resist-militarization-in-cauca
Venezuela’s Full Membership of Mercosur Converts the Bloc into “Fifth World Power”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7142
"Tigres" Are Honduras' New Battalion 3-16
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3791-qtigresq-are-honduras-new-battalion-3-16
The Grave Risks for Journalists and Those Who Stand for Freedom of Expression in Honduras
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/moreno260712.html
Divide and Rule in the Land of Gold (Guatemala)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11335
Mexico’s Movement for Real Democracy
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7675
Mexico: The Campaign Continues
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/31/mexico-campaign-continues
Photo Essay: National March Against the Imposition of Nieto as President in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3786-photo-essay-national-march-against-the-imposition-of-nieto-as-president-in-mexico
International Call for Solidarity with Zapatista Support Bases of San Marcos Aviles (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3793-international-call-for-solidarity-with-zapatista-support-bases-of-san-marcos-aviles
Coastal Development Threatens Mexican Reef
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7685
Mexican Truckers Stage National Protest
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/08/03/mexican-truckers-stage-national-protest/
Special Report: The Massacre of Miners Continues
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=203#1484
FAT Affiliate Wins Second Election at DMI (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=203#1479
Brazil And Ecuador To Help Rebuild Haitian Army
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/31/brazil-and-ecuador-to-help-rebuild-haitian-army/
AP Investigation Finds Lack of Results and Transparency in Haiti’s Reconstruction
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/ap-investigation-finds-lack-of-results-and-transparency-in-haitis-reconstruction
A Closer Look at USAID Food Aid Programs in Haiti
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
The Washington Post Ignores Coups in Article on Threats to Latin American Democracy (US/media)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/30/washington-post-ignores-coups-article-threats-latin-american-democracy
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, July 30, 2012
WNU #1138: Chilean Police Attack Mapuche Children
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1138, July 29, 2012
1. Chile: Carabineros Attack Mapuche Children
2. Argentina: Gold Mine Problems Spook Barrick Investors
3. Haiti: Four Killed in Police Raid at National Park
4. Haiti: Workers in New FTZ Complain About Wages
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Carabineros Attack Mapuche Children
Some 200 carabineros militarized police violently removed about 60 Mapuche on July 23 from land the indigenous people had occupied hours earlier near their homes in the Temucuicui community in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía. The carabineros threw tear gas grenades and fired pellets from shotguns to disperse the occupiers, including children and old people. A number of Mapuche were injured, and 12 were arrested--five men, four women and three girls. The women and girls were taken in a police bus to the nearby city of Collipulli; they reported being humiliated and sexually harassed by at least two police agents.
The carabineros attacked members of the Temucuicui community again later in the day when a group of Mapuche gathered at the Collipulli hospital to wait for injured friends and relatives being treated there. The agents reportedly fired pellets at the group from close range, wounding Fernanda Marillán, 12; Fabián Llanca, 16; and one adult.
Community members claim the land they occupied—officially the property of the Seinz, Valenzuela and Urban families and Martin Ruff and the Bosques Arauco S.A. company—was ancestral territory taken illegally from the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group. Land disputes are the main source of conflict in the Mapuche regions and have led to police violence against the Temucuicui community in the past [see Update #1127]. (Adital (Brazil) 7/24/12; Prensa Latina 7/25/12)
Photographs of Fernanda Marillán and Fabián Llanca’s wounds provoked outrage and protests after they began circulating on the internet. Some 30 members of the Mapuche Territorial Alliance protested outside the Santiago offices of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on July 26 while five others held a sit-in inside. The protesters were calling for the organization to sponsor a press conference to denounce the suffering of the underage victims. (Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/26/12)
The government’s response was inconsistent. “[W]e’re not going to allow police action to go outside the framework of the law,” rightwing president Sebastián Piñera promised on July 25, “and we’re investigating this matter and we’re not going to allow it.” (PL 7/25/12) On July 27 Lorena Fries, the director of the government’s National Human Rights Institute (INDH), announced that the agency was seeking an injunction on behalf of a total of four Mapuche minors that she said had been injured. (La Tercera (Chile) 7/27/12) But in Araucanía itself Regional Ministerial Secretary Mauricio Ojeda tried to shift the blame to the Mapuche, who he claimed were using minors as “human shields.” “First we have to analyze what the parents are doing with these children before we criticize the government,” he said on July 25. “We’re not the ones who bring the children to this type of situation, to expose them [to danger].” (Cooperativa (Chile) 7/25/12)
The government had already planned a “Security Summit” on the situation in Araucanía, in response to a request from big landowners who want a state of siege declared in the region. The meeting--held on July 24 in La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, with police officials, regional authorities and Attorney General Sabas Chahuán—concluded with a decision to send more police agents. (Adital 7/24/12; PL 7/25/12)
The carabineros carried out a new operation against the Temucuicui community on the afternoon of July 25 according to Radio Bío Bío. “Alert to the world,” indigenous spokespeople wrote in a message posted on Facebook. “Violent raid is taking place inside the ancestral Temucuicui community, hundreds of police have entered the community and houses of community members. The violence is unusual and criminal against women and children who remain inside their houses.” There appeared to be no reports of injuries or detentions, however. (PL 7/25/12)
*2. Argentina: Gold Mine Problems Spook Barrick Investors
Jamie Sokalsky, CEO of the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, announced on July 26 that major problems were delaying the opening of the company’s controversial Pascua Lama gold and silver mine, located in the Andes on both sides of the border between Argentina and Chile. The project will cost as much as $8 billion, he said, 60% more than previously projected, and gold won't be produced until mid-2014, a year later than expected. Barrick’s stocks dropped quickly, although they recovered somewhat, ending the day down by about 4.32%. The mining giant’s shares have fallen by almost 33% since the beginning of the year.
“As the CEO I accept full responsibility for this,” Sokalsky said in a conference call with investors. He attributed problems at the mine, one of the world’s largest, to the project’s complexity, the difficulties of working at high altitudes, a shortage of skilled engineers and “bi-national external factors as well.”
Sokalsky suggested that the “external factors” were labor issues and Argentina’s inflation rate, but he was obviously also referring to opposition by residents and environmentalists in Argentina and Chile and to a July 3 ruling by the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice leaving in effect a law to protect glaciers [see Update #1137]. “There's no way Pascua Lama can operate under this law,” Gonzalo Strano, who leads Greenpeace-Argentina's glaciers protection campaign, told the Associated Press, “because it’s clearly occupying a peri-glacial area, in the presence of glaciers.”
One source of environmental damage from the mine, according to Strano, would be the disposal of toxic wastes in a containment pond covering about 400 hectares on the Argentine side of the border. The mine would also strain the region’s water resources, he said: the gold and silver production method would require the use of 82 gallons (311 liters) of clean water per second for the next 25 years. While Barrick claims that Pascua Lama will be one of the world’s cheapest gold mines, Strano said the main cost savings would come from huge tax breaks and the fact that the company will essentially get the water for free. “If they really had to pay for the water like any other resident of the province, they wouldn't do this project.” (Miami Herald 7/26/12 from AP; Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/27/12)
*3. Haiti: Four Killed in Police Raid at National Park
At least four people died in an unsuccessful effort by the Haitian National Police (PNH) on July 23 to remove some 140 families from the La Visite National Park, south of Port-au-Prince in the Southeast department. The police operation--which included 36 riot police from the Order Maintenance Departmental Unit (UDMO), departmental police director Ovilma Sagesse, six police vehicles and one ambulance—was ordered by the national government’s Environment and Public Security ministries.
Residents resisted an order to vacate and threw rocks at the agents, who fired on the protesters. Witnesses said eight people were killed, but only four bodies had been found as of July 27; the victims were identified as Désir Enoz, Nicolas David, Robinson Volcin and Désir Aleis. Four children were reported missing, and three houses were burned down. The police reported five injured agents. “In the face of the aggressiveness of these individuals [the residents], we had to suspend the operation to avoid having victims,” police director Sagesse said on July 24. With the agreement of the local population, a four-member committee was set up under the supervision of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to investigate the incident.
Small farmers have reportedly been living illegally in La Visite since 1942. By clearing forest areas for farmland, the residents have lowered the water table in the park, which is a source of water for the Southeast and West departments, including Jacmel and the capital. Successive national governments have tried negotiations to get the residents out of the park, with no success.
The government of current president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) has taken a hard line on squatter communities that it says endanger the environment [see Update #1135]. So far the only inducement it has offered the farmers is a package of 50,000 gourdes (about US$1,189), half in advance and half after they have left. The residents say this isn’t enough to buy land to replace what they would lose. A July 28 statement from MINUSTAH backed up the residents, saying forced expulsion without an alternative for adequate housing is contrary to international regulations on human rights. (Haïti Libre 7/27/12, 7/28/12)
*4. Haiti: Workers in New FTZ Complain About Wages
The first plant in a giant “free trade zone” (FTZ) being built with international aid near Caracol in Haiti’s Northeast department went into operation at the beginning of July, with about 400 workers assembling apparel for a company identified only as “S & H Global S.A.” The Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC, previously called the Parc Industriel du Nord) is expected to employ 1,200 workers by the end of the year, and its promoters project that 50,000 Haitians will eventually find jobs there. The main producer at the FTZ will be South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd.
Some of the first 400 workers have already started to complain about the pay rate at the new FTZ--150 gourdes (about US$3.57) a day. The employees include women who formerly worked for another FTZ, the Compagnie de Développement Industriel S.A. (Codevi), 45 km southeast of Caracol in Ouanaminthe on the Dominican border.
During a visit to the Caracol FTZ on July 17, Haitian president Michel Martelly--accompanied by Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and Haitian commerce and industry minister Wilson Laleau--asked the workers to be patient. Laleau assured them that as a signatory to the “Better Work” agreement, the Haitian government would demand improved conditions at the plant. “We’ve already signed an agreement with the [South] Korean government for the construction of a professional school inside the park,” he added. “Other facilities are envisioned for transportation and food services for the park’s employees.” Martelly noted that the FTZ had signed on its first Haitian firm, the paint manufacturer Peintures Caraïbes, S.A. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 7/19/12; AlterPresse (Haiti) 7/25/12)
The FTZ’s promoters have also had to deal with a front-page article in the July 6 New York Times, which detailed criticisms of the project at length. Although many of the criticisms had already appeared in Haitian media [see Update #1087], much of the material was new. Reporter Deborah Sontag revealed that In December 2010 the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation, produced a five-page memo on what it called Sae-A’s “worst labor and criminal law violations” at its maquiladoras (duty-exempt assembly plants) in Guatemala. The memo “accused Sae-A of using bribes, death threats and imprisonment to prevent and break up unions,” Sontag wrote, “and said a local union suspected company officials of involvement in a union leader’s rape never investigated by Guatemalan authorities.”
Although Sae-A was finally pressured into allowing a union to form, it began moving its operations to Nicaragua. Now it’s making plans to move that production to Haiti once US trade preferences for Nicaragua expire in 2014. Although Caracol’s promoters claim the FTZ will “create jobs,” a Guatemalan newspaper described the process more accurately; when Sae-A shut down its main Guatemalan factory in the fall of 2011, the paper wrote: “A Maquila Closes and Goes to Haiti.”
Production is also likely to be shifted from Codevi, the only unionized garment assembly operation in Haiti, according to Yannick Etienne of Batay Ouvriye, the workers’ organization that led the struggle to form the union there. Fernando Capellán, Codevi’s owner, agreed. “They’re going to destroy my jobs to create cheaper jobs in Caracol,” he told the Times. (NYT 7/6/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, US/immigration
Hemispheric Resistance to Canadian Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3784-hemispheric-resistance-to-canadian-mining
Paraguay’s Bitter Harvest: Multinational Corporations Reap Benefits from Coup Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3774-paraguays-bitter-harvest-multinational-corporations-reap-benefits-from-coup-government
Amidst Broken Promises, Indigenous Authorities Detain Belo Monte Dam Engineers (Brazil)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3779-amidst-broken-promises-indigenous-authorities-detain-belo-monte-dam-engineers
Peru: Court Reduces Grupo Colina Death Squad Sentences
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/24/peru-court-reduces-grupo-colina-death-squad-sentences/
Operation Injustice: Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Human Rights Defenders and Community Leaders Face Mass Arrests and Arbitrary Detention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3772-operation-injustice-indigenous-and-afro-colombian-human-rights-defenders-and-community-leaders-face-mass-arrests-and-arbitrary-detention-
Assault on Colombian Trade Unions Continues Unabated
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3775-assault-on-colombian-trade-unions-continues-unabated
Chavez Announces “Immediate” Withdrawal from Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7131
Right-wing participation in civil society mobilization reveals political motivations behind the “conflict of powers” in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3773-right-wing-participation-in-civil-society-mobilization-reveals-political-motivations-behind-the-conflict-of-powers-in-el-salvador-
Guatemala Photo Essay: "In San Rafael Las Flores and my House, the Mine does not Pass"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3780-guatemala-photo-essay-qin-san-rafael-las-flores-and-my-house-the-mine-does-not-passq
Canadian Mining Goliaths Devastate Mexican Indigenous Communities and Environment
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10501-canadian-mining-goliaths-devast
Resisting the Silence: Voices of Survival in Mexico
http://nacla.org/news/2012/7/25/resisting-silence-voices-survival-mexico
#YoSoy132 Statement on Today's Symbolic Occupation of Televisa (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3783-yosoy132-statement-on-todays-symbolic-occupation-of-televisa-
Mexican Official: CIA ‘Manages’ Drug Trade
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3776-mexican-official-cia-manages-drug-trade
Is the War on Drugs in the Caribbean Going Up in Smoke?
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/26/war-drugs-caribbean-going-smoke
Cuban Dissident Oswaldo Paya Killed In Car Crash
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/23/cuban-dissident-oswaldo-paya-killed-in-car-crash/
Post-9/11 Sodus: The U.S.-Canadian Border on Display (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/25/post-911-sodus-us-canadian-border-display
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1138, July 29, 2012
1. Chile: Carabineros Attack Mapuche Children
2. Argentina: Gold Mine Problems Spook Barrick Investors
3. Haiti: Four Killed in Police Raid at National Park
4. Haiti: Workers in New FTZ Complain About Wages
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Carabineros Attack Mapuche Children
Some 200 carabineros militarized police violently removed about 60 Mapuche on July 23 from land the indigenous people had occupied hours earlier near their homes in the Temucuicui community in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía. The carabineros threw tear gas grenades and fired pellets from shotguns to disperse the occupiers, including children and old people. A number of Mapuche were injured, and 12 were arrested--five men, four women and three girls. The women and girls were taken in a police bus to the nearby city of Collipulli; they reported being humiliated and sexually harassed by at least two police agents.
The carabineros attacked members of the Temucuicui community again later in the day when a group of Mapuche gathered at the Collipulli hospital to wait for injured friends and relatives being treated there. The agents reportedly fired pellets at the group from close range, wounding Fernanda Marillán, 12; Fabián Llanca, 16; and one adult.
Community members claim the land they occupied—officially the property of the Seinz, Valenzuela and Urban families and Martin Ruff and the Bosques Arauco S.A. company—was ancestral territory taken illegally from the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group. Land disputes are the main source of conflict in the Mapuche regions and have led to police violence against the Temucuicui community in the past [see Update #1127]. (Adital (Brazil) 7/24/12; Prensa Latina 7/25/12)
Photographs of Fernanda Marillán and Fabián Llanca’s wounds provoked outrage and protests after they began circulating on the internet. Some 30 members of the Mapuche Territorial Alliance protested outside the Santiago offices of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on July 26 while five others held a sit-in inside. The protesters were calling for the organization to sponsor a press conference to denounce the suffering of the underage victims. (Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/26/12)
The government’s response was inconsistent. “[W]e’re not going to allow police action to go outside the framework of the law,” rightwing president Sebastián Piñera promised on July 25, “and we’re investigating this matter and we’re not going to allow it.” (PL 7/25/12) On July 27 Lorena Fries, the director of the government’s National Human Rights Institute (INDH), announced that the agency was seeking an injunction on behalf of a total of four Mapuche minors that she said had been injured. (La Tercera (Chile) 7/27/12) But in Araucanía itself Regional Ministerial Secretary Mauricio Ojeda tried to shift the blame to the Mapuche, who he claimed were using minors as “human shields.” “First we have to analyze what the parents are doing with these children before we criticize the government,” he said on July 25. “We’re not the ones who bring the children to this type of situation, to expose them [to danger].” (Cooperativa (Chile) 7/25/12)
The government had already planned a “Security Summit” on the situation in Araucanía, in response to a request from big landowners who want a state of siege declared in the region. The meeting--held on July 24 in La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, with police officials, regional authorities and Attorney General Sabas Chahuán—concluded with a decision to send more police agents. (Adital 7/24/12; PL 7/25/12)
The carabineros carried out a new operation against the Temucuicui community on the afternoon of July 25 according to Radio Bío Bío. “Alert to the world,” indigenous spokespeople wrote in a message posted on Facebook. “Violent raid is taking place inside the ancestral Temucuicui community, hundreds of police have entered the community and houses of community members. The violence is unusual and criminal against women and children who remain inside their houses.” There appeared to be no reports of injuries or detentions, however. (PL 7/25/12)
*2. Argentina: Gold Mine Problems Spook Barrick Investors
Jamie Sokalsky, CEO of the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, announced on July 26 that major problems were delaying the opening of the company’s controversial Pascua Lama gold and silver mine, located in the Andes on both sides of the border between Argentina and Chile. The project will cost as much as $8 billion, he said, 60% more than previously projected, and gold won't be produced until mid-2014, a year later than expected. Barrick’s stocks dropped quickly, although they recovered somewhat, ending the day down by about 4.32%. The mining giant’s shares have fallen by almost 33% since the beginning of the year.
“As the CEO I accept full responsibility for this,” Sokalsky said in a conference call with investors. He attributed problems at the mine, one of the world’s largest, to the project’s complexity, the difficulties of working at high altitudes, a shortage of skilled engineers and “bi-national external factors as well.”
Sokalsky suggested that the “external factors” were labor issues and Argentina’s inflation rate, but he was obviously also referring to opposition by residents and environmentalists in Argentina and Chile and to a July 3 ruling by the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice leaving in effect a law to protect glaciers [see Update #1137]. “There's no way Pascua Lama can operate under this law,” Gonzalo Strano, who leads Greenpeace-Argentina's glaciers protection campaign, told the Associated Press, “because it’s clearly occupying a peri-glacial area, in the presence of glaciers.”
One source of environmental damage from the mine, according to Strano, would be the disposal of toxic wastes in a containment pond covering about 400 hectares on the Argentine side of the border. The mine would also strain the region’s water resources, he said: the gold and silver production method would require the use of 82 gallons (311 liters) of clean water per second for the next 25 years. While Barrick claims that Pascua Lama will be one of the world’s cheapest gold mines, Strano said the main cost savings would come from huge tax breaks and the fact that the company will essentially get the water for free. “If they really had to pay for the water like any other resident of the province, they wouldn't do this project.” (Miami Herald 7/26/12 from AP; Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/27/12)
*3. Haiti: Four Killed in Police Raid at National Park
At least four people died in an unsuccessful effort by the Haitian National Police (PNH) on July 23 to remove some 140 families from the La Visite National Park, south of Port-au-Prince in the Southeast department. The police operation--which included 36 riot police from the Order Maintenance Departmental Unit (UDMO), departmental police director Ovilma Sagesse, six police vehicles and one ambulance—was ordered by the national government’s Environment and Public Security ministries.
Residents resisted an order to vacate and threw rocks at the agents, who fired on the protesters. Witnesses said eight people were killed, but only four bodies had been found as of July 27; the victims were identified as Désir Enoz, Nicolas David, Robinson Volcin and Désir Aleis. Four children were reported missing, and three houses were burned down. The police reported five injured agents. “In the face of the aggressiveness of these individuals [the residents], we had to suspend the operation to avoid having victims,” police director Sagesse said on July 24. With the agreement of the local population, a four-member committee was set up under the supervision of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to investigate the incident.
Small farmers have reportedly been living illegally in La Visite since 1942. By clearing forest areas for farmland, the residents have lowered the water table in the park, which is a source of water for the Southeast and West departments, including Jacmel and the capital. Successive national governments have tried negotiations to get the residents out of the park, with no success.
The government of current president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) has taken a hard line on squatter communities that it says endanger the environment [see Update #1135]. So far the only inducement it has offered the farmers is a package of 50,000 gourdes (about US$1,189), half in advance and half after they have left. The residents say this isn’t enough to buy land to replace what they would lose. A July 28 statement from MINUSTAH backed up the residents, saying forced expulsion without an alternative for adequate housing is contrary to international regulations on human rights. (Haïti Libre 7/27/12, 7/28/12)
*4. Haiti: Workers in New FTZ Complain About Wages
The first plant in a giant “free trade zone” (FTZ) being built with international aid near Caracol in Haiti’s Northeast department went into operation at the beginning of July, with about 400 workers assembling apparel for a company identified only as “S & H Global S.A.” The Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC, previously called the Parc Industriel du Nord) is expected to employ 1,200 workers by the end of the year, and its promoters project that 50,000 Haitians will eventually find jobs there. The main producer at the FTZ will be South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd.
Some of the first 400 workers have already started to complain about the pay rate at the new FTZ--150 gourdes (about US$3.57) a day. The employees include women who formerly worked for another FTZ, the Compagnie de Développement Industriel S.A. (Codevi), 45 km southeast of Caracol in Ouanaminthe on the Dominican border.
During a visit to the Caracol FTZ on July 17, Haitian president Michel Martelly--accompanied by Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and Haitian commerce and industry minister Wilson Laleau--asked the workers to be patient. Laleau assured them that as a signatory to the “Better Work” agreement, the Haitian government would demand improved conditions at the plant. “We’ve already signed an agreement with the [South] Korean government for the construction of a professional school inside the park,” he added. “Other facilities are envisioned for transportation and food services for the park’s employees.” Martelly noted that the FTZ had signed on its first Haitian firm, the paint manufacturer Peintures Caraïbes, S.A. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 7/19/12; AlterPresse (Haiti) 7/25/12)
The FTZ’s promoters have also had to deal with a front-page article in the July 6 New York Times, which detailed criticisms of the project at length. Although many of the criticisms had already appeared in Haitian media [see Update #1087], much of the material was new. Reporter Deborah Sontag revealed that In December 2010 the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation, produced a five-page memo on what it called Sae-A’s “worst labor and criminal law violations” at its maquiladoras (duty-exempt assembly plants) in Guatemala. The memo “accused Sae-A of using bribes, death threats and imprisonment to prevent and break up unions,” Sontag wrote, “and said a local union suspected company officials of involvement in a union leader’s rape never investigated by Guatemalan authorities.”
Although Sae-A was finally pressured into allowing a union to form, it began moving its operations to Nicaragua. Now it’s making plans to move that production to Haiti once US trade preferences for Nicaragua expire in 2014. Although Caracol’s promoters claim the FTZ will “create jobs,” a Guatemalan newspaper described the process more accurately; when Sae-A shut down its main Guatemalan factory in the fall of 2011, the paper wrote: “A Maquila Closes and Goes to Haiti.”
Production is also likely to be shifted from Codevi, the only unionized garment assembly operation in Haiti, according to Yannick Etienne of Batay Ouvriye, the workers’ organization that led the struggle to form the union there. Fernando Capellán, Codevi’s owner, agreed. “They’re going to destroy my jobs to create cheaper jobs in Caracol,” he told the Times. (NYT 7/6/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, US/immigration
Hemispheric Resistance to Canadian Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3784-hemispheric-resistance-to-canadian-mining
Paraguay’s Bitter Harvest: Multinational Corporations Reap Benefits from Coup Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3774-paraguays-bitter-harvest-multinational-corporations-reap-benefits-from-coup-government
Amidst Broken Promises, Indigenous Authorities Detain Belo Monte Dam Engineers (Brazil)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3779-amidst-broken-promises-indigenous-authorities-detain-belo-monte-dam-engineers
Peru: Court Reduces Grupo Colina Death Squad Sentences
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/24/peru-court-reduces-grupo-colina-death-squad-sentences/
Operation Injustice: Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Human Rights Defenders and Community Leaders Face Mass Arrests and Arbitrary Detention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3772-operation-injustice-indigenous-and-afro-colombian-human-rights-defenders-and-community-leaders-face-mass-arrests-and-arbitrary-detention-
Assault on Colombian Trade Unions Continues Unabated
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3775-assault-on-colombian-trade-unions-continues-unabated
Chavez Announces “Immediate” Withdrawal from Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7131
Right-wing participation in civil society mobilization reveals political motivations behind the “conflict of powers” in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3773-right-wing-participation-in-civil-society-mobilization-reveals-political-motivations-behind-the-conflict-of-powers-in-el-salvador-
Guatemala Photo Essay: "In San Rafael Las Flores and my House, the Mine does not Pass"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3780-guatemala-photo-essay-qin-san-rafael-las-flores-and-my-house-the-mine-does-not-passq
Canadian Mining Goliaths Devastate Mexican Indigenous Communities and Environment
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10501-canadian-mining-goliaths-devast
Resisting the Silence: Voices of Survival in Mexico
http://nacla.org/news/2012/7/25/resisting-silence-voices-survival-mexico
#YoSoy132 Statement on Today's Symbolic Occupation of Televisa (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3783-yosoy132-statement-on-todays-symbolic-occupation-of-televisa-
Mexican Official: CIA ‘Manages’ Drug Trade
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3776-mexican-official-cia-manages-drug-trade
Is the War on Drugs in the Caribbean Going Up in Smoke?
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/26/war-drugs-caribbean-going-smoke
Cuban Dissident Oswaldo Paya Killed In Car Crash
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/23/cuban-dissident-oswaldo-paya-killed-in-car-crash/
Post-9/11 Sodus: The U.S.-Canadian Border on Display (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/25/post-911-sodus-us-canadian-border-display
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
WNU #1137: Argentine Activists Fight “Mega-Mining”
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1137, July 22, 2012
1. Argentina: Activists Continue Struggle Against “Mega-Mining”
2. Chile: Catholic Charity Rejects Barrick Gold Donation
3. Honduras: More Evictions, More Occupations in the Aguán
4. Mexico: More Protests Planned Against “Imposition”
5. Mexico: Money Laundering Scandals Multiply
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, 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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Activists Continue Struggle Against “Mega-Mining”
On July 20 soldiers, police and supposed “pro-mining activists” broke up an encampment that environmentalists and area residents had set up at Cerro Negro in the northwestern Argentine province of Catamarca to protest open-pit mining. The environmentalists--who came from Córdoba, La Rioja, Santa Fe, San Juan and Buenos Aires as well as from Catamarca—had camped out at the intersection of national highways 40 and 60 since July 9 to block trucks heading to the massive Bajo de la Alumbrera gold and copper deposit near the border with Chile. The protesters let other traffic pass.
About 120 people who identified themselves as “pro-mining” arrived at the encampment in the afternoon of July 20, followed a few minutes later by some 30 soldiers from the infantry; 10 police agents were already at the scene. Catamarca provincial prosecutor Silvia Alvarez announced that she had a court order to allow the passage of a truck carrying explosives to the Alumbrera. To avoid a confrontation, the demonstrators let the truck go through. But 30 minutes later the “pro-mining” group--thought to have been organized by local governments--began throwing rocks and stun grenades at the encampment. Prosecutor Alvarez then announced that she had a court order to close the encampment down. The soldiers, masked and carrying clubs and shields, advanced on the protesters, who again conceded in order to avoid violence.
When 56 protesters attempted to regroup across the border in the nearby province of La Rioja, the Catamarca police followed their bus and forcibly prevented them from getting out. Protesters said they weren’t allowed to stop until they’d reached Córdoba province, some 250 km from Cerro Negro.
Provincial governments and the federal government of center-left president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have repeatedly repressed the mining protests, which were started in the northwestern provinces in January by area residents who believe the use of cyanide in mining is contaminating their scarce water resources [see Update #1117]. “We’re not against mining,” protester Darío Moreno explained. “We’re against transnational mega-mining,” which he said was similar to foreign multinationals’ introduction of genetically modified soy and their “theft of petroleum.” The Bajo de la Alumbrera mine is owned and operated by a consortium including the Swiss-British mining company Xstrata PLC and two Canadian companies, Goldcorp Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc.
In the morning of July 20, just hours before the operation against the Catamarca protesters, human rights activist and 1980 Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, accompanied by legislators and representatives of civil organizations, presented the Supreme Court of Justice and the National Human Rights Secretariat with a document calling for an end to “the criminalization of social protest.” “The people currently participating in the selective blockade in Cerro Negro are defending human rights, the territory, health, life, biodiversity and our common assets,” the document said, “and they are exercising their right to preserve and protect the environment and other fundamental rights.” (Adital (Brazil) 7/16/12; Plaza de Mayo (Argentina) 7/21/12; Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/21/12)
*2. Chile: Catholic Charity Rejects Barrick Gold Donation
The Chilean Catholic foundation Sisters of the Good Samaritan announced on July 6 that it was turning down an offer from the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation to donate 800 million pesos (about US$1.64 million) to build a shelter for the sick and disabled in Vallenar, capital of the northern province of Huasco. The charitable group based its refusal on the social and environmental conflicts the Canadian mining giant had created in the region.
The source of the conflicts has been Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold, silver and copper mine located partly in Argentina’s San Juan province and partly in Chile’s Huasco province. Opponents say the mine, which is scheduled to open in 2013, will deplete scarce water resources and contaminate the region through the use of toxic materials such as cyanide. Barrick, the world’s largest gold mining company, has generated some support in the province by promising job creation and, according to opponents, by making donations to local groups.
On July 17 some 55 Chilean organizations issued a declaration praising the “bravery and moral quality” of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and calling on the Chilean government to provide the resources needed to build the shelter. Andrea Cisternas, the director of the Huasco Valley Social-Environmental Movement, expressed hope that other organizations would follow the charity’s example. Cisternas remarked that “in the end, Barrick is doing these things under the table [and] is doing them badly. Now everyone knows it, because this buying of consciences maybe isn’t just about consciences—life is also what’s being sold.” (Radio Universidad de Chile 7/13/12; Adital (Brazil) 7/18/12)
Barrick has also received a setback in its Argentine operations. On July 3 the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice quashed preliminary injunctions the mining company had won from lower courts blocking parts of a law intended to protect glaciers. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have charged that mining at Pascua Lama and at Veladero, an open-pit mine already in operation in the northwestern province of San Juan, is causing the shrinkage of glaciers, which are a key source of water in the region [see Update #1089].
Barrick had won the injunctions by claiming the law was unconstitutional since it gave the national government power over mining operations, which had previously been under the control of the provinces. The Supreme Court didn’t rule on the legislation’s constitutionality but said “the law must be applied [until] its constitutional validity is resolved.” (AP 7/3/12 via Businessweek)
*3. Honduras: More Evictions, More Occupations in the Aguán
The situation in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley, where land disputes have led to as many as 70 deaths in the past three years, remained tense and confused as of July 20, with prior agreements and court rulings apparently being contradicted by later developments.
The National Agrarian Institute (INA) was reportedly ready in the second week of July to implement agreements made between the government, campesino groups and major landowners in June to settle disputes over eight estates [see Update #1132]. The INA would pay out 636 million lempiras (more than US$33 million) to two major landowners--Honduran cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum and Nicaraguan entrepreneur and politician René Morales Carazo--for the estates and then turn them over to the members of two campesino organizations, the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA). The campesinos would pay the money back with 6.5% interest annually over a period of 15 years.
About 85% of the money was to go to Facussé for more than 4,000 hectares of land currently occupied by 3,500 families belonging to the MUCA. Seven estates were included: Marañones, Isla Número Uno, Isla Número Dos, La Confianza, La Aurora, Lempira and Concepción. Morales was to give up one estate, San Esteban, now occupied by some 600 families belonging to MARCA. (Honduran press reports were contradictory; some said San Esteban would go to MUCA members.)
The agreement didn’t cover four other disputed estates. Two of them, Despertar and La Trinidad, were officially owned by Morales but occupied by MARCA members. A court ruled on June 29 that they should go to the occupiers; the ruling also covered Facussé’s San Isidro estate, which is claimed by MARCA members. The landowners appealed these rulings to a higher court.
Another of Facussé’s estates, Paso Aguán, was occupied briefly on at least two occasions by some 700 families protesting the murder of campesino Gregorio Chávez, whose body was found buried on the estate on July 6 [see Update #1136]. The protesters formed an organization, the Gregorio Chávez Refoundation, which is backed by the MUCA. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 7/10/12; MARCA statement 7/17/12 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras))
Within a week the agreements on the eight estates seemed to have unraveled. The money for the landowners didn’t appear; Facussé still hadn’t been paid as of July 20, and Roger Pineda, a lawyer for Facussé’s food product and cooking oil company, Grupo Dinant, demanded the eviction of campesinos from the disputed estates.
Meanwhile, the Ceiba and Francisco Morazán Appeals Court issued an injunction blocking the lower court’s ruling in favor of the campesinos and backing Facussé’s claim to the San Isidro estate. On July 18 some 300 police agents and soldiers arrived at San Isidro to remove the occupiers there, but they were met by hundreds of MARCA members and supporters and decided to withdraw. The next day, some 250 campesino families occupied another of Facussé’s estates, Los Laureles, located south of the city of Tocoa in Colón department; the occupiers belong to a new group said to be supported by the MUCA. The police tried to remove them that morning but failed because of the presence of supporters. The police were successful in a new attempt on July 20. Meanwhile, a group of 200 campesinos again occupied Paso Aguán on the same day.
After the unsuccessful operation at San Isidro on July 18, Kenneth Sabillón, a police commissioner, complained to the local media about the confusing situation in the Aguán. “[I]t’s not possible that [the courts] should tell us one day to evict the [landowners’ security] guards and then the next tell us that we have to evict the campesinos,” he said, calling for the different parties to sit down and negotiate. (Lista Nicaragua y Más blog 7/19/12 via ALAI; Prensa Latina 7/20/12; El Heraldo 7/20/12)
*4. Mexico: More Protests Planned Against “Imposition”
Thousands of people marched in Mexico City on July 22 to protest what they called the “imposition” of Enrique Peña Nieto, the official winner in the July 1 presidential election, and his party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1136]. Signs and chants emphasized claims that Peña Nieto, the former governor of México state, had won the presidency through fraud, vote buying and biased coverage from the mainstream media, especially the giant television network Televisa, which demonstrators called a “lie factory.”
The authorities didn’t give a crowd estimate, but the Associated Press (AP) wire service reported that the July 22 march was smaller than a similar march on July 7, which the wire service said drew a crowd of 50,000. The reporter suggested that the movement was weakening. (AP 7/22/12 via El Carabobeño (Caracas))
The march was one of a series of events planned on July 15 in a gathering of at least 300 organizations in San Salvador Atenco, a town northeast of Mexico City in México state. The first “National Convention Against Imposition” brought together a broad range of student, labor and campesino groups with other social organizations. Participants included the newly formed #YoSoy132 (“I’m number 132”) student movement; the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME); the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), a large rank-and-file caucus in the teachers’ union; and the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino community organization based in Atenco. FPDT and Atenco were subjected to brutal repression by México state police in May 2006, during Peña Nieto’s term as governor [see Update #1039].
The convention decided on a plan of action that includes a protest against Televisa on July 27; a national civic strike on Aug. 8; an SME-sponsored mobilization in Mexico City on Aug. 11; a second convention on Sept. 22-23, to be held in Oaxaca; and a series of actions from Nov. 20, when Mexico officially marks the anniversary of the start of the 1910 Revolution, to Dec. 1, the day the new president is to be inaugurated. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/16/12)
*5. Mexico: Money Laundering Scandals Multiply
At an unusual joint press conference in Mexico City on July 19, the presidents of Mexico’s governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) called on the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to investigate evidence of money laundering by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). PAN president Gustavo Madero and PRD president Jesús Zambrano cited indications that during the campaign for the July 1 presidential and legislative elections PRI officials moved large sums of money through fake corporations and the Grupo Financiero Monex foreign exchange company in order to circumvent campaign finance restrictions. Madero said there was no implication that the money came from organized crime, but it may have been “stolen, from tax evasion, from companies, from the government, from state governments.” (La Jornada 7/20/12)
Jesús Murillo Karam, the PRI’s legal representative for electoral matters, admitted on July 19 that the party had paid some workers through gift cards—a total of 7,851 cards worth 66,326,300 pesos (about US$5.05 million)—and he said the cards may have been funded through Monex. But the PRI dismissed allegations that it used millions of dollars’ worth of gift cards for Organización Soriana, Mexico’s second-largest retailer, to pay voters to mark their ballots for PRI candidates [see Update #1136]. (LJ 7/20/12)
Correction: In this paragraph we originally understated the amount that the PRI admits to having paid out to party workers in gift cards.
The focus on Monex, which some Mexicans are starting to refer to as “Monexgate,” comes amid investigations of widespread money laundering through Mexican exchange houses. On July 17 a US Senate subcommittee released a 330-page report on the failure of the London-based corporation HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, to institute safeguards to prevent money laundering through some of its affiliates. The subcommittee said it had found that HSBC Mexico “transported $7 billion in physical US dollars to [HSBC Bank USA] from 2007 to 2008, outstripping other Mexican banks, even one twice its size, raising red flags that the volume of dollars included proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States.”
The bank also looked the other way when some bank accounts seemed suspicious. For example, HSBC saw no major risk in the accounts of Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon, who moved $90 million through the bank in the early and middle 2000s. The US indicted Ye Gon in 2007 for alleged involvement in the importation of methamphetamine; US prosecutors later dropped the charges, but an indictment Mexico filed against Ye Gon is still open [see World War 4 Report 9/20/08]. (LJ 7/18/12)
Ye Gon also had accounts at Monex. The Mexican government has found evidence of money being laundered through the firm by Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, including the Tijuana and Beltrán Leyva cartels, and Monex is one of the companies through which former PRI governor of Tamaulipas Tomás Yarrington allegedly laundered $7.2 million. Yarrington was accused earlier this year of laundering money for the Los Zetas drug gang and the so-called Gulf Cartel. (Página 24 (Aguascalientes) 7/13/12) (The Mexican exchange house Monex apparently has no connection to a US firm with the same name.)
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that drug trafficking worldwide is worth some $320 billion a year. (UNODC press release 7/16/12) How much of this passes through the banking system is unclear, but in 2009 then-UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa told the British weekly newspaper The Observer he had seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks at the height of the 2008 world financial crisis. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities,” Costa said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” He declined to name the banks. (The Observer 12/13/09)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Chile: Ex-Colonels Charged For Torturing Michelle Bachelet’s Father
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/18/chile-ex-colonels-charged-for-torturing-michelle-bachelets-father/
Betraying Memory in Chile: Documental Pinochet's Manipulation of History
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3765--betraying-memory-in-chile-documental-pinochets-manipulation-of-history
Uruguay’s Marijuana Bill Provokes Mixed Reactions
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/10/uruguays-marijuana-bill-provokes-mixed-reactions/
A Coup Over Land: The Resource War Behind Paraguay’s Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3758-a-coup-over-land-the-resource-war-behind-paraguays-crisis
Post-Coup Paraguay: An Interview with Fernando Lugo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3766-post-coup-paraguay-an-interview-with-fernando-lugo
Brazil: Xavante territorial rights affirmed following ranchers' uprising
http://ww4report.com/node/11280
Bolivia: government yields to indigenous demands in Mallku Khota mining conflict
http://ww4report.com/node/11288
Evo Morales: Maya calendar portends end of Coca-Cola... and capitalism
http://ww4report.com/node/11289
Bolivia: coca production down, cocaine production up?
http://ww4report.com/node/11291
Peruvians Face Off Against Newmont Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3763-peruvians-face-off-against-newmont-mining
Ecuador: Authorities Misuse Judicial System to Stop Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3764-ecuador-authorities-misuse-judicial-system-to-stop-protests
Colombia: indigenous protester killed as army retakes base
http://ww4report.com/node/11282
The Resurrection of Uribe in Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/16/resurrection-uribe-colombia
Uribe Meets with Venezuelan Opposition to Protest “Chavista Dictatorship”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7110
News Reports Confirm Drastic Deterioration of Honduran Sovereignty
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/16/news-reports-confirm-drastic-erosion-honduran-sovereignty
Canada’s Promotion of Mining Industry Belies Claims of Corporate Social Responsibility (Honduras)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7554
Photo Essay: The Peoples’ International Health Tribunal in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3771-photo-essay-the-peoples-international-health-tribunal-in-san-miguel-ixtahuacan-guatemala
Guatemala’s Highest Court to Hear Landmark Indigenous Challenge against Mining Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3770-guatemalas-highest-court-to-hear-landmark-indigenous-challenge-against-mining-law
Communities Continue Legal Offensive against Guatemalan Mining Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3768-communities-launch-legal-offensive-against-guatemalan-mining-law-
The Faces of Resistance to Mining Injustice Across Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3762-the-faces-of-resistance-to-mining-injustice-across-guatemala
Reportero: An Interview with Sergio Haro (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/17/reportero-interview-sergio-haro
Thousands of Mexicans Protest Alleged Elections Fraud
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8588
Guántanamera, Courtesy of the U.S.-Cuban Embargo
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/20/gu%C3%A1ntanamera-courtesy-us-cuban-embargo
Unsustainable Solutions to Haiti’s Housing Crisis
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/20/unsustainable-solutions-haiti%E2%80%99s-housing-crisis
104 Members of Congress Call for the UN to Take Responsibility for Cholera (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/104-members-of-congress-call-for-the-un-to-take-responsibility-for-cholera
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1137, July 22, 2012
1. Argentina: Activists Continue Struggle Against “Mega-Mining”
2. Chile: Catholic Charity Rejects Barrick Gold Donation
3. Honduras: More Evictions, More Occupations in the Aguán
4. Mexico: More Protests Planned Against “Imposition”
5. Mexico: Money Laundering Scandals Multiply
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, 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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Activists Continue Struggle Against “Mega-Mining”
On July 20 soldiers, police and supposed “pro-mining activists” broke up an encampment that environmentalists and area residents had set up at Cerro Negro in the northwestern Argentine province of Catamarca to protest open-pit mining. The environmentalists--who came from Córdoba, La Rioja, Santa Fe, San Juan and Buenos Aires as well as from Catamarca—had camped out at the intersection of national highways 40 and 60 since July 9 to block trucks heading to the massive Bajo de la Alumbrera gold and copper deposit near the border with Chile. The protesters let other traffic pass.
About 120 people who identified themselves as “pro-mining” arrived at the encampment in the afternoon of July 20, followed a few minutes later by some 30 soldiers from the infantry; 10 police agents were already at the scene. Catamarca provincial prosecutor Silvia Alvarez announced that she had a court order to allow the passage of a truck carrying explosives to the Alumbrera. To avoid a confrontation, the demonstrators let the truck go through. But 30 minutes later the “pro-mining” group--thought to have been organized by local governments--began throwing rocks and stun grenades at the encampment. Prosecutor Alvarez then announced that she had a court order to close the encampment down. The soldiers, masked and carrying clubs and shields, advanced on the protesters, who again conceded in order to avoid violence.
When 56 protesters attempted to regroup across the border in the nearby province of La Rioja, the Catamarca police followed their bus and forcibly prevented them from getting out. Protesters said they weren’t allowed to stop until they’d reached Córdoba province, some 250 km from Cerro Negro.
Provincial governments and the federal government of center-left president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have repeatedly repressed the mining protests, which were started in the northwestern provinces in January by area residents who believe the use of cyanide in mining is contaminating their scarce water resources [see Update #1117]. “We’re not against mining,” protester Darío Moreno explained. “We’re against transnational mega-mining,” which he said was similar to foreign multinationals’ introduction of genetically modified soy and their “theft of petroleum.” The Bajo de la Alumbrera mine is owned and operated by a consortium including the Swiss-British mining company Xstrata PLC and two Canadian companies, Goldcorp Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc.
In the morning of July 20, just hours before the operation against the Catamarca protesters, human rights activist and 1980 Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, accompanied by legislators and representatives of civil organizations, presented the Supreme Court of Justice and the National Human Rights Secretariat with a document calling for an end to “the criminalization of social protest.” “The people currently participating in the selective blockade in Cerro Negro are defending human rights, the territory, health, life, biodiversity and our common assets,” the document said, “and they are exercising their right to preserve and protect the environment and other fundamental rights.” (Adital (Brazil) 7/16/12; Plaza de Mayo (Argentina) 7/21/12; Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/21/12)
*2. Chile: Catholic Charity Rejects Barrick Gold Donation
The Chilean Catholic foundation Sisters of the Good Samaritan announced on July 6 that it was turning down an offer from the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation to donate 800 million pesos (about US$1.64 million) to build a shelter for the sick and disabled in Vallenar, capital of the northern province of Huasco. The charitable group based its refusal on the social and environmental conflicts the Canadian mining giant had created in the region.
The source of the conflicts has been Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold, silver and copper mine located partly in Argentina’s San Juan province and partly in Chile’s Huasco province. Opponents say the mine, which is scheduled to open in 2013, will deplete scarce water resources and contaminate the region through the use of toxic materials such as cyanide. Barrick, the world’s largest gold mining company, has generated some support in the province by promising job creation and, according to opponents, by making donations to local groups.
On July 17 some 55 Chilean organizations issued a declaration praising the “bravery and moral quality” of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and calling on the Chilean government to provide the resources needed to build the shelter. Andrea Cisternas, the director of the Huasco Valley Social-Environmental Movement, expressed hope that other organizations would follow the charity’s example. Cisternas remarked that “in the end, Barrick is doing these things under the table [and] is doing them badly. Now everyone knows it, because this buying of consciences maybe isn’t just about consciences—life is also what’s being sold.” (Radio Universidad de Chile 7/13/12; Adital (Brazil) 7/18/12)
Barrick has also received a setback in its Argentine operations. On July 3 the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice quashed preliminary injunctions the mining company had won from lower courts blocking parts of a law intended to protect glaciers. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have charged that mining at Pascua Lama and at Veladero, an open-pit mine already in operation in the northwestern province of San Juan, is causing the shrinkage of glaciers, which are a key source of water in the region [see Update #1089].
Barrick had won the injunctions by claiming the law was unconstitutional since it gave the national government power over mining operations, which had previously been under the control of the provinces. The Supreme Court didn’t rule on the legislation’s constitutionality but said “the law must be applied [until] its constitutional validity is resolved.” (AP 7/3/12 via Businessweek)
*3. Honduras: More Evictions, More Occupations in the Aguán
The situation in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley, where land disputes have led to as many as 70 deaths in the past three years, remained tense and confused as of July 20, with prior agreements and court rulings apparently being contradicted by later developments.
The National Agrarian Institute (INA) was reportedly ready in the second week of July to implement agreements made between the government, campesino groups and major landowners in June to settle disputes over eight estates [see Update #1132]. The INA would pay out 636 million lempiras (more than US$33 million) to two major landowners--Honduran cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum and Nicaraguan entrepreneur and politician René Morales Carazo--for the estates and then turn them over to the members of two campesino organizations, the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA). The campesinos would pay the money back with 6.5% interest annually over a period of 15 years.
About 85% of the money was to go to Facussé for more than 4,000 hectares of land currently occupied by 3,500 families belonging to the MUCA. Seven estates were included: Marañones, Isla Número Uno, Isla Número Dos, La Confianza, La Aurora, Lempira and Concepción. Morales was to give up one estate, San Esteban, now occupied by some 600 families belonging to MARCA. (Honduran press reports were contradictory; some said San Esteban would go to MUCA members.)
The agreement didn’t cover four other disputed estates. Two of them, Despertar and La Trinidad, were officially owned by Morales but occupied by MARCA members. A court ruled on June 29 that they should go to the occupiers; the ruling also covered Facussé’s San Isidro estate, which is claimed by MARCA members. The landowners appealed these rulings to a higher court.
Another of Facussé’s estates, Paso Aguán, was occupied briefly on at least two occasions by some 700 families protesting the murder of campesino Gregorio Chávez, whose body was found buried on the estate on July 6 [see Update #1136]. The protesters formed an organization, the Gregorio Chávez Refoundation, which is backed by the MUCA. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 7/10/12; MARCA statement 7/17/12 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras))
Within a week the agreements on the eight estates seemed to have unraveled. The money for the landowners didn’t appear; Facussé still hadn’t been paid as of July 20, and Roger Pineda, a lawyer for Facussé’s food product and cooking oil company, Grupo Dinant, demanded the eviction of campesinos from the disputed estates.
Meanwhile, the Ceiba and Francisco Morazán Appeals Court issued an injunction blocking the lower court’s ruling in favor of the campesinos and backing Facussé’s claim to the San Isidro estate. On July 18 some 300 police agents and soldiers arrived at San Isidro to remove the occupiers there, but they were met by hundreds of MARCA members and supporters and decided to withdraw. The next day, some 250 campesino families occupied another of Facussé’s estates, Los Laureles, located south of the city of Tocoa in Colón department; the occupiers belong to a new group said to be supported by the MUCA. The police tried to remove them that morning but failed because of the presence of supporters. The police were successful in a new attempt on July 20. Meanwhile, a group of 200 campesinos again occupied Paso Aguán on the same day.
After the unsuccessful operation at San Isidro on July 18, Kenneth Sabillón, a police commissioner, complained to the local media about the confusing situation in the Aguán. “[I]t’s not possible that [the courts] should tell us one day to evict the [landowners’ security] guards and then the next tell us that we have to evict the campesinos,” he said, calling for the different parties to sit down and negotiate. (Lista Nicaragua y Más blog 7/19/12 via ALAI; Prensa Latina 7/20/12; El Heraldo 7/20/12)
*4. Mexico: More Protests Planned Against “Imposition”
Thousands of people marched in Mexico City on July 22 to protest what they called the “imposition” of Enrique Peña Nieto, the official winner in the July 1 presidential election, and his party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1136]. Signs and chants emphasized claims that Peña Nieto, the former governor of México state, had won the presidency through fraud, vote buying and biased coverage from the mainstream media, especially the giant television network Televisa, which demonstrators called a “lie factory.”
The authorities didn’t give a crowd estimate, but the Associated Press (AP) wire service reported that the July 22 march was smaller than a similar march on July 7, which the wire service said drew a crowd of 50,000. The reporter suggested that the movement was weakening. (AP 7/22/12 via El Carabobeño (Caracas))
The march was one of a series of events planned on July 15 in a gathering of at least 300 organizations in San Salvador Atenco, a town northeast of Mexico City in México state. The first “National Convention Against Imposition” brought together a broad range of student, labor and campesino groups with other social organizations. Participants included the newly formed #YoSoy132 (“I’m number 132”) student movement; the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME); the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), a large rank-and-file caucus in the teachers’ union; and the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino community organization based in Atenco. FPDT and Atenco were subjected to brutal repression by México state police in May 2006, during Peña Nieto’s term as governor [see Update #1039].
The convention decided on a plan of action that includes a protest against Televisa on July 27; a national civic strike on Aug. 8; an SME-sponsored mobilization in Mexico City on Aug. 11; a second convention on Sept. 22-23, to be held in Oaxaca; and a series of actions from Nov. 20, when Mexico officially marks the anniversary of the start of the 1910 Revolution, to Dec. 1, the day the new president is to be inaugurated. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/16/12)
*5. Mexico: Money Laundering Scandals Multiply
At an unusual joint press conference in Mexico City on July 19, the presidents of Mexico’s governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) called on the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to investigate evidence of money laundering by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). PAN president Gustavo Madero and PRD president Jesús Zambrano cited indications that during the campaign for the July 1 presidential and legislative elections PRI officials moved large sums of money through fake corporations and the Grupo Financiero Monex foreign exchange company in order to circumvent campaign finance restrictions. Madero said there was no implication that the money came from organized crime, but it may have been “stolen, from tax evasion, from companies, from the government, from state governments.” (La Jornada 7/20/12)
Jesús Murillo Karam, the PRI’s legal representative for electoral matters, admitted on July 19 that the party had paid some workers through gift cards—a total of 7,851 cards worth 66,326,300 pesos (about US$5.05 million)—and he said the cards may have been funded through Monex. But the PRI dismissed allegations that it used millions of dollars’ worth of gift cards for Organización Soriana, Mexico’s second-largest retailer, to pay voters to mark their ballots for PRI candidates [see Update #1136]. (LJ 7/20/12)
Correction: In this paragraph we originally understated the amount that the PRI admits to having paid out to party workers in gift cards.
The focus on Monex, which some Mexicans are starting to refer to as “Monexgate,” comes amid investigations of widespread money laundering through Mexican exchange houses. On July 17 a US Senate subcommittee released a 330-page report on the failure of the London-based corporation HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, to institute safeguards to prevent money laundering through some of its affiliates. The subcommittee said it had found that HSBC Mexico “transported $7 billion in physical US dollars to [HSBC Bank USA] from 2007 to 2008, outstripping other Mexican banks, even one twice its size, raising red flags that the volume of dollars included proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States.”
The bank also looked the other way when some bank accounts seemed suspicious. For example, HSBC saw no major risk in the accounts of Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon, who moved $90 million through the bank in the early and middle 2000s. The US indicted Ye Gon in 2007 for alleged involvement in the importation of methamphetamine; US prosecutors later dropped the charges, but an indictment Mexico filed against Ye Gon is still open [see World War 4 Report 9/20/08]. (LJ 7/18/12)
Ye Gon also had accounts at Monex. The Mexican government has found evidence of money being laundered through the firm by Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, including the Tijuana and Beltrán Leyva cartels, and Monex is one of the companies through which former PRI governor of Tamaulipas Tomás Yarrington allegedly laundered $7.2 million. Yarrington was accused earlier this year of laundering money for the Los Zetas drug gang and the so-called Gulf Cartel. (Página 24 (Aguascalientes) 7/13/12) (The Mexican exchange house Monex apparently has no connection to a US firm with the same name.)
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that drug trafficking worldwide is worth some $320 billion a year. (UNODC press release 7/16/12) How much of this passes through the banking system is unclear, but in 2009 then-UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa told the British weekly newspaper The Observer he had seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks at the height of the 2008 world financial crisis. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities,” Costa said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” He declined to name the banks. (The Observer 12/13/09)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Chile: Ex-Colonels Charged For Torturing Michelle Bachelet’s Father
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/18/chile-ex-colonels-charged-for-torturing-michelle-bachelets-father/
Betraying Memory in Chile: Documental Pinochet's Manipulation of History
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3765--betraying-memory-in-chile-documental-pinochets-manipulation-of-history
Uruguay’s Marijuana Bill Provokes Mixed Reactions
http://latindispatch.com/2012/07/10/uruguays-marijuana-bill-provokes-mixed-reactions/
A Coup Over Land: The Resource War Behind Paraguay’s Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3758-a-coup-over-land-the-resource-war-behind-paraguays-crisis
Post-Coup Paraguay: An Interview with Fernando Lugo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3766-post-coup-paraguay-an-interview-with-fernando-lugo
Brazil: Xavante territorial rights affirmed following ranchers' uprising
http://ww4report.com/node/11280
Bolivia: government yields to indigenous demands in Mallku Khota mining conflict
http://ww4report.com/node/11288
Evo Morales: Maya calendar portends end of Coca-Cola... and capitalism
http://ww4report.com/node/11289
Bolivia: coca production down, cocaine production up?
http://ww4report.com/node/11291
Peruvians Face Off Against Newmont Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3763-peruvians-face-off-against-newmont-mining
Ecuador: Authorities Misuse Judicial System to Stop Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3764-ecuador-authorities-misuse-judicial-system-to-stop-protests
Colombia: indigenous protester killed as army retakes base
http://ww4report.com/node/11282
The Resurrection of Uribe in Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/16/resurrection-uribe-colombia
Uribe Meets with Venezuelan Opposition to Protest “Chavista Dictatorship”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7110
News Reports Confirm Drastic Deterioration of Honduran Sovereignty
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/16/news-reports-confirm-drastic-erosion-honduran-sovereignty
Canada’s Promotion of Mining Industry Belies Claims of Corporate Social Responsibility (Honduras)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7554
Photo Essay: The Peoples’ International Health Tribunal in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3771-photo-essay-the-peoples-international-health-tribunal-in-san-miguel-ixtahuacan-guatemala
Guatemala’s Highest Court to Hear Landmark Indigenous Challenge against Mining Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3770-guatemalas-highest-court-to-hear-landmark-indigenous-challenge-against-mining-law
Communities Continue Legal Offensive against Guatemalan Mining Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3768-communities-launch-legal-offensive-against-guatemalan-mining-law-
The Faces of Resistance to Mining Injustice Across Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3762-the-faces-of-resistance-to-mining-injustice-across-guatemala
Reportero: An Interview with Sergio Haro (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/17/reportero-interview-sergio-haro
Thousands of Mexicans Protest Alleged Elections Fraud
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8588
Guántanamera, Courtesy of the U.S.-Cuban Embargo
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/20/gu%C3%A1ntanamera-courtesy-us-cuban-embargo
Unsustainable Solutions to Haiti’s Housing Crisis
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/20/unsustainable-solutions-haiti%E2%80%99s-housing-crisis
104 Members of Congress Call for the UN to Take Responsibility for Cholera (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/104-members-of-congress-call-for-the-un-to-take-responsibility-for-cholera
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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