[Due to other commitments, we are unable to send out an Update this week. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Paraguay Changes: Elections End 60 Years of Right Wing Rule
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1246/1/
Paraguay to join South America's anti-imperialist bloc?
http://ww4report.com/node/5388
Illegal Autonomy Referendum Deepens Division in Bolivia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1251/1/
Ecuador Undergoes Mining Makeover
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1249/1/
Mistrial in FARC narco case —again
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5398
Haiti food crisis sparking new wave of "boat people"?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5397
NAFTA partners extend SPP at "Three Amigos" summit
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5399
Dissecting the North American Summit Joint Statement: Bush's Last Stand
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5178?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=558651&utm_campaign=Dissecting%20the%20North%20American%20Summit%20Joint%20Statement%3A%20Bush%27s%20Last%20Stand
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
WNU #944: Colombian Paras Threaten Activists
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #944, April 20, 2008
1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Nicargua, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucía Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."
CSN is asking for letters to tell US Congress members to oppose US support for these actions by the Colombian government; to AngloGold Ashanti's South American exploration manager, Chris Lodder (email slenahan@anglogoldashanti.com), telling him to stop the company's collaboration with paramilitary forces; and to President Uribe (email auribe@presidencia.gov.co, fax +57 1 566 2071) demanding protection for the activists, an investigation of the threats, and punishment for those responsible. (CSN alert 4/14/08)
On Apr. 15 a group of 63 Congress members sent a letter to Uribe asking him to reject publicly comments by his adviser, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, who had said that a Mar. 6 march for the victims of paramilitary violence [see Update #938, which erroneously gave the date as Mar. 8] was organized by "allied members" of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The letter said six grassroots leaders had been murdered since Obdulio Gaviria's comments, which specifically mentioned National State Crime Victims Movement leader Iván Cepeda Castro. Cepeda Castro attended a meeting on Apr. 15 at the Capitol in Washington, DC, coordinated by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Speakers cited the violence in Colombia as a reason to oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which Uribe and US president George W. Bush are seeking to have the US Congress approve. (Prensa Latina 4/16/08; El Tiempo (Bogotá) 4/17/08)
*2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
After an eight-month strike, the Grupo México mining company has started to shut down its San Martín copper, silver and zinc mine in Sombrerete municipality in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, according to Jesús Jiménez, a delegate in Zacatecas and Jalisco for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM). Jiménez said the company has already terminated 100 of the mine's 450 workers on a claim that the mining operation was unsustainable. The workers went on strike on July 30, 2007, as part of a strike over safety conditions that included the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, and a mine in Taxco, Guerrero [see Update #911]. Grupo México has reportedly lost $120 million in revenues at San Martín since the strike began. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/18/08)
[Police and soldiers attempted to end the Cananea strike forcibly on Jan. 12; the union responded with an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16--see Update #931]
The SNTMMRM has been organizing protests in Mexico City around safety issues at Grupo México mines and a demand that the company retrieve the bodies of miners killed in a methane explosion in the Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila on Feb. 19, 2006; only two of the 65 bodies have been recovered. Miners in groups of 10 have stood holding signs from 9am to 6pm each weekday in intersections, plazas and major tourist sites like the Angel de la Independencia statue and the esplanade of the Bellas Artes building. The protests are in rotating shifts, with unionists coming to the capital for one week and then returning home. One of the signs shows a photograph of Grupo México president Germán Larrea Mota Velasco with the caption: "Through the fault of this murderer my dad isn't resting in peace and has left us orphans. Where is justice?" The company is suing the union over the sign for the "crime of discrimination"; the SNTMMRM says the company has also organized goons to attack the protesters. (LJ 4/19/08)
*3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed a number of Puerto Rican independence activists in a coordinated operation on Apr. 16 at their homes in San Juan, Yauco, Peñuelas, Bayamón and Guaynabo. The activists included Tania Delgado, Miguel Sánchez and Miguel Viqueira.
The agents "tried to interview Miguel Viqueira and Tania Delgado on their activities as independence supporters" and asked if they knew about actions by the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to attorney Alvin Couto. Agents also visited an alleged former Machetero leader, identified in different sources as "José Castillo" or "Papo Castillo." They told Castillo that they were aware of a plot to kill him and were legally required to inform him. Couto dismissed this as an "invention of the federal agents. No patriotic organization is going to make an attempt on the lives of others. This follows a policy of trying to create gossip and rumors to create anxiety and uncertainly" among pro-independence groups, he said.
FBI spokesperson Harry Rodríguez acknowledged that agents had visited people because they "might have information about investigations that are under way." Reports that the activists had been treated with "hostility" were a matter of "perception," Rodríguez said. (Note by El Nuevo Día staffer Pedro Bosque Pérez 4/17/08 posted on Univision forum; El Diario-La Prensa 4/17/08 from correspondent, print version only)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: From Sweat Shop to Co-op
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/17/from-sweat-shop-to-co-op/
Chilean Diplomat's Book Critiques Washington's Rush to War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1227/1/
Chile passes Tibet resolution, Mapuche heartened
http://ww4report.com/node/5380
Elections in Paraguay: Indigenous Woman on Course for Senate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1226/68/
Porto Alegre's Participatory Budgeting at a Crossroads
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/14/porto-alegre’s-participatory-budgeting-at-a-crossroads/
Colombia: conscientious objector freed following protests
http://ww4report.com/node/5363
Colombia: Open Letter To Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1224/1/
Colombia's Three Amigos Rustle Up Support for Free Trade Deal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1222/68/
Venezuela to nationalize steel company
http://ww4report.com/node/5362
Massive Show Of Support For Venezuelan President Chavez On Coup Anniversary
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1221/68/
Manitoba First Nation appeals to Chávez in pipeline fight
http://ww4report.com/node/5376
South America Looks to Create NATO-Style Defense Council
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1225/1/
Nicaragua headed for General Assembly presidency; US, Colombia miffed
http://ww4report.com/node/5368
US pushes police powers at Salvador "anti-gang" summit
http://ww4report.com/node/5378
Guatemala: bishop recieves death threats for defending campesinos
http://ww4report.com/node/5364
Mexico: Pemex protests paralyze congress
http://ww4report.com/node/5379
Boss of Mexico's feared "Zetas" busted in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/5367
"Wild West bloodbath" in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5365
Madison Avenue exploits Mexican irredentism
http://ww4report.com/node/5366
Border Land Battle Pits Development against Human Rights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5142
Two Chicken Stories: NAFTA's Real Winners and Losers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5159
U.S.-Latin America: The Intersection of Trade and Security
www.americas.irc-online.org/am/5148
Latin America: Food or Fuel--That Is the Burning Question
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1223/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #944, April 20, 2008
1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Nicargua, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucía Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."
CSN is asking for letters to tell US Congress members to oppose US support for these actions by the Colombian government; to AngloGold Ashanti's South American exploration manager, Chris Lodder (email slenahan@anglogoldashanti.com), telling him to stop the company's collaboration with paramilitary forces; and to President Uribe (email auribe@presidencia.gov.co, fax +57 1 566 2071) demanding protection for the activists, an investigation of the threats, and punishment for those responsible. (CSN alert 4/14/08)
On Apr. 15 a group of 63 Congress members sent a letter to Uribe asking him to reject publicly comments by his adviser, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, who had said that a Mar. 6 march for the victims of paramilitary violence [see Update #938, which erroneously gave the date as Mar. 8] was organized by "allied members" of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The letter said six grassroots leaders had been murdered since Obdulio Gaviria's comments, which specifically mentioned National State Crime Victims Movement leader Iván Cepeda Castro. Cepeda Castro attended a meeting on Apr. 15 at the Capitol in Washington, DC, coordinated by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Speakers cited the violence in Colombia as a reason to oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which Uribe and US president George W. Bush are seeking to have the US Congress approve. (Prensa Latina 4/16/08; El Tiempo (Bogotá) 4/17/08)
*2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
After an eight-month strike, the Grupo México mining company has started to shut down its San Martín copper, silver and zinc mine in Sombrerete municipality in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, according to Jesús Jiménez, a delegate in Zacatecas and Jalisco for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM). Jiménez said the company has already terminated 100 of the mine's 450 workers on a claim that the mining operation was unsustainable. The workers went on strike on July 30, 2007, as part of a strike over safety conditions that included the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, and a mine in Taxco, Guerrero [see Update #911]. Grupo México has reportedly lost $120 million in revenues at San Martín since the strike began. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/18/08)
[Police and soldiers attempted to end the Cananea strike forcibly on Jan. 12; the union responded with an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16--see Update #931]
The SNTMMRM has been organizing protests in Mexico City around safety issues at Grupo México mines and a demand that the company retrieve the bodies of miners killed in a methane explosion in the Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila on Feb. 19, 2006; only two of the 65 bodies have been recovered. Miners in groups of 10 have stood holding signs from 9am to 6pm each weekday in intersections, plazas and major tourist sites like the Angel de la Independencia statue and the esplanade of the Bellas Artes building. The protests are in rotating shifts, with unionists coming to the capital for one week and then returning home. One of the signs shows a photograph of Grupo México president Germán Larrea Mota Velasco with the caption: "Through the fault of this murderer my dad isn't resting in peace and has left us orphans. Where is justice?" The company is suing the union over the sign for the "crime of discrimination"; the SNTMMRM says the company has also organized goons to attack the protesters. (LJ 4/19/08)
*3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed a number of Puerto Rican independence activists in a coordinated operation on Apr. 16 at their homes in San Juan, Yauco, Peñuelas, Bayamón and Guaynabo. The activists included Tania Delgado, Miguel Sánchez and Miguel Viqueira.
The agents "tried to interview Miguel Viqueira and Tania Delgado on their activities as independence supporters" and asked if they knew about actions by the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to attorney Alvin Couto. Agents also visited an alleged former Machetero leader, identified in different sources as "José Castillo" or "Papo Castillo." They told Castillo that they were aware of a plot to kill him and were legally required to inform him. Couto dismissed this as an "invention of the federal agents. No patriotic organization is going to make an attempt on the lives of others. This follows a policy of trying to create gossip and rumors to create anxiety and uncertainly" among pro-independence groups, he said.
FBI spokesperson Harry Rodríguez acknowledged that agents had visited people because they "might have information about investigations that are under way." Reports that the activists had been treated with "hostility" were a matter of "perception," Rodríguez said. (Note by El Nuevo Día staffer Pedro Bosque Pérez 4/17/08 posted on Univision forum; El Diario-La Prensa 4/17/08 from correspondent, print version only)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: From Sweat Shop to Co-op
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/17/from-sweat-shop-to-co-op/
Chilean Diplomat's Book Critiques Washington's Rush to War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1227/1/
Chile passes Tibet resolution, Mapuche heartened
http://ww4report.com/node/5380
Elections in Paraguay: Indigenous Woman on Course for Senate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1226/68/
Porto Alegre's Participatory Budgeting at a Crossroads
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/14/porto-alegre’s-participatory-budgeting-at-a-crossroads/
Colombia: conscientious objector freed following protests
http://ww4report.com/node/5363
Colombia: Open Letter To Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1224/1/
Colombia's Three Amigos Rustle Up Support for Free Trade Deal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1222/68/
Venezuela to nationalize steel company
http://ww4report.com/node/5362
Massive Show Of Support For Venezuelan President Chavez On Coup Anniversary
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1221/68/
Manitoba First Nation appeals to Chávez in pipeline fight
http://ww4report.com/node/5376
South America Looks to Create NATO-Style Defense Council
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1225/1/
Nicaragua headed for General Assembly presidency; US, Colombia miffed
http://ww4report.com/node/5368
US pushes police powers at Salvador "anti-gang" summit
http://ww4report.com/node/5378
Guatemala: bishop recieves death threats for defending campesinos
http://ww4report.com/node/5364
Mexico: Pemex protests paralyze congress
http://ww4report.com/node/5379
Boss of Mexico's feared "Zetas" busted in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/5367
"Wild West bloodbath" in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5365
Madison Avenue exploits Mexican irredentism
http://ww4report.com/node/5366
Border Land Battle Pits Development against Human Rights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5142
Two Chicken Stories: NAFTA's Real Winners and Losers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5159
U.S.-Latin America: The Intersection of Trade and Security
www.americas.irc-online.org/am/5148
Latin America: Food or Fuel--That Is the Burning Question
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1223/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, April 14, 2008
WNU #943: Colombian Campesino Murdered, Haitian Protests Spread
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #943, April 13, 2008
1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
On Mar. 30, unidentified assailants shot to death campesino community leader Gerardo Antonio Ciro as he was returning to his home in the rural community of El Jordán in Cocorna municipality, in the eastern region of Antioquia department, Colombia. Community members said they did not hear any gunshots, so they believe the killers may have used a silencer on the gun. Ciro was an active and nationally recognized leader of his community and of the Association of Small-scale and Medium-scale Producers of Eastern Antioquia (ASOPROA). His efforts with ASOPROA to help community members hold on to their land and protect themselves against forced displacement were not well received by government and military officials, who tried to link Ciro to armed guerrilla groups. Those accusations made Ciro a target of the paramilitary groups whose members act as guides in Colombian military operations and as prosecution witnesses in criminal cases.
In February 2006 the Corporación Jurídica Libertad (Legal Freedom Corporation) asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to step in and seek guarantees from the Colombian government for the protection of threatened community leaders and residents of eastern Antioquia, including Ciro. Ciro had received death threats from local paramilitaries since at least 2002, and was forced to leave his community for a period between 2002 and 2005. The threats continued after his return. On Jan. 6, 2006, his son received a written death threatening the Ciro family and other families who had protested the Colombian army's Oct. 13, 2005 execution of a neighbor, Ubaldo Antonio Buitrago Giraldo. Five of the families fled the community following the death threats. (Corporación Jurídica Libertad 4/1/08)
*2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
Protests that started in the southwestern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 over the high cost of food and other staples erupted again with new force on Apr. 7. This followed a two-day lull in the disturbances, which had spread to several other cities and resulted in four deaths [see Update #942].
In Les Cayes on Apr. 7 a crowd attacked a building belonging to Senator Jean Gabriel Fortuné, who had charged that drug dealers and political groups infiltrated the earlier protests. Haitian police and soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) turned back the protesters, who then looted a store belonging to Fortuné's wife. Protesters said a worker in a nearby church was killed when he was hit by a bullet during the incident; this brought the total of deaths in the protests to five. In Jérémie, west of Les Cayes on Haiti's southwestern peninsula, police agents used nightsticks and tear gas to disperse several hundred rock-throwing protesters. Some of the demonstrators called for the removal of the MINUSTAH troops and the return of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of office in 2004. Other protesters were supporting rightwing former military officer Guy Philippe, who led the armed uprising that precipitated Aristide's ouster.
Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince was paralyzed as students demonstrated and thousands of people hurled rocks and set up burning barricades near the National Palace and in the Martissant and Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhoods. The windshields of more than a hundred vehicles were broken. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 4/7/08)
On the morning of Apr. 8 crowds in Port-au-Prince attacked the National Palace itself, forcing open the main gate. MINUSTAH troops responded with rubber bullets, wounding several people, including Jean-Jacques Augustin, a reporter and photographer for the daily Le Matin. For the rest of the day, traffic was blocked in the capital as thousands of people erected flaming barricades and trashed and looted stores, public offices, restaurants and gas stations throughout the metropolitan area. In Champ-de-Mars the Air France office was damaged, National Credit Bank vehicles were set on fire and windshields were smashed on private cars. Crowds hurled rocks at stores along the highway in Delmas, while the National Old Age Insurance office was partly burned in Pétionville and the Le Matin office was attacked with rocks. Police agents largely gave up all efforts to stop the crowds, and MINUSTAH tried to take over police work in the capital. (AHP 4/8/08)
On Apr. 9 President René Garcia Préval addressed the nation, ordering the protesters to stop and proposing longterm measures for increasing domestic production of staples like rice and other foods. "Instead of subsidizing the price of food products coming from abroad, we'd rather subsidize national production," he said. "I propose that the price of fertilizer be subsidized by 50% and even more." (AHP 4/8/08; Haiti Support Group News Briefs 4/10/08 from Reuters) What was described as a "precarious calm" took hold in the capital after Préval's speech, but protests against against lavichè ("expensive life") continued on Apr. 10 in Jérémie, in the central city of Hinche, in Mirebalais in the east, in Gonaïves in the northwest, in Jacmel in the southeast, and in Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in the south. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
Although no deaths were reported after Apr. 7, the French group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated 31 injured people, including 15 with gunshot wounds, in its hospitals in Port-au-Prince from Apr. 7 to Apr. 10. The majority of the patients were treated at Trinité hospital on Apr. 8, the day of the most intense protests in the capital. (HSG 4/10/08 from MSF) As commercial activities slowly resumed on Apr. 11, extensive damage was reported, with more than 20 gas stations vandalized in the Port-au-Prince area. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
On Apr. 12 President Préval announced emergency measures to bring down the price of food. He said a sack of rice would be reduced to $43 from the current $51, a decrease of about 15%. The government is to put up $5 of the $8 reduction, while private business are to supply the remaining $3. The reduction is for one month and affects the 30,000 tons of rice currently on the market.
Despite the new measures, a Senate no-confidence vote later in the day forced Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis from office, with 16 of the 27 senators voting against the government; one supported Alexis, and 10 were absent. Préval must now propose a replacement. Also on Apr. 12, MINUSTAH troops reportedly fired tear gas at protesters in central Port-au-Prince, and a United Nations police agent from Nigerian who was dressed in civilian clothes was shot dead by unknown assailants near the capital's cathedral. (HSG 4/12/08 from Reuters, AFP; AlterPresse 4/12/08)
*3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
After a week of disturbances in Haiti over the high cost of living, on Apr. 11 the Organization of American States (OAS) announced that in about two weeks it would supply $1 million for the purchase of food. France offered 1 million euros (about $1.5 million). On Apr. 10 Brazil, which leads the MINUSTAH troops, announced that it would ship 14 tons of food by a Brazilian Air Force Boeing KC-137/707, in coordination with the World Food Program (WFP), to arrive on Apr. 11. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías made a dramatically larger commitment, announcing on Apr. 12 that his government would send 364 tons of emergency food aid, including beef, chicken, milk, cooking oil and lentils. (AlterPresse 4/11/08; Brazilian government press release 4/10/08; HSG 4/12/08 from AFP)
Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi described international reaction to the events in Haiti as "silence" in comparison to the conservative media's condemnations of China for repression in Tibet and the progressive Latin American media's condemnations of Colombia for its Mar. 1 attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador [see Update #937]. He suggested the left's response was influenced by the fact that the MINUSTAH forces are largely supplied by center-left South American governments: 1,211 soldiers from Brazil, 1,147 from Uruguay, 562 from Argentina and 502 from Chile.
In the 1980s Haiti produced 95% of the rice it consumed, Zibechi said; now, after 20 years of neoliberal trade policies, Haiti imports 80% of its rice from the US. According to Didier Dominique from the Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), the destruction of the country's agricultural sector was part of a plan to transform Haiti into a source of cheap labor for assembly plants in "free trade zones." (Servicio Informativo "alai-amlatina" 4/11/08)
At the Apr. 10 opening of the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC, World Bank president Robert Zoellick held up a piece of bread and a sack of rice and warned that the increase in the prices of basic foods could wipe out gains in combatting world poverty over the last seven years. Zoellick, a former US trade representative, noted that food protests had broken out in countries as far apart as Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and Haiti, and attributed much of the problem to the growing use of farmlands to produce biocombustibles like ethanol instead of food crops. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/08 from correspondents)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1218/1/
Brazil: Action Alert: Tension Erupts in Raposa Serra do Sol
http://www.rainforestfoundation.org/?q=en/node/157
Protesters Target Canada's Iamgold in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1210/1/
Ecuador's Oil Change: An Exporter's Historic Proposal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1211/1/
Ecuador's Yasuni Park: Oil Exploration or Nature Protection?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1215/68/
Bush introduces Colombia FTA amid political hoo-hah
http://ww4report.com/node/5341
Colombia-US: Fight Over Trade Deal Is On
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1213/68/
Action Alert: Stop the Colombia Free Trade Agreement http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombia_fta08/855uwbir47nxemb6
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1212/1/
FARC denies medical mission access to Ingrid Betancourt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5342
Community Radio Announcers Killed in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1219/68/
Mexico - US: NAFTA Renegotiation - Promise or Mirage?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1216/68/
Mexico: Pemex privatization advances
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5340
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #943, April 13, 2008
1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
On Mar. 30, unidentified assailants shot to death campesino community leader Gerardo Antonio Ciro as he was returning to his home in the rural community of El Jordán in Cocorna municipality, in the eastern region of Antioquia department, Colombia. Community members said they did not hear any gunshots, so they believe the killers may have used a silencer on the gun. Ciro was an active and nationally recognized leader of his community and of the Association of Small-scale and Medium-scale Producers of Eastern Antioquia (ASOPROA). His efforts with ASOPROA to help community members hold on to their land and protect themselves against forced displacement were not well received by government and military officials, who tried to link Ciro to armed guerrilla groups. Those accusations made Ciro a target of the paramilitary groups whose members act as guides in Colombian military operations and as prosecution witnesses in criminal cases.
In February 2006 the Corporación Jurídica Libertad (Legal Freedom Corporation) asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to step in and seek guarantees from the Colombian government for the protection of threatened community leaders and residents of eastern Antioquia, including Ciro. Ciro had received death threats from local paramilitaries since at least 2002, and was forced to leave his community for a period between 2002 and 2005. The threats continued after his return. On Jan. 6, 2006, his son received a written death threatening the Ciro family and other families who had protested the Colombian army's Oct. 13, 2005 execution of a neighbor, Ubaldo Antonio Buitrago Giraldo. Five of the families fled the community following the death threats. (Corporación Jurídica Libertad 4/1/08)
*2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
Protests that started in the southwestern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 over the high cost of food and other staples erupted again with new force on Apr. 7. This followed a two-day lull in the disturbances, which had spread to several other cities and resulted in four deaths [see Update #942].
In Les Cayes on Apr. 7 a crowd attacked a building belonging to Senator Jean Gabriel Fortuné, who had charged that drug dealers and political groups infiltrated the earlier protests. Haitian police and soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) turned back the protesters, who then looted a store belonging to Fortuné's wife. Protesters said a worker in a nearby church was killed when he was hit by a bullet during the incident; this brought the total of deaths in the protests to five. In Jérémie, west of Les Cayes on Haiti's southwestern peninsula, police agents used nightsticks and tear gas to disperse several hundred rock-throwing protesters. Some of the demonstrators called for the removal of the MINUSTAH troops and the return of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of office in 2004. Other protesters were supporting rightwing former military officer Guy Philippe, who led the armed uprising that precipitated Aristide's ouster.
Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince was paralyzed as students demonstrated and thousands of people hurled rocks and set up burning barricades near the National Palace and in the Martissant and Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhoods. The windshields of more than a hundred vehicles were broken. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 4/7/08)
On the morning of Apr. 8 crowds in Port-au-Prince attacked the National Palace itself, forcing open the main gate. MINUSTAH troops responded with rubber bullets, wounding several people, including Jean-Jacques Augustin, a reporter and photographer for the daily Le Matin. For the rest of the day, traffic was blocked in the capital as thousands of people erected flaming barricades and trashed and looted stores, public offices, restaurants and gas stations throughout the metropolitan area. In Champ-de-Mars the Air France office was damaged, National Credit Bank vehicles were set on fire and windshields were smashed on private cars. Crowds hurled rocks at stores along the highway in Delmas, while the National Old Age Insurance office was partly burned in Pétionville and the Le Matin office was attacked with rocks. Police agents largely gave up all efforts to stop the crowds, and MINUSTAH tried to take over police work in the capital. (AHP 4/8/08)
On Apr. 9 President René Garcia Préval addressed the nation, ordering the protesters to stop and proposing longterm measures for increasing domestic production of staples like rice and other foods. "Instead of subsidizing the price of food products coming from abroad, we'd rather subsidize national production," he said. "I propose that the price of fertilizer be subsidized by 50% and even more." (AHP 4/8/08; Haiti Support Group News Briefs 4/10/08 from Reuters) What was described as a "precarious calm" took hold in the capital after Préval's speech, but protests against against lavichè ("expensive life") continued on Apr. 10 in Jérémie, in the central city of Hinche, in Mirebalais in the east, in Gonaïves in the northwest, in Jacmel in the southeast, and in Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in the south. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
Although no deaths were reported after Apr. 7, the French group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated 31 injured people, including 15 with gunshot wounds, in its hospitals in Port-au-Prince from Apr. 7 to Apr. 10. The majority of the patients were treated at Trinité hospital on Apr. 8, the day of the most intense protests in the capital. (HSG 4/10/08 from MSF) As commercial activities slowly resumed on Apr. 11, extensive damage was reported, with more than 20 gas stations vandalized in the Port-au-Prince area. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
On Apr. 12 President Préval announced emergency measures to bring down the price of food. He said a sack of rice would be reduced to $43 from the current $51, a decrease of about 15%. The government is to put up $5 of the $8 reduction, while private business are to supply the remaining $3. The reduction is for one month and affects the 30,000 tons of rice currently on the market.
Despite the new measures, a Senate no-confidence vote later in the day forced Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis from office, with 16 of the 27 senators voting against the government; one supported Alexis, and 10 were absent. Préval must now propose a replacement. Also on Apr. 12, MINUSTAH troops reportedly fired tear gas at protesters in central Port-au-Prince, and a United Nations police agent from Nigerian who was dressed in civilian clothes was shot dead by unknown assailants near the capital's cathedral. (HSG 4/12/08 from Reuters, AFP; AlterPresse 4/12/08)
*3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
After a week of disturbances in Haiti over the high cost of living, on Apr. 11 the Organization of American States (OAS) announced that in about two weeks it would supply $1 million for the purchase of food. France offered 1 million euros (about $1.5 million). On Apr. 10 Brazil, which leads the MINUSTAH troops, announced that it would ship 14 tons of food by a Brazilian Air Force Boeing KC-137/707, in coordination with the World Food Program (WFP), to arrive on Apr. 11. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías made a dramatically larger commitment, announcing on Apr. 12 that his government would send 364 tons of emergency food aid, including beef, chicken, milk, cooking oil and lentils. (AlterPresse 4/11/08; Brazilian government press release 4/10/08; HSG 4/12/08 from AFP)
Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi described international reaction to the events in Haiti as "silence" in comparison to the conservative media's condemnations of China for repression in Tibet and the progressive Latin American media's condemnations of Colombia for its Mar. 1 attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador [see Update #937]. He suggested the left's response was influenced by the fact that the MINUSTAH forces are largely supplied by center-left South American governments: 1,211 soldiers from Brazil, 1,147 from Uruguay, 562 from Argentina and 502 from Chile.
In the 1980s Haiti produced 95% of the rice it consumed, Zibechi said; now, after 20 years of neoliberal trade policies, Haiti imports 80% of its rice from the US. According to Didier Dominique from the Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), the destruction of the country's agricultural sector was part of a plan to transform Haiti into a source of cheap labor for assembly plants in "free trade zones." (Servicio Informativo "alai-amlatina" 4/11/08)
At the Apr. 10 opening of the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC, World Bank president Robert Zoellick held up a piece of bread and a sack of rice and warned that the increase in the prices of basic foods could wipe out gains in combatting world poverty over the last seven years. Zoellick, a former US trade representative, noted that food protests had broken out in countries as far apart as Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and Haiti, and attributed much of the problem to the growing use of farmlands to produce biocombustibles like ethanol instead of food crops. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/08 from correspondents)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1218/1/
Brazil: Action Alert: Tension Erupts in Raposa Serra do Sol
http://www.rainforestfoundation.org/?q=en/node/157
Protesters Target Canada's Iamgold in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1210/1/
Ecuador's Oil Change: An Exporter's Historic Proposal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1211/1/
Ecuador's Yasuni Park: Oil Exploration or Nature Protection?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1215/68/
Bush introduces Colombia FTA amid political hoo-hah
http://ww4report.com/node/5341
Colombia-US: Fight Over Trade Deal Is On
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1213/68/
Action Alert: Stop the Colombia Free Trade Agreement http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombia_fta08/855uwbir47nxemb6
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1212/1/
FARC denies medical mission access to Ingrid Betancourt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5342
Community Radio Announcers Killed in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1219/68/
Mexico - US: NAFTA Renegotiation - Promise or Mirage?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1216/68/
Mexico: Pemex privatization advances
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5340
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
WNU #942: Haitian Protesters Demand Food
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #942, April 6, 2008
1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President René Préval's government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration's failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country's third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.
Official sources said on Apr. 3 that there were no major injuries in the Les Cayes protests, and MINUSTAH spokesperson Fred Blaise claimed that crowds were under control by the end of the day. Sources in Les Cayes gave a different story, reporting that the disturbances continued into Apr. 4 and that two people were shot dead and 18 were injured, 12 of them by bullets, during the 48 hours of demonstrations. Some people put the number of the dead at four; one of those killed was said to be named Jean Baptiste Zary. There were conflicting reports on who was responsible for the shooting, although some people in Les Cayes blamed soldiers trying to drive back the demonstrators. On Apr. 4 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis confirmed one death.
Demonstrations against the high cost of living--lavichè ("expensive life") in Creole--broke out in other areas. Hundreds protested on Apr. 3 in Gonaïves on the northwest coast. The protests there were largely peaceful, but United Nations workers were evacuated to a police base, and five people were injured with rocks as protesters tired to force the Frabre Geffrard high school's administration to let the students join the demonstrations. Gonaïves is Haiti's fourth largest city. Protests started in the southern city of Petit-Goâve on Apr. 4 as demonstrators tried to close schools and bring out students. Students marched in downtown Port-au-Prince the same day to protest the cost of living.
As in other parts of the world, food prices have been rising sharply in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. In Port-au-Prince the cost of rice, beans, condensed milk and fruit has gone up some 50% from a year ago, while the cost of spaghetti has doubled.
After initially blaming the protests in Les Cayes on drug dealers and smugglers, on Apr. 4 Prime Minister Alexis announced that "the government is in solidarity with the population, which is proving to be worried about the high cost of living." He said the government would immediately disburse 400 million gourdes (about $10.43 million) for soup kitchens and a program providing jobs in maintaining the sanitation system. For the longer term he promised a package of programs to reduce the cost of living, including 65 million gourdes ($1.51 million) for sanitation, 400 million gourdes ($10.43 million) for micro-credit through the National Bank and local lenders, 90 million gourdes ($2.34 million) in agricultural production, and 44 million gourdes ($1.14 million) for food programs in schools and universities. (Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4/4/08 from AP; Haiti Support Network News Briefs 4/4/08 from AP; AlterPresse 4/3/08, 4/4/08, 4/4/08, 4/5/08; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/4/08)
In March unnamed sources reported that the government was planning to ask Parliament to raise the minimum wage to 150 gourdes ($3.90) a day, about double the current level. The leftist labor movement Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") charges that the plan shows the "antipopular and corrupt character of the current government." The group had called for a minimum wage of 350-450 gourdes in 2003, during the government of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse, unnamed "other labor organizations" support the government's plan for 150 gourdes. (AlterPresse 3/25/08) [The minimum wage only directly impacts the relatively small number of Haitians employed in the formal sector.]
*2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
On Apr. 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabón, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man's death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse 4/3/08 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants press release 4/2/08)
*3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
On the evening of Apr. 3 Mexican federal police agents arrested two activists in the northern state of Chihuahua for their roles in militant protests blocking federal highways: Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a leader in the movement demanding justice for the more than 450 young women killed in the Ciudad Juárez area since the 1990s; and Carlos Chávez Quevedo, a leader in the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN), which has protested high electricity rates for pumping from the wells that area farmers use for irrigation. Both activists were released on bail the night of Apr. 4 after some 50 people staged a sit-in in front of the federal judicial office in Ciudad Juárez.
Chávez founded the OAN in collaboration with another farmer activist, Armando Villarreal Martha, who was murdered on Mar. 14 in broad daylight by a group of heavily armed men [see Update #939]. Jurado--who was charged with participation in a blockade of the Santa Fe international bridge in July 2007 to demand the return of missing women--is the director of the Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity (CISO) and has been active in cross-border solidarity work with US groups. She had spoken out strongly the week before her arrest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's use of federal troops against organized crime. "[W]e have had experiences that at the checkpoints violations of the community's human rights have been committed," she said [see Updates #916, 927]. Upon her release, Jurado charged that the government was using repression against social leaders to intimidate them, especially to prevent protests against the possible privatization of parts of the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/08, 4/6/08; SouthWest Organizing Project 4/4/08)
As of Mar. 30, the military was investigating 16 soldiers in the shooting deaths of four young men in Santiago de los Caballeros, Badiraguato, in the western state of Sinaloa, on Mar. 26. The soldiers opened fire on the men as they were driving a van to a party; two other passengers were wounded. All the victims were unarmed. (LJ 3/31/08)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: Farmers Declare One-Month Truce
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1208/68/
Argentina: Empty Shelves, Drowned Chicks as Farm Strike Rages
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1204/68/
Argentina: Farm Strike Exposes Fernández's Weak Flank
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1200/68/
Expansion of Biotechnology in Brazil Brings Violence
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5070
Where the Asphalt Ends: Bogota's Periferies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5057
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5067
How Green is the Latin American Left? A Look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1203/1/
Ecuadorian Parliament OKs Ban on Foreign Military Bases
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1209/68/
Military Crisis in South America: The Results of Plan Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1206/1/
Colombia's Gold Bonanza: Canadian Mining Leads to "Economic Forced Displacement"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1202/1/
Colombia: soldiers arrested in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5316
Crisis along the Rio Dulce in Guatemala: The Death of Mario Caal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1205/1/
Latin American Food Fights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5124
Energy Integration and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5109
Presidential Candidates on Trade
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5065
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #942, April 6, 2008
1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President René Préval's government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration's failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country's third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.
Official sources said on Apr. 3 that there were no major injuries in the Les Cayes protests, and MINUSTAH spokesperson Fred Blaise claimed that crowds were under control by the end of the day. Sources in Les Cayes gave a different story, reporting that the disturbances continued into Apr. 4 and that two people were shot dead and 18 were injured, 12 of them by bullets, during the 48 hours of demonstrations. Some people put the number of the dead at four; one of those killed was said to be named Jean Baptiste Zary. There were conflicting reports on who was responsible for the shooting, although some people in Les Cayes blamed soldiers trying to drive back the demonstrators. On Apr. 4 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis confirmed one death.
Demonstrations against the high cost of living--lavichè ("expensive life") in Creole--broke out in other areas. Hundreds protested on Apr. 3 in Gonaïves on the northwest coast. The protests there were largely peaceful, but United Nations workers were evacuated to a police base, and five people were injured with rocks as protesters tired to force the Frabre Geffrard high school's administration to let the students join the demonstrations. Gonaïves is Haiti's fourth largest city. Protests started in the southern city of Petit-Goâve on Apr. 4 as demonstrators tried to close schools and bring out students. Students marched in downtown Port-au-Prince the same day to protest the cost of living.
As in other parts of the world, food prices have been rising sharply in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. In Port-au-Prince the cost of rice, beans, condensed milk and fruit has gone up some 50% from a year ago, while the cost of spaghetti has doubled.
After initially blaming the protests in Les Cayes on drug dealers and smugglers, on Apr. 4 Prime Minister Alexis announced that "the government is in solidarity with the population, which is proving to be worried about the high cost of living." He said the government would immediately disburse 400 million gourdes (about $10.43 million) for soup kitchens and a program providing jobs in maintaining the sanitation system. For the longer term he promised a package of programs to reduce the cost of living, including 65 million gourdes ($1.51 million) for sanitation, 400 million gourdes ($10.43 million) for micro-credit through the National Bank and local lenders, 90 million gourdes ($2.34 million) in agricultural production, and 44 million gourdes ($1.14 million) for food programs in schools and universities. (Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4/4/08 from AP; Haiti Support Network News Briefs 4/4/08 from AP; AlterPresse 4/3/08, 4/4/08, 4/4/08, 4/5/08; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/4/08)
In March unnamed sources reported that the government was planning to ask Parliament to raise the minimum wage to 150 gourdes ($3.90) a day, about double the current level. The leftist labor movement Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") charges that the plan shows the "antipopular and corrupt character of the current government." The group had called for a minimum wage of 350-450 gourdes in 2003, during the government of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse, unnamed "other labor organizations" support the government's plan for 150 gourdes. (AlterPresse 3/25/08) [The minimum wage only directly impacts the relatively small number of Haitians employed in the formal sector.]
*2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
On Apr. 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabón, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man's death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse 4/3/08 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants press release 4/2/08)
*3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
On the evening of Apr. 3 Mexican federal police agents arrested two activists in the northern state of Chihuahua for their roles in militant protests blocking federal highways: Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a leader in the movement demanding justice for the more than 450 young women killed in the Ciudad Juárez area since the 1990s; and Carlos Chávez Quevedo, a leader in the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN), which has protested high electricity rates for pumping from the wells that area farmers use for irrigation. Both activists were released on bail the night of Apr. 4 after some 50 people staged a sit-in in front of the federal judicial office in Ciudad Juárez.
Chávez founded the OAN in collaboration with another farmer activist, Armando Villarreal Martha, who was murdered on Mar. 14 in broad daylight by a group of heavily armed men [see Update #939]. Jurado--who was charged with participation in a blockade of the Santa Fe international bridge in July 2007 to demand the return of missing women--is the director of the Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity (CISO) and has been active in cross-border solidarity work with US groups. She had spoken out strongly the week before her arrest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's use of federal troops against organized crime. "[W]e have had experiences that at the checkpoints violations of the community's human rights have been committed," she said [see Updates #916, 927]. Upon her release, Jurado charged that the government was using repression against social leaders to intimidate them, especially to prevent protests against the possible privatization of parts of the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/08, 4/6/08; SouthWest Organizing Project 4/4/08)
As of Mar. 30, the military was investigating 16 soldiers in the shooting deaths of four young men in Santiago de los Caballeros, Badiraguato, in the western state of Sinaloa, on Mar. 26. The soldiers opened fire on the men as they were driving a van to a party; two other passengers were wounded. All the victims were unarmed. (LJ 3/31/08)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: Farmers Declare One-Month Truce
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1208/68/
Argentina: Empty Shelves, Drowned Chicks as Farm Strike Rages
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1204/68/
Argentina: Farm Strike Exposes Fernández's Weak Flank
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1200/68/
Expansion of Biotechnology in Brazil Brings Violence
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5070
Where the Asphalt Ends: Bogota's Periferies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5057
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5067
How Green is the Latin American Left? A Look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1203/1/
Ecuadorian Parliament OKs Ban on Foreign Military Bases
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1209/68/
Military Crisis in South America: The Results of Plan Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1206/1/
Colombia's Gold Bonanza: Canadian Mining Leads to "Economic Forced Displacement"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1202/1/
Colombia: soldiers arrested in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5316
Crisis along the Rio Dulce in Guatemala: The Death of Mario Caal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1205/1/
Latin American Food Fights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5124
Energy Integration and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5109
Presidential Candidates on Trade
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5065
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, March 31, 2008
WNU #941: Crackdown on Peruvian Leftists
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #941, March 30, 2008
1. Peru: Crackdown on Leftists
2. Argentina: Farmers Strike Continues
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Crackdown on Leftists
As of Mar. 25, the government of Peruvian president Alan García had arrested nine leftist activists in less than month, charging that they were planning terrorist acts or were funded by the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías.
The Antiterrorist Directorate of the National Police of Peru (PNP) arrested seven activists on Feb. 29 as they were trying to return to Peru after attending a Feb. 24-27 conference of the leftist Bolivarian Continental Coordination (CCB) in Quito. The PNP claims the CCB supports two rebel groups, Peru's Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to PNP director general Octavio Salazar, the activists were planning to sabotage two summits to be held in Peru this year: the Latin American-European Union (ALC-UE) in May and the Asian Pacific Cooperation (APEC) in November. One of those arrested, Roque Gonzales La Rosa, served eight years in prison for the kidnapping of a Bolivian politician. The arrests came the day before an attack by the Colombian military on a FARC camp in Ecuadoran territory which set off a brief diplomatic crisis between Colombia and the left-leaning governments of Ecuador and Venezuela [see Updates #937, 939, 940].
Two more CCB members were arrested on Mar. 17 as they were allegedly trying to deposit $65,000 from Ecuador; Peruvian authorities said they suspected the money came from Venezuela. CCB founder Fernando Rivero told media in Venezuela that the group is autonomous and receives no support from Chávez's government.
Meanwhile, a congressional committee has begun investigating the Centers of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas ("Casas de ALBA," referring to a trade bloc promoted by Venezuela and Cuba). This is a nongovernmental organization with 150 offices in Peru providing medical attention to poor Peruvians, often by Cuban doctors in Bolivia and Venezuela. Its spokespeople deny receiving funds from Venezuela. Antiterrorism prosecutor Julio Galindo charged that "countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and Guatemala" were trying "one way or another to destabilize" Peru. But former interior minister Fernando Rospigliosi said García's government was exaggerating the influence of the ALBA centers and the CCB "to make the public believe that the social movements which are being created by other causes are coming from a foreign influence."
The North American group Rights Action is calling for letters to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights (email InfoDesk@ohchr.org), and Peru's embassies in Canada (fax 613-232-3062, email emperuca@magi.com) and the US (fax 202-659-8124, peru@peruemb.org) to "express...concern that the Peruvian government is violating fundamental human rights through the incarceration of its citizens for participating in political meetings and protests." (El Comercio (Quito) 3/1/08 from EFE; Notiver (Veracruz, Mexico) 3/25/08 from AP; Rights Action alert 3/22/08)
*2. Argentina: Farmers Strike Continues
Argentine farmer groups and the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner held six hours of talks on Mar. 28 aimed at ending a 16-day-old producers' strike that had restricted food supplies in major cities. Strike supporters lifted some of the blockades they had maintained on highways throughout the country, but more radical sectors said this was only a 48-hour truce and stayed at their positions at highway entrances.
The producers were protesting Fernández de Kirchner's increase in taxes on soy, a major export crop for Argentina. The president, from the left wing of the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), insisted that she would not give in to "extortion" from the producers. She noted that many of the strikers were very wealthy and contrasted their "protests of abundance" with the "protests of poverty" in the early 2000s when "thousands of Argentines [were] blocking streets and highways because they needed work," along with middle-class demonstrators who had lost their savings in the 2001 financial crisis. According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, the strike is led by the far-right Argentine Rural Society. Strike supporters held a protest in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires the evening of Mar. 25. Calloni says most of the 5,000 protesters beating on pots and pans were from the capital's richest neighborhoods. Some activists referred to the strike support actions as "fashion protests."
The government has been backed by many activist groups, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA). A Maoist and a Trotskyist group were backing the strike, although not its rightwing leadership. Many groups, including the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Movement (MST), rejected both the government and the strike. The National Picketer ("Piquetero") Bloc said: "[W]e working people and broad sectors of the middle class find ourselves like the salami in the sandwich in this conflict of the 'country' against the government... No one cares about the situation of the people." (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/26/08, 3/27/08, 3/28/08, 3/29/08 from correspondent; Prensa de Frente (Argentina) 3/28/08)
Correction: In the original version we inadvertently called the MST the "Movement Toward Socialism"; see Update #960.
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #941, March 30, 2008
1. Peru: Crackdown on Leftists
2. Argentina: Farmers Strike Continues
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Crackdown on Leftists
As of Mar. 25, the government of Peruvian president Alan García had arrested nine leftist activists in less than month, charging that they were planning terrorist acts or were funded by the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías.
The Antiterrorist Directorate of the National Police of Peru (PNP) arrested seven activists on Feb. 29 as they were trying to return to Peru after attending a Feb. 24-27 conference of the leftist Bolivarian Continental Coordination (CCB) in Quito. The PNP claims the CCB supports two rebel groups, Peru's Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to PNP director general Octavio Salazar, the activists were planning to sabotage two summits to be held in Peru this year: the Latin American-European Union (ALC-UE) in May and the Asian Pacific Cooperation (APEC) in November. One of those arrested, Roque Gonzales La Rosa, served eight years in prison for the kidnapping of a Bolivian politician. The arrests came the day before an attack by the Colombian military on a FARC camp in Ecuadoran territory which set off a brief diplomatic crisis between Colombia and the left-leaning governments of Ecuador and Venezuela [see Updates #937, 939, 940].
Two more CCB members were arrested on Mar. 17 as they were allegedly trying to deposit $65,000 from Ecuador; Peruvian authorities said they suspected the money came from Venezuela. CCB founder Fernando Rivero told media in Venezuela that the group is autonomous and receives no support from Chávez's government.
Meanwhile, a congressional committee has begun investigating the Centers of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas ("Casas de ALBA," referring to a trade bloc promoted by Venezuela and Cuba). This is a nongovernmental organization with 150 offices in Peru providing medical attention to poor Peruvians, often by Cuban doctors in Bolivia and Venezuela. Its spokespeople deny receiving funds from Venezuela. Antiterrorism prosecutor Julio Galindo charged that "countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and Guatemala" were trying "one way or another to destabilize" Peru. But former interior minister Fernando Rospigliosi said García's government was exaggerating the influence of the ALBA centers and the CCB "to make the public believe that the social movements which are being created by other causes are coming from a foreign influence."
The North American group Rights Action is calling for letters to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights (email InfoDesk@ohchr.org), and Peru's embassies in Canada (fax 613-232-3062, email emperuca@magi.com) and the US (fax 202-659-8124, peru@peruemb.org) to "express...concern that the Peruvian government is violating fundamental human rights through the incarceration of its citizens for participating in political meetings and protests." (El Comercio (Quito) 3/1/08 from EFE; Notiver (Veracruz, Mexico) 3/25/08 from AP; Rights Action alert 3/22/08)
*2. Argentina: Farmers Strike Continues
Argentine farmer groups and the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner held six hours of talks on Mar. 28 aimed at ending a 16-day-old producers' strike that had restricted food supplies in major cities. Strike supporters lifted some of the blockades they had maintained on highways throughout the country, but more radical sectors said this was only a 48-hour truce and stayed at their positions at highway entrances.
The producers were protesting Fernández de Kirchner's increase in taxes on soy, a major export crop for Argentina. The president, from the left wing of the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), insisted that she would not give in to "extortion" from the producers. She noted that many of the strikers were very wealthy and contrasted their "protests of abundance" with the "protests of poverty" in the early 2000s when "thousands of Argentines [were] blocking streets and highways because they needed work," along with middle-class demonstrators who had lost their savings in the 2001 financial crisis. According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, the strike is led by the far-right Argentine Rural Society. Strike supporters held a protest in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires the evening of Mar. 25. Calloni says most of the 5,000 protesters beating on pots and pans were from the capital's richest neighborhoods. Some activists referred to the strike support actions as "fashion protests."
The government has been backed by many activist groups, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA). A Maoist and a Trotskyist group were backing the strike, although not its rightwing leadership. Many groups, including the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Movement (MST), rejected both the government and the strike. The National Picketer ("Piquetero") Bloc said: "[W]e working people and broad sectors of the middle class find ourselves like the salami in the sandwich in this conflict of the 'country' against the government... No one cares about the situation of the people." (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/26/08, 3/27/08, 3/28/08, 3/29/08 from correspondent; Prensa de Frente (Argentina) 3/28/08)
Correction: In the original version we inadvertently called the MST the "Movement Toward Socialism"; see Update #960.
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Paraguay: Campesino Leader Charged For Confronting Crop Spraying http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1198/1/
Bolivia: Government, Opposition Clash in Cooking Oil War http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1197/68/
Ecuador: Manta Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1191/68/
Yankees Head Home http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5058
Military Crisis in South America: The Results of Plan Colombia http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5107
The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics of Trade http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5101
WSJ terror-baits free trade opponent http://ww4report.com/node/5301
The Specious "National Security" Argument http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5103
Fruit Giant Chiquita Sued for Colombia Deaths http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1190/68/
The Last Rebels of the Caribbean: Garifuna Fighting for TheirLives in Honduras http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1195/1/
UN: Mexico Violating Human Rights of Migrants http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1192/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, March 24, 2008
WNU #940: Peruvian Indigenous Seize Oil Field, Ecuador IDs Colombian Bombs
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #940, March 23, 2008
1. Peru: Indigenous Seize Oil Field
2. Peru: Ex-Officer Loses Massacre Suit
3. Ecuador: ID Bombs Used on FARC Camp
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Peru: Indigenous Seize Oil Field
At least two people were killed and 12 wounded on Mar. 22 in Peru's northeastern Loreto department in clashes between police and mostly Achuar indigenous workers who had been occupying installations on the Pluspetrol Norte oil company's lot 1AB since Mar. 20 in a labor dispute. The clashes occurred after the workers attempted to take over the Andoas airport on Mar. 22; they were then removed by police agents, who stayed to patrol the area.
According to a National Police communiqué, indigenous people firing shotguns killed police officer Jaime Armando Reyna Ruiz and wounded 11 other agents who were on patrol. Police colonel Armando Martínez said one worker was also killed. An indigenous leader, César García, said on the Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) radio network that in fact two indigenous people were killed, while Loreto departmental president Iván Vásquez told the media that 27 people had been detained. Outside agitators were "detected...inciting the natives to attack the police," according to Vásquez.
There have been a number of disputes between Pluspetrol and the Achuar communities [see Updates #838, 872]. In October the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River (Feconaco) threatened to occupy oil wells if the company failed to comply with agreements it signed in 2006 relating to environmental issues and social programs. Local communities occupied some facilities in January. In the current dispute the workers are demanding a 50% wage increase. Pluspetrol, which is largely owned by Argentines, said it was in negotiations with the communities before talks were broken off because of the Mar. 20 occupation. The company said it was losing 23,000 barrels a day because of the occupation; the usual daily production is 47,000 barrels, according to Pluspetrol. (AFP 3/23/08; El Comercio (Ecuador) 3/23/08 from EFE; La República (Lima) 3/23/08)
*2. Peru: Ex-Officer Loses Massacre Suit
On Mar. 5 US District Judge Adalberto Jordan in Miami ordered retired Peruvian army major Telmo Ricardo Hurtado to pay $37 million to two survivors of a 1985 massacre in which soldiers under Hurtado's direct command killed 69 indigenous campesinos, mostly women and children, in the highlands village of Accomarca. The plaintiffs, Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido, survived the massacre as teenagers, losing many of their close relatives. They sued Hurtado, who fled to the US in 2002, under the 1789 Alien Torts Statute; the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) represented them [see Update #935]. The $37 million award is mostly symbolic; Hurtado is currently in immigration detention.
Three Peruvian military units, led by officers Juan Rivera, David Castañeda and Luis Robles, backed up Hurtado's unit during the 1985 massacre. Rivera, currently in immigration detention in Maryland, is also being sued by Accomarca survivors with support from the CJA. Castañeda lives in Boston, where he has repeatedly applied for political asylum. Robles is still an active duty army officer in Peru, although his movements have been restricted because of an investigation by the courts. (Inter Press Service 3/5/08)
*3. Ecuador: ID Bombs Used on FARC Camp
Citing unnamed sources in the Ecuadoran Air Force (FAE), on Mar. 21 the Quito daily El Comercio reported that US "smart bombs" of the sort the US fired at Iraqi targets during the 1991 Gulf War were the ones the Colombian military used in a Mar. 1 attack on a camp of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadoran territory. More than 20 people were killed, including FARC second-in-command Raúl Reyes and four visiting Mexican students [see Updates #937, 939].
The FAE sources reportedly said the camp was hit with 10 GBU 12 Paveway II bombs, 500-pound laser-guided weapons made by the US; the same sources said these bombs are not usually part of the arsenal employed with Brazilian Supertucano airplanes or Israeli Kfirs, the planes favored by the Colombian Air Force. The Colombian military insists that it used conventional bombs, fired from eight of its planes: five Supertucanos and three US-built A-37 planes. Ecuadoran authorities also are questioning the reasons for the flight of an HC-130 airplane, used for refueling helicopters, from the US base at Manta, Ecuador, just hours before the Mar. 1 attack. On Mar. 20 the ABN agency distributed a FARC communiqué, dated Mar. 14, charging that the US Southern Command had led the attack. The FARC also denied that Reyes' computer could have survived the bombing, "which pulverized everything around it." The Colombian government has charged that the computer has files compromising the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments. (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/21/08 from AFP, DPA, Prensa Latina; 3/22/08 from AFP, DPA, Notimex; AFP 3/23/08)
On Mar. 17 the Bogotá daily El Tiempo published a photograph, supposedly from a laptop computer found at the FARC camp, which it said showed Reyes together with Ecuadoran internal and external security minister Gustavo Larrea. It was in fact a picture of Patricio Etchegaray, general secretary of the Communist Party of Argentina, who said he had a long interview with Reyes three years ago at a rebel camp. El Tiempo issued a retraction in the afternoon, saying its information came from the Colombian police. El Tiempo is partly owned by the Santos family, which currently has two members in the government: Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. (LJ 3/18/08 from DPA, AFP, Reuters)
Relations remained tense between Ecuador and Colombia, which have not resumed normal diplomatic relations since just after the Mar. 1 attack. On Mar. 21 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa said the situation would get worse if it was true that one of the 23 people killed in the attack was Franklin Aizalia Molina, an Ecuadoran mechanic who lived with his parents in Quito. The parents said photographs of a body identified as that of FARC negotiator, propagandist and songwriter "Julián Conrado" (Guillermo Enrique Torres) were really of their son, who had disappeared around the time of the attack. The Ecuadoran government was to send a delegation of officials and relatives of Aizalia Molina to Bogotá on Mar. 24 to present fingerprints and genetic material to help establish the body's identity. (LJ 3/23/08 from Prensa Latina, DPA, AFP)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1184/1/
Fighting for Survival in Paraguay's Green Desert Wonderland http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1181/68/
Peru: Coca Advocates Protest Suggested UN Ban
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1188/1/
Chiquita sued over FARC payments
http://ww4report.com/node/5274
London Court Rules in Favor of Venezuela in Dispute with Exxon http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1185/68/
Another SOA? Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1182/1/
Electrical workers union side-steps strike in Mexico City
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#814
Strike at Metropolitan University continues: second month
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#815
Grupo Modelo (Corona) out to smash independent union
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#816
Reciclamos! Is Community Recycling a Sustainable Livelihood in Coastal Mexico?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1183/1/
Cuba: Transvestites and Crossdressers Key Workers Against AIDS http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1187/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #940, March 23, 2008
1. Peru: Indigenous Seize Oil Field
2. Peru: Ex-Officer Loses Massacre Suit
3. Ecuador: ID Bombs Used on FARC Camp
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Peru: Indigenous Seize Oil Field
At least two people were killed and 12 wounded on Mar. 22 in Peru's northeastern Loreto department in clashes between police and mostly Achuar indigenous workers who had been occupying installations on the Pluspetrol Norte oil company's lot 1AB since Mar. 20 in a labor dispute. The clashes occurred after the workers attempted to take over the Andoas airport on Mar. 22; they were then removed by police agents, who stayed to patrol the area.
According to a National Police communiqué, indigenous people firing shotguns killed police officer Jaime Armando Reyna Ruiz and wounded 11 other agents who were on patrol. Police colonel Armando Martínez said one worker was also killed. An indigenous leader, César García, said on the Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) radio network that in fact two indigenous people were killed, while Loreto departmental president Iván Vásquez told the media that 27 people had been detained. Outside agitators were "detected...inciting the natives to attack the police," according to Vásquez.
There have been a number of disputes between Pluspetrol and the Achuar communities [see Updates #838, 872]. In October the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River (Feconaco) threatened to occupy oil wells if the company failed to comply with agreements it signed in 2006 relating to environmental issues and social programs. Local communities occupied some facilities in January. In the current dispute the workers are demanding a 50% wage increase. Pluspetrol, which is largely owned by Argentines, said it was in negotiations with the communities before talks were broken off because of the Mar. 20 occupation. The company said it was losing 23,000 barrels a day because of the occupation; the usual daily production is 47,000 barrels, according to Pluspetrol. (AFP 3/23/08; El Comercio (Ecuador) 3/23/08 from EFE; La República (Lima) 3/23/08)
*2. Peru: Ex-Officer Loses Massacre Suit
On Mar. 5 US District Judge Adalberto Jordan in Miami ordered retired Peruvian army major Telmo Ricardo Hurtado to pay $37 million to two survivors of a 1985 massacre in which soldiers under Hurtado's direct command killed 69 indigenous campesinos, mostly women and children, in the highlands village of Accomarca. The plaintiffs, Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido, survived the massacre as teenagers, losing many of their close relatives. They sued Hurtado, who fled to the US in 2002, under the 1789 Alien Torts Statute; the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) represented them [see Update #935]. The $37 million award is mostly symbolic; Hurtado is currently in immigration detention.
Three Peruvian military units, led by officers Juan Rivera, David Castañeda and Luis Robles, backed up Hurtado's unit during the 1985 massacre. Rivera, currently in immigration detention in Maryland, is also being sued by Accomarca survivors with support from the CJA. Castañeda lives in Boston, where he has repeatedly applied for political asylum. Robles is still an active duty army officer in Peru, although his movements have been restricted because of an investigation by the courts. (Inter Press Service 3/5/08)
*3. Ecuador: ID Bombs Used on FARC Camp
Citing unnamed sources in the Ecuadoran Air Force (FAE), on Mar. 21 the Quito daily El Comercio reported that US "smart bombs" of the sort the US fired at Iraqi targets during the 1991 Gulf War were the ones the Colombian military used in a Mar. 1 attack on a camp of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadoran territory. More than 20 people were killed, including FARC second-in-command Raúl Reyes and four visiting Mexican students [see Updates #937, 939].
The FAE sources reportedly said the camp was hit with 10 GBU 12 Paveway II bombs, 500-pound laser-guided weapons made by the US; the same sources said these bombs are not usually part of the arsenal employed with Brazilian Supertucano airplanes or Israeli Kfirs, the planes favored by the Colombian Air Force. The Colombian military insists that it used conventional bombs, fired from eight of its planes: five Supertucanos and three US-built A-37 planes. Ecuadoran authorities also are questioning the reasons for the flight of an HC-130 airplane, used for refueling helicopters, from the US base at Manta, Ecuador, just hours before the Mar. 1 attack. On Mar. 20 the ABN agency distributed a FARC communiqué, dated Mar. 14, charging that the US Southern Command had led the attack. The FARC also denied that Reyes' computer could have survived the bombing, "which pulverized everything around it." The Colombian government has charged that the computer has files compromising the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments. (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/21/08 from AFP, DPA, Prensa Latina; 3/22/08 from AFP, DPA, Notimex; AFP 3/23/08)
On Mar. 17 the Bogotá daily El Tiempo published a photograph, supposedly from a laptop computer found at the FARC camp, which it said showed Reyes together with Ecuadoran internal and external security minister Gustavo Larrea. It was in fact a picture of Patricio Etchegaray, general secretary of the Communist Party of Argentina, who said he had a long interview with Reyes three years ago at a rebel camp. El Tiempo issued a retraction in the afternoon, saying its information came from the Colombian police. El Tiempo is partly owned by the Santos family, which currently has two members in the government: Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. (LJ 3/18/08 from DPA, AFP, Reuters)
Relations remained tense between Ecuador and Colombia, which have not resumed normal diplomatic relations since just after the Mar. 1 attack. On Mar. 21 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa said the situation would get worse if it was true that one of the 23 people killed in the attack was Franklin Aizalia Molina, an Ecuadoran mechanic who lived with his parents in Quito. The parents said photographs of a body identified as that of FARC negotiator, propagandist and songwriter "Julián Conrado" (Guillermo Enrique Torres) were really of their son, who had disappeared around the time of the attack. The Ecuadoran government was to send a delegation of officials and relatives of Aizalia Molina to Bogotá on Mar. 24 to present fingerprints and genetic material to help establish the body's identity. (LJ 3/23/08 from Prensa Latina, DPA, AFP)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1184/1/
Fighting for Survival in Paraguay's Green Desert Wonderland http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1181/68/
Peru: Coca Advocates Protest Suggested UN Ban
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1188/1/
Chiquita sued over FARC payments
http://ww4report.com/node/5274
London Court Rules in Favor of Venezuela in Dispute with Exxon http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1185/68/
Another SOA? Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1182/1/
Electrical workers union side-steps strike in Mexico City
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#814
Strike at Metropolitan University continues: second month
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#815
Grupo Modelo (Corona) out to smash independent union
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=130#816
Reciclamos! Is Community Recycling a Sustainable Livelihood in Coastal Mexico?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1183/1/
Cuba: Transvestites and Crossdressers Key Workers Against AIDS http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1187/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
WNU #939: Women's Day Protests, Ecuador Probes US Role in Attack
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #939, March 16, 2008
1. Latin America: Women's Day Protests
2. Mexico: Rural Activist Killed
3. Ecuador: Probes US Role in Attack
4. Argentina: Ex-Officer in Suicide?
5. Uruguay: Ex-Officer Wins Round in Italy
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Latin America: Women's Day Protests
Hundreds of Guatemalan women commemorated International Women's Day on Mar. 8 with a march through Guatemala City's Historic Center to demand an end to violence, to impunity and to discrimination against women. "Enough of all this violence," they chanted as they marched from the Supreme Court of Justice to the Plaza de la Constitución. In a theatrical presentation near the Metropolitan Cathedral, a group of women with painted faces mimed a rescue of a girl kidnapped by a soldier. Groups of indigenous women and girls also demanded an end to racism and to discrimination against women.
Hundreds of Salvadoran women marched in San Salvador, demanding greater "attention" to the violence women suffer. In Nicaragua, women demonstrated in different parts of Managua for the restoration of therapeutic abortion, which was criminalized by the National Assembly in October 2006 [see Update #873]. The protests were organized by the Women's Autonomous Movement and the Feminist Movement, which are composed of different civil society groups. Honduran women demanded the solution of murders of women in recent years, more respect for women's rights, and better working conditions.
In Uruguay women who work in the government and representatives of all the political parties met in a United Nations office to sign a joint work plan for the next two years. (El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 3/9/08 from combined wire services)
Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa used an official celebration in Emiliano Zapata, Morelos, to announce a new women's rights program, Pro-Equality, and regulations to enforce a year-old law to protect women from violence. Calderón listened as Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, an indigenous Zapotec, charged that she was denied the post of mayor of Santa María Quiegolani, in Oaxaca, in a Nov. 4 election because she is a woman. Calderón said that by the end of his term in 2012 the government expects to bring about a 50% reduction in income disparity for women, a 30% reduction in the number of households in extreme poverty headed by women, and a 70% reduction in sexual harassment at the workplace. (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/11/08)
*2. Mexico: Rural Activist Killed
At around noon on Mar. 14 a group of armed men killed farmer leader Armando Villarreal Martha with submachine gun blasts near his house in Nuevo Casas Grandes municipality, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Villarreal Martha was the leader of the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN). He was well-known for his campaigns for lower electricity rates for farmers and campesinos, and was imprisoned for a year and a half before being acquitted of charges in connection with the occupation of the Janos and Villa Ahumada customs station in 2002. Earlier this year he was involved in national protests calling for the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [see Updates #929-931, 933] and in demands for the reactivation of the petrochemical industry to make fertilizers and other chemicals cheaper for farmers. He ran as a local candidate for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1988 and for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1992. (La Jornada 3/15/08)
*3. Ecuador: Probes US Role in Attack
On Mar. 11 Fernando Cordero, vice president of Ecuador's Constituent Assembly, told Ecuavisa television that the Assembly's Sovereignty Commission would "do an audit" of the US military base at the southwestern town of Manta to see if the base was used in a Mar. 1 bombing raid by the Colombian military against a camp of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) inside Ecuadoran territory [see Update #937]. The FARC second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, was killed in the raid, along with about 20 other guerrillas and four visiting Mexican students. On Mar. 6 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa indicated that the attack was carried out with "smart bombs"; some people doubt that the Colombian air force has the capability to use these hi-tech weapons. The US will have to leave the base in 2009, when a 10-year lease expires. (La Jornada 3/12/08 from AFP, PL, DPA, Reuters)
On Mar. 4 the Mexican Attorney General's Office (PGR) started an investigation of the four dead Mexican students and the one surviving Mexican, Lucía Morett Alvarez, for possible links to the FARC. Some Mexican media have also suggested links to drug trafficking. In a Mexico City press conference on Mar. 14, family members denied that the students were members of any armed group. Morett's aunt, María Alvarez Moctezuma, said her niece, who is hospitalized in Quito for treatment of her injuries, was on a visit to the camp to carry out "interviews that would enrich her researches." Morett's parents have noted that Mexico failed to issue a complaint against Colombia for the attack on five unarmed Mexican citizens. (LJ 3/15/08)
*4. Argentina: Ex-Officer in Suicide?
On Feb. 25 the body of retired Argentine military officer Lt. Col. Paul Alberto Navone was found by an employee of the Air Force's Hotel Parque, in Ascochinga, a town some 55km north of Buenos Aires. He had been shot in the chest; a 9mm pistol and a suicide note were found near the body. Navone, who lived in Ascochinga, had been scheduled to appear that day before federal judge Myriam Galizzi in an investigation of the disappearance of twin babies born in Paraná, Entre Ríos province, in 1978, during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship's "dirty war" against suspected leftists. The parents were Raquel Negro and Tulio "Tucho" Valenzuela, a leader of the Montoneros rebel group. Claiming ill health, Navone had gotten his court appearance postponed to Mar. 3.
The government has been investigating the kidnapping of some 600 babies during the dictatorship, generally the children of leftists who were disappeared by the military. Former navy officer Héctor Febres was also expected to testify in the investigation when he died suddenly on Dec. 10. The cause of death was a heart attack, but there were traces of cyanide in his body, and two coast guard officers were charged with homicide [see Updates #927, 929]. Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which has agitated for decades for clarification of the theft of the babies, said she would demand an investigation to see if Navone "was eliminated, as may have happened with Héctor Febres." (Clarín (Buenos Aires) 2/26/08; Página 12 (Buenos Aires) 3/2/08)
*5. Uruguay: Ex-Officer Wins Round in Italy
On Jan. 17 the Review Court of Rome dismissed the Italian case against former Uruguayan navy captain Néstor Jorge Fernández Tróccoli, who was arrested in Salerno on Dec. 23 in connection with Operation Condor, a clandestine program of cooperation between South American militaries during the 1970s and 1980s [see Update #929]. Fernández Tróccoli, who headed Uruguay's secret services for the 1973-1985 military dictatorship, is one of 140 military officers and soldiers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay that Italy is seeking for crimes against more than 25 people of Italian origin. The Italian court found that there was insufficient evidence against Fernández Tróccoli. However, as of February he was still held in prison because of an extradition request from Uruguay. (Terra (Spain) 2/6/08 from EFE)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Brazil: Activists protest at World Biofuels Market
http://ww4report.com/node/5259
Chile: Emerging Party Seeks Self-Government for Mapuche People http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1174/68/
Bolivian Social Movements Mobilize for Constitutional Referendum http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1175/1/
Colombia: US hand in Raul Reyes hit?
http://ww4report.com/node/5258
Hypocrisies of a US-backed Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1178/68/
Photo Essay: Colombia--Massive Demonstrations Against Paramilitary and State Terror
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1169/1/
Justice Department harasses Salvador solidarity committee
http://ww4report.com/node/5250
Waiting for Hector: An Implacable Fight for Justice in Nueva Linda, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1177/1/
Belize Sows Seeds for Food Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1176/1/
Mexico: Mass graves in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5261
Mexico: Pemex scandal hits Calderón administration
http://ww4report.com/node/5260
Mexico: guerilla convicts' sentences reduced
http://ww4report.com/node/5237
Mexico: Brad Will family protest Oaxaca investigation
http://ww4report.com/node/5236
Mexico: Oaxaca--APPO activist freed from prison
http://ww4report.com/node/5235
Mexico: Tabasco Maya community joins Zapatista movement
http://ww4report.com/node/5234
Mexico: Chiapas--two more sentenced in Acteal massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5233
Mexico: Chiapas--prisoners on hunger strike; land conflicts continue
http://ww4report.com/node/5232
For more Latin America news stories:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #939, March 16, 2008
1. Latin America: Women's Day Protests
2. Mexico: Rural Activist Killed
3. Ecuador: Probes US Role in Attack
4. Argentina: Ex-Officer in Suicide?
5. Uruguay: Ex-Officer Wins Round in Italy
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Latin America: Women's Day Protests
Hundreds of Guatemalan women commemorated International Women's Day on Mar. 8 with a march through Guatemala City's Historic Center to demand an end to violence, to impunity and to discrimination against women. "Enough of all this violence," they chanted as they marched from the Supreme Court of Justice to the Plaza de la Constitución. In a theatrical presentation near the Metropolitan Cathedral, a group of women with painted faces mimed a rescue of a girl kidnapped by a soldier. Groups of indigenous women and girls also demanded an end to racism and to discrimination against women.
Hundreds of Salvadoran women marched in San Salvador, demanding greater "attention" to the violence women suffer. In Nicaragua, women demonstrated in different parts of Managua for the restoration of therapeutic abortion, which was criminalized by the National Assembly in October 2006 [see Update #873]. The protests were organized by the Women's Autonomous Movement and the Feminist Movement, which are composed of different civil society groups. Honduran women demanded the solution of murders of women in recent years, more respect for women's rights, and better working conditions.
In Uruguay women who work in the government and representatives of all the political parties met in a United Nations office to sign a joint work plan for the next two years. (El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 3/9/08 from combined wire services)
Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa used an official celebration in Emiliano Zapata, Morelos, to announce a new women's rights program, Pro-Equality, and regulations to enforce a year-old law to protect women from violence. Calderón listened as Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, an indigenous Zapotec, charged that she was denied the post of mayor of Santa María Quiegolani, in Oaxaca, in a Nov. 4 election because she is a woman. Calderón said that by the end of his term in 2012 the government expects to bring about a 50% reduction in income disparity for women, a 30% reduction in the number of households in extreme poverty headed by women, and a 70% reduction in sexual harassment at the workplace. (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/11/08)
*2. Mexico: Rural Activist Killed
At around noon on Mar. 14 a group of armed men killed farmer leader Armando Villarreal Martha with submachine gun blasts near his house in Nuevo Casas Grandes municipality, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Villarreal Martha was the leader of the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN). He was well-known for his campaigns for lower electricity rates for farmers and campesinos, and was imprisoned for a year and a half before being acquitted of charges in connection with the occupation of the Janos and Villa Ahumada customs station in 2002. Earlier this year he was involved in national protests calling for the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [see Updates #929-931, 933] and in demands for the reactivation of the petrochemical industry to make fertilizers and other chemicals cheaper for farmers. He ran as a local candidate for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1988 and for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1992. (La Jornada 3/15/08)
*3. Ecuador: Probes US Role in Attack
On Mar. 11 Fernando Cordero, vice president of Ecuador's Constituent Assembly, told Ecuavisa television that the Assembly's Sovereignty Commission would "do an audit" of the US military base at the southwestern town of Manta to see if the base was used in a Mar. 1 bombing raid by the Colombian military against a camp of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) inside Ecuadoran territory [see Update #937]. The FARC second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, was killed in the raid, along with about 20 other guerrillas and four visiting Mexican students. On Mar. 6 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa indicated that the attack was carried out with "smart bombs"; some people doubt that the Colombian air force has the capability to use these hi-tech weapons. The US will have to leave the base in 2009, when a 10-year lease expires. (La Jornada 3/12/08 from AFP, PL, DPA, Reuters)
On Mar. 4 the Mexican Attorney General's Office (PGR) started an investigation of the four dead Mexican students and the one surviving Mexican, Lucía Morett Alvarez, for possible links to the FARC. Some Mexican media have also suggested links to drug trafficking. In a Mexico City press conference on Mar. 14, family members denied that the students were members of any armed group. Morett's aunt, María Alvarez Moctezuma, said her niece, who is hospitalized in Quito for treatment of her injuries, was on a visit to the camp to carry out "interviews that would enrich her researches." Morett's parents have noted that Mexico failed to issue a complaint against Colombia for the attack on five unarmed Mexican citizens. (LJ 3/15/08)
*4. Argentina: Ex-Officer in Suicide?
On Feb. 25 the body of retired Argentine military officer Lt. Col. Paul Alberto Navone was found by an employee of the Air Force's Hotel Parque, in Ascochinga, a town some 55km north of Buenos Aires. He had been shot in the chest; a 9mm pistol and a suicide note were found near the body. Navone, who lived in Ascochinga, had been scheduled to appear that day before federal judge Myriam Galizzi in an investigation of the disappearance of twin babies born in Paraná, Entre Ríos province, in 1978, during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship's "dirty war" against suspected leftists. The parents were Raquel Negro and Tulio "Tucho" Valenzuela, a leader of the Montoneros rebel group. Claiming ill health, Navone had gotten his court appearance postponed to Mar. 3.
The government has been investigating the kidnapping of some 600 babies during the dictatorship, generally the children of leftists who were disappeared by the military. Former navy officer Héctor Febres was also expected to testify in the investigation when he died suddenly on Dec. 10. The cause of death was a heart attack, but there were traces of cyanide in his body, and two coast guard officers were charged with homicide [see Updates #927, 929]. Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which has agitated for decades for clarification of the theft of the babies, said she would demand an investigation to see if Navone "was eliminated, as may have happened with Héctor Febres." (Clarín (Buenos Aires) 2/26/08; Página 12 (Buenos Aires) 3/2/08)
*5. Uruguay: Ex-Officer Wins Round in Italy
On Jan. 17 the Review Court of Rome dismissed the Italian case against former Uruguayan navy captain Néstor Jorge Fernández Tróccoli, who was arrested in Salerno on Dec. 23 in connection with Operation Condor, a clandestine program of cooperation between South American militaries during the 1970s and 1980s [see Update #929]. Fernández Tróccoli, who headed Uruguay's secret services for the 1973-1985 military dictatorship, is one of 140 military officers and soldiers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay that Italy is seeking for crimes against more than 25 people of Italian origin. The Italian court found that there was insufficient evidence against Fernández Tróccoli. However, as of February he was still held in prison because of an extradition request from Uruguay. (Terra (Spain) 2/6/08 from EFE)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Brazil: Activists protest at World Biofuels Market
http://ww4report.com/node/5259
Chile: Emerging Party Seeks Self-Government for Mapuche People http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1174/68/
Bolivian Social Movements Mobilize for Constitutional Referendum http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1175/1/
Colombia: US hand in Raul Reyes hit?
http://ww4report.com/node/5258
Hypocrisies of a US-backed Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1178/68/
Photo Essay: Colombia--Massive Demonstrations Against Paramilitary and State Terror
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1169/1/
Justice Department harasses Salvador solidarity committee
http://ww4report.com/node/5250
Waiting for Hector: An Implacable Fight for Justice in Nueva Linda, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1177/1/
Belize Sows Seeds for Food Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1176/1/
Mexico: Mass graves in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5261
Mexico: Pemex scandal hits Calderón administration
http://ww4report.com/node/5260
Mexico: guerilla convicts' sentences reduced
http://ww4report.com/node/5237
Mexico: Brad Will family protest Oaxaca investigation
http://ww4report.com/node/5236
Mexico: Oaxaca--APPO activist freed from prison
http://ww4report.com/node/5235
Mexico: Tabasco Maya community joins Zapatista movement
http://ww4report.com/node/5234
Mexico: Chiapas--two more sentenced in Acteal massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5233
Mexico: Chiapas--prisoners on hunger strike; land conflicts continue
http://ww4report.com/node/5232
For more Latin America news stories:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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