[There is no Update this week; we'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Newly Discovered Military Archives May Throw Light on Past Abuses in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4553-newly-discovered-military-archives-may-throw-light-on-past-abuses-in-argentina
Visibility from High-Profile Human Rights Inquiries Trickles Down in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4557-visibility-from-high-profile-human-rights-inquiries-trickles-down-in-chile
NACLA-CLACS Conversation with Carlos Pérez Guartambel: Indigenous Resistance in the Andes (Ecuador)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/11/18/nacla-clacs-conversation-carlos-p%C3%A9rez-guartambel-indigenous-resistance-andes
Ecuador high court halves judgment against Chevron
http://ww4report.com/node/12761
Water Festival of El Carmen de Viboral: Communities Resist Water Privatization and Multinational Mining in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4554-water-festival-of-el-carmen-de-viboral-communities-resist-water-privatization-and-multinational-mining-in-colombia
Leader Opposed to Colombian Mining Project Murdered
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/12/leader-opposed-colombian-mining-project-murdered
Aerial Fumigations and its Discontents (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/15/aerial-fumigations-and-its-discontents
Putting Profits over People: Extractivism and Human Rights in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4559-putting-profits-over-people-extractivism-and-human-rights-in-colombia
Partial Accord: FARC’s Christmas Gift to Juan Manuel Santos (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/13/partial-accord-farc%E2%80%99s-christmas-gift-juan-manuel-santos
Mass Mobilization against Healthcare Reform Storms Through Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4558-mass-mobilization-against-healthcare-reform-storms-through-colombia
Venezuelan Meat Packing Workers Protest Abuses Following Alleged Repression
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10168
Report: Hydroelectric Dam would Wipe Out Indigenous Tribes in Guyana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4556-report-hydroelectric-dam-would-wipe-out-indigenous-tribes-in-guyana
US Congress Continues to Slam Political Repression Ahead of Honduran Elections
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/us-congress-continues-to-slam-political-repression-ahead-of-honduran-elections
Canada Signs Free Trade Deal with Honduras amid Pre-electoral Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4555-canada-signs-free-trade-deal-with-honduras-amid-pre-electoral-repression
Honduras: A Partial Victory for the Campaign to Free “Chavelo” Morales
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4561-honduras-a-partial-victory-for-the-campaign-to-free-chavelo-morales
Mexico Forced Displacement on OAS Agenda
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexico-forced-displacement-on-oas-agenda/
The High Cost of Candy: Death Toll Climbs in Factory Disaster (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-high-cost-of-candy-death-toll-climbs-in-factory-disaster/
Mexico's Blood Banks
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/14/mexicos-blood-banks
Mexico narco networks inside and outside prisons
http://ww4report.com/node/12758
Stand With Haitian Workers for a Living Wage!
http://grassrootssolidarity.blogspot.com/2013/11/stand-with-haitian-workers-for-living.html
Monday, November 18, 2013
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
WNU #1199: US Documents Blast Mexico’s “Drug War”
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1199, November 10, 2013
1. Mexico: US Documents Blast Calderón’s “Drug War”
2. Honduras: Pre-Election Repression Continues
3. Chile: Four Are Sentenced for Gay Youth's Death
4. Haiti: Anti-Martelly March Is Attacked
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: US Documents Blast Calderón’s “Drug War”
US officials were secretly critical of the militarized anti-narcotic policies of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) at the same time that the US government was funding and publicly backing them, according to declassified documents that the Washington, DC-based research group National Security Archive posted on its website on Nov. 6. The documents are among 30 official reports and diplomatic cables, with dates from Aug. 25, 2007 to May 22, 2012, that the US government released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the National Security Archive and other organizations in Mexico and the US.
Drug trafficking groups “have operated fairly openly and with freedom of movement and operations” in northeastern Mexico, the US embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section reported in a “sensitive” but unclassified Apr. 16, 2010 cable. “In many cases they operated with near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces.” For example, Mexican authorities arrested 16 members of the police force in Matamoros, in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, in connection with the notorious August 2010 massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants by the Los Zetas gang in San Fernando municipality [see Update #1180]. According to an Apr. 15, 2011 unclassified cable from the US consulate in Matamoros, the police agents were accused of “protecting the Los Zetas TCO [transnational criminal organization] members responsible for the kidnapping and murder of bus passengers in the San Fernando area.” The Mexican authorities responded to the massive violence against migrants by trying to downplay it. The same cable reported that after an April 2011 military operation uncovered 36 mass graves with a total of 145 bodies around San Fernando, Mexican officials told consular staff off the record that “the bodies are being split up to make the total number less obvious and thus less alarming.”
President Calderón’s use of the military in the fight against trafficking was supposed to compensate for the local authorities’ failure to fight the cartels. But US officials concluded—as did many Mexicans--that the policy had backfired. Calderón's “crackdown…resulted in some unintended consequences,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote in a secret Aug. 3, 2010 memo. “For example, the removal of DTO [drug trafficking organization] leadership has allowed less experienced and undisciplined personnel to fill the leadership vacuum, contributing to the spike of drug-related murders.” Some 50,000 to 60,000 Mexicans died in drug-related violence under the Calderón administration [see Update #1169].
The documents also discuss the relationship between Los Zetas and the Kaibiles, a Guatemalan special operations force accused of committing massacres during the country’s US-backed 1960-1996 counterinsurgency against leftist rebels [see World War 4 Report 10/23/13]. A heavily redacted “sensitive” US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cable from July 2009 noted that in 2005 an arrested Zeta member said his organization had recruited “former Guatemalan Kaibiles to work with the Zetas, and that the Kaibiles were procuring firearms and grenades from Guatemala on behalf of the Gulf Cartel.” The connection with the Kaibiles seems to have continued. Another heavily redacted DEA cable, from May 28, 2010, reports on a shootout between security forces and Los Zetas members on May 19. Several people were arrested. “[I]t was determined that some of them were members of the Zetas and the subjects from Guatemala were members of the Fuerzas Especiales de Guatemala (Kaibiles),” the report says. The next two sentences are redacted. (National Security Archive 11/6/13; Proceso (Mexico) 11/6/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/8/13)
In related news, on Nov. 5 the US State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the founders of the Guadalajara drug cartel. A Mexican court convicted Caro Quintero in the 1985 torture murder of US DEA agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena and sentenced him to 40 years in prison [see Update #1198, where we incorrectly gave the sentence as 60 years]. He was released on a technicality in August of this year, after serving 28 years of the sentence, and quickly disappeared. The US federal government has charged Caro Quintero separately with a number of felonies and considers him a fugitive from justice. On Nov. 6, the day after the US announced the reward, a panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court voted 4-1 to overturn the decision releasing Caro Quintero and to return the case to an appeals court. (NBC News 11/6/13, some from AP; Fox News Latino 11/6/13)
*2. Honduras: Pre-Election Repression Continues
Unknown assailants shot Honduras video journalist Manuel Murillo Varela dead on Oct. 23; his body was found the next day in Tegucigalpa’s Colonia Independencia. Murillo Varela had worked as a camera operator for Honduras’ Globo TV and for the state television, Canal 8, and was also the official camera operator for former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), who was overthrown in a June 2009 military coup. Murillo Varela had been a victim of violence in the past: he and a colleague were abducted on Feb. 2, 2010, reportedly by police agents, and were tortured for over 24 hours. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), responded to the incident by issuing a protection order for Murillo Varela. Both the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Inter American Press Association (SIP) condemned the Oct. 23 murder. More than 30 journalists have been killed in Honduras since 2010.
Murillo Varela was active in the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), which grew out of resistance to the 2009 coup and which is now a leading force in the Nov. 24 presidential, legislative and municipal elections [see Update #1194]. Other party activists have faced threats and harassment as the voting approaches. On Oct. 23, masked police agents ransacked the residence of a local LIBRE leader, Edwin Robelo Espinal, in the capital’s Flor del Campo neighborhood, breaking down a total of 15 doors in the house, ostensibly to look for “weapons and a rocket-propelled launcher.” The raid on Espinal’s residence was carried out by members of a 5,000-member military police unit announced in August [see Update #1189] and put in operation in October. Like Murillo Varela, Espinal had an IACHR protection order; his partner, Wendy Avila, was killed in September 2009 during a protest demanding President Zelaya’s return, and Espinal himself was tortured by police agents in June 2010.
On Oct. 30, a week after the attack on Espinal’s home, Beatriz Valle, a LIBRE congressional candidate in the central department of Francisco Morazán and a deputy foreign minister during Zelaya’s administration, announced that she had received death threats. She decided to leave the country.
An Oct. 21 report by the Canadian-based organization Rights Action found that LIBRE political candidates, their families and campaign leaders have suffered more attacks and killings since May 2012 than all other political parties combined.
The harassment hasn’t been confined to LIBRE activists. On Oct. 10 military police raided the home of Marco Antonio Rodriguez, the vice president of the National Child Welfare Worker’s Trade Union (SITRAPANI), and in mid-October the police raided the home of Dassaev Aguilar, a former correspondent for the leftist Venezuelan-based TeleSUR television network. Meanwhile, government prosecutors continue to press their case against Berta Cáceres, general coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and two other of the organization’s leaders for their support of resistance to the Agua Zarca dam being constructed in territory claimed by the indigenous Lempa [see Update #1194]. (Europa Press 10/30/13; Rights Action 11/4/13; Minga Informativa ALAI 11/7/13)
*3. Chile: Four Are Sentenced for Gay Youth's Death
On Oct. 28 the Fourth Oral Criminal Court in Santiago, Chile, sentenced Patricio Ahumada Garay to life in prison for a brutal assault on Daniel Zamudio, a gay young man, on Mar. 3, 2012; Zamudio died of his injuries three weeks later [see Update #1123]. The court sentenced three other men to prison for participating in the assault: Alejandro Angulo and Raúl López were each given 15 years in prison, and Fabián Mora Mora seven years. The sentences were the same as those requested by the prosecutor, Ernesto Vásquez, and by Jaime Silva, the attorney for the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (Movilh), except in the case of Fabián Mora; the lawyers had asked for an eight-year sentence.
Zamudio’s death brought public attention to violence against LGBT people in Chile and resulted in the passage of the Zamudio Law, an anti-discrimination law that had languished in Congress for seven years [see Update #1124]. But hate crimes appear to be continuing. Wladimir Sepúlveda, a 21-year-old youth, was severely beaten on Oct. 20 on the Avenida Independencia in San Francisco de Mostazal, a city in the central O’Higgins region. He was hospitalized with cranial injuries, and as of Oct. 29 his life was thought to be at risk. LGBT rights activists suspect that the beating was a homophobic assault. (Adital (Brazil) 10/29/13)
*4. Haiti: Anti-Martelly March Is Attacked
Several thousand Haitians marched for four hours through much of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area on Nov. 7 to protest the government of President Joseph Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) and Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe. The march, which riot police dispersed on two occasions with tear gas, was sponsored by several groups, including the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (Fopak), a base organization close to the populist Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004).
The march began in northeastern Port-au-Prince in the impoverished neighborhood of Bel-Air, a stronghold of opposition to Martelly. The demonstrators proceeded east through the commune of Delmas and then southeast into Pétionville, a suburb in the hills where many of the elite live, including President Martelly, although several impoverished neighborhoods--such as Jalousie, where residents live precariously on a hillside--are also in the Pétionville commune. Some people presumed to be Martelly supporters fired into the air when the march entered Pétionville, and other counter-demonstrators threw stones at the marchers from rooftops, scattering street vendors and passersby along with the protesters. The Corps for Intervention and the Maintenance of Order (CIMO) of the Haitian National Police (PNH) then used tear gas to disperse the march.
The demonstration regrouped and headed back into Port-au-Prince, attempting to gather in the city center at the Champ de Mars park and the ruins of the National Palace, which was destroyed in a January 2010 earthquake. CIMO agents again used tear gas to break up the demonstration. (New York Times 11/7/13 from AP; AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/8/13)
Earlier in the week, about 100 protesters, mostly university students, burned tires and hurled stones at police outside the presidential offices on Nov. 4 as US education secretary Arne Duncan met with President Martelly. The students were protesting classroom conditions. One told the Associated Press wire service that his school had no library, classrooms had no lights and teachers rarely arrived at their classes. (NYT 11/4/13 from AP) Also on Nov. 4, professors ended a strike at the State University of Haiti (UEH), whose various schools are scattered around downtown Port-au-Prince. The professors began their job action on Oct. 15 to demand a salary increase; they are also seeking a more modern structure for the UEH’s administration. “The professors have other forms of struggle, even if the strike has ended,” Professor Luné Roc Pierre Louis told reporters. (AlterPresse 11/5/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration
South of the Border, Mining Is King (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4543-south-of-the-border-mining-is-king
Chile torture survivor in landmark legal victory
http://ww4report.com/node/12676#comment-451815
Paraguay pressed on indigenous land restitution
http://ww4report.com/node/12750
Brazil judge suspends construction on Amazon dam
http://ww4report.com/node/12573#comment-451811
Brazil-Venezuela: Yanomami Denounce Illegal Miners and Lack of Health Care
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4544-brazil-venezuela-yanomami-denounce-illegal-miners-and-lack-of-health-care
Bolivia ready for nuclear power: Evo Morales
http://ww4report.com/node/12743
Peru: government ultimatum to illegal miners
http://ww4report.com/node/12746
Cajamarca: Conga occupation not moved (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12745
Cuzco: unrest over water mega-diversion (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12744
Ecuador mineral zone militarized
http://ww4report.com/node/12161#comment-451813
Bogotá and FARC sign deal on political guarantees (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12749
Colombia court strikes down military justice law
http://ww4report.com/node/12748
Colombia: mine opponents assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12747
Colombia: Black Communities in Cauca Peacefully Occupy Government Offices
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4546-colombia-black-communities-in-cauca-peacefully-occupy-government-offices
New Documents Show Venezuela Has Been Key US Spying Target
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10144
Panama ups ante in Nicaragua canal race
http://ww4report.com/node/1275
US Lawmakers Lobby for Right-wing and US Intervention in Honduran, Salvadoran Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4550-us-lawmakers-lobby-for-right-wing-and-us-intervention-in-honduran-salvadoran-elections
Honduras Votes
http://www.thenation.com/article/177028/honduras-votes
New Report Highlights Rising Poverty and Inequality in Honduras
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/rising-inequality-in-honduras
Where Will the Children Play? Neoliberal Militarization in Pre-Election Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4542-where-will-the-children-play-neoliberal-militarization-in-pre-election-honduras
Nueva Esperanza, Honduras: Against the Same Old Neoliberal Agenda
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4545-nueva-esperanza-honduras-against-the-same-old-neoliberal-agenda
Study Finds Link Between Land Grabs and Sexual Violence Against Q´eqchís Women (Guatemala)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11059
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
Guatemala: Ríos Montt Trial Delay is a Letdown to Genocide Victims
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4547-guatemala-rios-montt-trial-delay-is-a-letdown-to-genocide-victims
Mexico Forced Displacement on OAS Agenda (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexico-forced-displacement-on-oas-agenda/
Mexico judge suspends Wirikuta mineral leases
http://ww4report.com/node/9944#comment-451814
New GMO Crops Temporarily Blocked in Mexico
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10935
Who Killed the Capo? (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/who-killed-the-capo/
Remembering Brad Will in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4549-remembering-brad-will-in-mexico
In Bed with the Bully—Consensual U.S. Surveillance in Mexico
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/7/bed-bully%E2%80%94consensual-us-surveillance-mexico
The Border Patrol’s Out-of-Control Growth (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/5/border-patrol%E2%80%99s-out-control-growth
Book Review: History's Sinkhole (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/6/book-review-historys-sinkhole
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1199, November 10, 2013
1. Mexico: US Documents Blast Calderón’s “Drug War”
2. Honduras: Pre-Election Repression Continues
3. Chile: Four Are Sentenced for Gay Youth's Death
4. Haiti: Anti-Martelly March Is Attacked
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: US Documents Blast Calderón’s “Drug War”
US officials were secretly critical of the militarized anti-narcotic policies of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) at the same time that the US government was funding and publicly backing them, according to declassified documents that the Washington, DC-based research group National Security Archive posted on its website on Nov. 6. The documents are among 30 official reports and diplomatic cables, with dates from Aug. 25, 2007 to May 22, 2012, that the US government released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the National Security Archive and other organizations in Mexico and the US.
Drug trafficking groups “have operated fairly openly and with freedom of movement and operations” in northeastern Mexico, the US embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section reported in a “sensitive” but unclassified Apr. 16, 2010 cable. “In many cases they operated with near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces.” For example, Mexican authorities arrested 16 members of the police force in Matamoros, in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, in connection with the notorious August 2010 massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants by the Los Zetas gang in San Fernando municipality [see Update #1180]. According to an Apr. 15, 2011 unclassified cable from the US consulate in Matamoros, the police agents were accused of “protecting the Los Zetas TCO [transnational criminal organization] members responsible for the kidnapping and murder of bus passengers in the San Fernando area.” The Mexican authorities responded to the massive violence against migrants by trying to downplay it. The same cable reported that after an April 2011 military operation uncovered 36 mass graves with a total of 145 bodies around San Fernando, Mexican officials told consular staff off the record that “the bodies are being split up to make the total number less obvious and thus less alarming.”
President Calderón’s use of the military in the fight against trafficking was supposed to compensate for the local authorities’ failure to fight the cartels. But US officials concluded—as did many Mexicans--that the policy had backfired. Calderón's “crackdown…resulted in some unintended consequences,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote in a secret Aug. 3, 2010 memo. “For example, the removal of DTO [drug trafficking organization] leadership has allowed less experienced and undisciplined personnel to fill the leadership vacuum, contributing to the spike of drug-related murders.” Some 50,000 to 60,000 Mexicans died in drug-related violence under the Calderón administration [see Update #1169].
The documents also discuss the relationship between Los Zetas and the Kaibiles, a Guatemalan special operations force accused of committing massacres during the country’s US-backed 1960-1996 counterinsurgency against leftist rebels [see World War 4 Report 10/23/13]. A heavily redacted “sensitive” US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cable from July 2009 noted that in 2005 an arrested Zeta member said his organization had recruited “former Guatemalan Kaibiles to work with the Zetas, and that the Kaibiles were procuring firearms and grenades from Guatemala on behalf of the Gulf Cartel.” The connection with the Kaibiles seems to have continued. Another heavily redacted DEA cable, from May 28, 2010, reports on a shootout between security forces and Los Zetas members on May 19. Several people were arrested. “[I]t was determined that some of them were members of the Zetas and the subjects from Guatemala were members of the Fuerzas Especiales de Guatemala (Kaibiles),” the report says. The next two sentences are redacted. (National Security Archive 11/6/13; Proceso (Mexico) 11/6/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/8/13)
In related news, on Nov. 5 the US State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the founders of the Guadalajara drug cartel. A Mexican court convicted Caro Quintero in the 1985 torture murder of US DEA agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena and sentenced him to 40 years in prison [see Update #1198, where we incorrectly gave the sentence as 60 years]. He was released on a technicality in August of this year, after serving 28 years of the sentence, and quickly disappeared. The US federal government has charged Caro Quintero separately with a number of felonies and considers him a fugitive from justice. On Nov. 6, the day after the US announced the reward, a panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court voted 4-1 to overturn the decision releasing Caro Quintero and to return the case to an appeals court. (NBC News 11/6/13, some from AP; Fox News Latino 11/6/13)
*2. Honduras: Pre-Election Repression Continues
Unknown assailants shot Honduras video journalist Manuel Murillo Varela dead on Oct. 23; his body was found the next day in Tegucigalpa’s Colonia Independencia. Murillo Varela had worked as a camera operator for Honduras’ Globo TV and for the state television, Canal 8, and was also the official camera operator for former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), who was overthrown in a June 2009 military coup. Murillo Varela had been a victim of violence in the past: he and a colleague were abducted on Feb. 2, 2010, reportedly by police agents, and were tortured for over 24 hours. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), responded to the incident by issuing a protection order for Murillo Varela. Both the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Inter American Press Association (SIP) condemned the Oct. 23 murder. More than 30 journalists have been killed in Honduras since 2010.
Murillo Varela was active in the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), which grew out of resistance to the 2009 coup and which is now a leading force in the Nov. 24 presidential, legislative and municipal elections [see Update #1194]. Other party activists have faced threats and harassment as the voting approaches. On Oct. 23, masked police agents ransacked the residence of a local LIBRE leader, Edwin Robelo Espinal, in the capital’s Flor del Campo neighborhood, breaking down a total of 15 doors in the house, ostensibly to look for “weapons and a rocket-propelled launcher.” The raid on Espinal’s residence was carried out by members of a 5,000-member military police unit announced in August [see Update #1189] and put in operation in October. Like Murillo Varela, Espinal had an IACHR protection order; his partner, Wendy Avila, was killed in September 2009 during a protest demanding President Zelaya’s return, and Espinal himself was tortured by police agents in June 2010.
On Oct. 30, a week after the attack on Espinal’s home, Beatriz Valle, a LIBRE congressional candidate in the central department of Francisco Morazán and a deputy foreign minister during Zelaya’s administration, announced that she had received death threats. She decided to leave the country.
An Oct. 21 report by the Canadian-based organization Rights Action found that LIBRE political candidates, their families and campaign leaders have suffered more attacks and killings since May 2012 than all other political parties combined.
The harassment hasn’t been confined to LIBRE activists. On Oct. 10 military police raided the home of Marco Antonio Rodriguez, the vice president of the National Child Welfare Worker’s Trade Union (SITRAPANI), and in mid-October the police raided the home of Dassaev Aguilar, a former correspondent for the leftist Venezuelan-based TeleSUR television network. Meanwhile, government prosecutors continue to press their case against Berta Cáceres, general coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and two other of the organization’s leaders for their support of resistance to the Agua Zarca dam being constructed in territory claimed by the indigenous Lempa [see Update #1194]. (Europa Press 10/30/13; Rights Action 11/4/13; Minga Informativa ALAI 11/7/13)
*3. Chile: Four Are Sentenced for Gay Youth's Death
On Oct. 28 the Fourth Oral Criminal Court in Santiago, Chile, sentenced Patricio Ahumada Garay to life in prison for a brutal assault on Daniel Zamudio, a gay young man, on Mar. 3, 2012; Zamudio died of his injuries three weeks later [see Update #1123]. The court sentenced three other men to prison for participating in the assault: Alejandro Angulo and Raúl López were each given 15 years in prison, and Fabián Mora Mora seven years. The sentences were the same as those requested by the prosecutor, Ernesto Vásquez, and by Jaime Silva, the attorney for the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (Movilh), except in the case of Fabián Mora; the lawyers had asked for an eight-year sentence.
Zamudio’s death brought public attention to violence against LGBT people in Chile and resulted in the passage of the Zamudio Law, an anti-discrimination law that had languished in Congress for seven years [see Update #1124]. But hate crimes appear to be continuing. Wladimir Sepúlveda, a 21-year-old youth, was severely beaten on Oct. 20 on the Avenida Independencia in San Francisco de Mostazal, a city in the central O’Higgins region. He was hospitalized with cranial injuries, and as of Oct. 29 his life was thought to be at risk. LGBT rights activists suspect that the beating was a homophobic assault. (Adital (Brazil) 10/29/13)
*4. Haiti: Anti-Martelly March Is Attacked
Several thousand Haitians marched for four hours through much of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area on Nov. 7 to protest the government of President Joseph Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) and Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe. The march, which riot police dispersed on two occasions with tear gas, was sponsored by several groups, including the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (Fopak), a base organization close to the populist Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004).
The march began in northeastern Port-au-Prince in the impoverished neighborhood of Bel-Air, a stronghold of opposition to Martelly. The demonstrators proceeded east through the commune of Delmas and then southeast into Pétionville, a suburb in the hills where many of the elite live, including President Martelly, although several impoverished neighborhoods--such as Jalousie, where residents live precariously on a hillside--are also in the Pétionville commune. Some people presumed to be Martelly supporters fired into the air when the march entered Pétionville, and other counter-demonstrators threw stones at the marchers from rooftops, scattering street vendors and passersby along with the protesters. The Corps for Intervention and the Maintenance of Order (CIMO) of the Haitian National Police (PNH) then used tear gas to disperse the march.
The demonstration regrouped and headed back into Port-au-Prince, attempting to gather in the city center at the Champ de Mars park and the ruins of the National Palace, which was destroyed in a January 2010 earthquake. CIMO agents again used tear gas to break up the demonstration. (New York Times 11/7/13 from AP; AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/8/13)
Earlier in the week, about 100 protesters, mostly university students, burned tires and hurled stones at police outside the presidential offices on Nov. 4 as US education secretary Arne Duncan met with President Martelly. The students were protesting classroom conditions. One told the Associated Press wire service that his school had no library, classrooms had no lights and teachers rarely arrived at their classes. (NYT 11/4/13 from AP) Also on Nov. 4, professors ended a strike at the State University of Haiti (UEH), whose various schools are scattered around downtown Port-au-Prince. The professors began their job action on Oct. 15 to demand a salary increase; they are also seeking a more modern structure for the UEH’s administration. “The professors have other forms of struggle, even if the strike has ended,” Professor Luné Roc Pierre Louis told reporters. (AlterPresse 11/5/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, US/immigration
South of the Border, Mining Is King (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4543-south-of-the-border-mining-is-king
Chile torture survivor in landmark legal victory
http://ww4report.com/node/12676#comment-451815
Paraguay pressed on indigenous land restitution
http://ww4report.com/node/12750
Brazil judge suspends construction on Amazon dam
http://ww4report.com/node/12573#comment-451811
Brazil-Venezuela: Yanomami Denounce Illegal Miners and Lack of Health Care
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4544-brazil-venezuela-yanomami-denounce-illegal-miners-and-lack-of-health-care
Bolivia ready for nuclear power: Evo Morales
http://ww4report.com/node/12743
Peru: government ultimatum to illegal miners
http://ww4report.com/node/12746
Cajamarca: Conga occupation not moved (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12745
Cuzco: unrest over water mega-diversion (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12744
Ecuador mineral zone militarized
http://ww4report.com/node/12161#comment-451813
Bogotá and FARC sign deal on political guarantees (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12749
Colombia court strikes down military justice law
http://ww4report.com/node/12748
Colombia: mine opponents assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12747
Colombia: Black Communities in Cauca Peacefully Occupy Government Offices
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4546-colombia-black-communities-in-cauca-peacefully-occupy-government-offices
New Documents Show Venezuela Has Been Key US Spying Target
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10144
Panama ups ante in Nicaragua canal race
http://ww4report.com/node/1275
US Lawmakers Lobby for Right-wing and US Intervention in Honduran, Salvadoran Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4550-us-lawmakers-lobby-for-right-wing-and-us-intervention-in-honduran-salvadoran-elections
Honduras Votes
http://www.thenation.com/article/177028/honduras-votes
New Report Highlights Rising Poverty and Inequality in Honduras
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/rising-inequality-in-honduras
Where Will the Children Play? Neoliberal Militarization in Pre-Election Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4542-where-will-the-children-play-neoliberal-militarization-in-pre-election-honduras
Nueva Esperanza, Honduras: Against the Same Old Neoliberal Agenda
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4545-nueva-esperanza-honduras-against-the-same-old-neoliberal-agenda
Study Finds Link Between Land Grabs and Sexual Violence Against Q´eqchís Women (Guatemala)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11059
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
Guatemala: Ríos Montt Trial Delay is a Letdown to Genocide Victims
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4547-guatemala-rios-montt-trial-delay-is-a-letdown-to-genocide-victims
Mexico Forced Displacement on OAS Agenda (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexico-forced-displacement-on-oas-agenda/
Mexico judge suspends Wirikuta mineral leases
http://ww4report.com/node/9944#comment-451814
New GMO Crops Temporarily Blocked in Mexico
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10935
Who Killed the Capo? (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/who-killed-the-capo/
Remembering Brad Will in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4549-remembering-brad-will-in-mexico
In Bed with the Bully—Consensual U.S. Surveillance in Mexico
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/7/bed-bully%E2%80%94consensual-us-surveillance-mexico
The Border Patrol’s Out-of-Control Growth (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/5/border-patrol%E2%80%99s-out-control-growth
Book Review: History's Sinkhole (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/6/book-review-historys-sinkhole
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, November 4, 2013
WNU #1198: Indigenous Mexican Schoolteacher Released
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1198, November 3, 2013
1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a schoolteacher from the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, was freed from imprisonment on Oct. 31 after receiving a pardon that day from President Enrique Peña Nieto. Patishtán had been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in Chiapas’ El Bosque municipality in June of that year [see Update #1192]. He has consistently maintained his innocence. Human rights activists in Mexico and around the world demonstrated and petitioned for his release, charging that the teacher was being persecuted as an indigenous Tzotzil activist and a supporter of the leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Patishtán’s pardon was the first granted under a change to the penal code allowing presidential pardons “when there are consistent indications of grave human rights violations.” President Peña Nieto, from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), announced his plan for the pardon on Oct. 29, one day before the new regulations were to take effect. A presidential pardon was the only option for freeing Patishtán after a federal court in Chiapas turned down his appeal on Sept. 12. Although he accepted the pardon, Patishtán had refused to ask for it, saying the government should ask him to be forgiven for its treatment of him.
Patishtán received the pardon while in the National Institute of Neurology in Mexico City; he had been transferred there from prison to undergo radiation treatment for a brain tumor discovered last year. After his release, two of his children and one grandchild accompanied Patishtán to a press conference at the offices of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Services and Consultancy for Peace (SERAPAZ). “From the first day I arrived at the prison, I felt free,” he told supporters and journalists. “Some people ask me: what sustains you so that you never stop laughing, and I tell them: it’s because I have a clear conscience.” (Washington Post 10/31/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/1/13)
*2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, announced on Oct. 31 that it was temporarily halting work on its unfinished Pascua Lama gold and silver mine high in the Andes on the Chilean-Argentine border. The only operations at the mine will be those required for compliance with environmental protection laws, according to the company, which said resumption of work would depend on costs and the outlook for gold prices. The projected cost of the massive mine, which was originally set to open in the second half of 2014, has risen from $3 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion now. Barrick is short of cash after a dramatic drop in international gold prices in the spring; gold is currently selling for 20% less than it was a year ago. Barrick is cutting 1,850 jobs and is said to be considering the possibility of selling an interest in Pascua Lama, on which it has spent $5.4 billion to date.
The Pascua Lama project was already stalled because of environmental lawsuits in Chile, where the courts suspended construction in April because of problems the work had caused to water supplies in the area of the mine [see Update #1188]. On Oct. 11 the company faced a new setback when the appeals court in Chile’s northern Antofagasta region agreed to examine another legal action charging that the mine is causing environmental damage and compromising the quality of life for local residents. (Reuters 10/11/13; Bloomberg 10/31/13)
Mining companies, which are major consumers of energy, are also facing problems with environmental challenges to hydroelectric projects in Chile. As of late October the appeals court in Coyhaique province, in the southern region of Aysén, had issued a temporary order blocking work at a $733 million hydroelectric dam on the Cuervo river. The government granted an environmental permit for the project in September, but the government’s own environmental prosecutor appealed, saying the permit wasn’t legal. Opponents charge that the dam will harm the environment and will pose a risk because of its location on a fault line. The Supreme Court had temporarily halted work on the dam in May 2012 on the grounds that the owners, Australian-based Origin Energy and the Anglo-Swiss Glencore Xstrata PLC, failed to file a required soil study with the National Geology and Mining Service [see World War 4 Report 5/14/12]. (Reuters 10/25/13)
*3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly voted 188-2 on Oct. 29 to condemn the 53-year-old US economic embargo of Cuba. This was the 22nd year in a row that the General Assembly has passed a resolution rejecting the US policy. Israel and the US were the only countries to oppose the resolution, which was presented by Cuba; last year Palau backed the US, but this year it abstained, along with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki defended the US position, saying: "We don't feel that this annual debate in the United Nations does anything to add to or advance a constructive discussion about these issues.” Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed by the General Assembly have no binding force.
Speaking at the General Assembly, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez asked what had happened to the “change” that US president Barack Obama had promised during his 2008 electoral campaign. According to the Cuban government, the Obama administration has tightened some sanctions, especially the ones relating to banking, although it has relaxed limitations on travel to the island; more than 350,000 Cuban Americans and 98,000 other US citizens visited last year. The two governments are continuing direct negotiations on immigration, postal service and strategies for responding to natural disasters, but the US government seems uninterested in other measures to normalize relations. (CBS News 10/29/13; Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 10/29/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/30/13 from correspondent)
On Nov. 1 Mexican finance secretary Luis Videgaray announced that Cuba and Mexico had reached an agreement on a $487 million debt the Cuban government contracted more than 15 years ago. Mexico will forgive 70% of the debt and Cuba will commit to repay the rest over the next 10 years to settle the issue, which has caused some friction between the governments. Videgaray said the two countries would sign a formal agreement during Cuban foreign minister’s Rodríguez’s current visit to Mexico. (LJ 11/2/13)
*4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
The torture death of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena near Guadalajara in the western Mexican state of Jalisco in February 1985 was linked to drug running by the US-backed “contra” rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua, according to two former DEA agents and a former pilot for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camarena was kidnapped by criminals working for Rafael Caro Quintero, a founder of the so-called Guadalajara Cartel, and was executed at one of Caro Quintero’s ranches. According to the US, the cartel targeted Camarena because he had uncovered Caro Quintero’s marijuana growing and processing operation. Under pressure from the US, the Mexican government eventually captured Caro Quintero and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for Camarena’s murder.
The new allegations appeared on an Oct. 10 broadcast by the rightwing US-based Fox television network and in an Oct. 12 article published by the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso. Both reports were based on interviews with Phil Jordan, an ex-director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez, who said he directed the investigation of Camarena’s death; and Tosh Plumlee, who worked as a pilot for SETCO, a CIA-linked airline that flew military supplies to the contras. It isn’t clear why Fox chose to air the allegations now, but attention on the Camarena murder increased after a Mexican judge released Caro Quintero from prison on a technicality on Aug. 9 of this year.
According to the Fox and Proceso reports, CIA operatives had infiltrated Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), many of whose agents provided protection for Caro Quintero’s criminal activities in the 1980s, including the Camarena kidnapping and murder. CIA infiltrators were present when the DEA agent was killed, the reports allege. “I was told by Mexican authorities…that CIA operatives were in there,” Jordan said to Fox News. “Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.” Ex-DEA agent Berrellez gave Proceso the name of at least one CIA operative he claimed was involved. “Two witnesses identified Félix Ismael Rodríguez,” he said.
The Cuban-born Rodríguez was a long-time US agent who was active in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in the Vietnam war and in the October 1967 execution of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara in Bolivia. In the middle 1980s Rodríguez was in El Salvador working with another Cuban-born agent, Luis Posada Carriles, supplying contra operations [see Update #1185]. According to the Proceso report, Rodríguez introduced the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros to the Guadalajara cartel. Matta allegedly used his Colombian connections to supply cocaine to the cartel, with the complicity of the CIA, which received part of the money and used it to supply arms and other military equipment to the contras. The reason for Camarena’s murder, according to Proceso, was that Camarena had “discovered that his own government was collaborating with Mexican narco trafficking in its illicit business.”
The CIA denies the accusations. “[I]t’s ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a US federal agent or the escape of his killer,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News on Oct. 10.
A number of sources reported in the 1980s and early 1990s that the contras were funded in part through drug sales with the help or complicity of the CIA. In 1998 CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz told Congress that the CIA “worked with a variety of ...assets [and] pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.” The “CIA had an operational interest” in the contras and “did nothing to stop” the drug trafficking, Hitz said. Mainstream US media generally avoided the subject. In 1996 the Mercury News of San Jose, California, ran a series linking the contras to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, but the paper later repudiated the articles. The reporter, Gary Webb, lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again. He died in December 2004, an apparent suicide [see Update #777]. (Fox News 10/10/13; Proceso 10/12/13; El País (Madrid) 10/15/13)
Correction: This item originally read that Caro Quintero had been sentenced to 60 years in prison; the correct number is 40.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Rejects the Extractive Model in the Streets
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10983
Latin America: Report from the II Continental Summit on Indigenous Communication
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4532-latin-america-report-from-the-ii-continental-summit-on-indigenous-communication
Brazilian Judge Halts Belo Monte Dam Construction, Temporarily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4540-brazilian-judge-halts-belo-monte-dam-construction-temporarily
Bolivia: The Politics of Extractivism (Bolivia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4536-bolivia-the-politics-of-extractivism
The Road to Everywhere: The Geopolitics of the TIPNIS Conflict (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/10/30/clacs-student-blog%E2%80%94-road-everywhere-geopolitics-tipnis-conflict
Bolivia: indigenous power at issue in hunger strike
http://ww4report.com/node/12735
The Costs of the War System and the Economic Predicament of Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/1/costs-war-system-and-economic-predicament-colombia
Venezuela’s Maduro Denounces Twitter Attack as Thousands of Pro-Government Accounts Suspended
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
Giving our movements new life — the case of El Salvador
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/giving-movements-new-life-case-el-salvador/
Honduras: Military Police as a Major Electoral Issue
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-military-police-as-a-major-electoral-issue
History on Hold for Victims of Guatemalan Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4533-history-on-hold-for-victims-of-guatemalan-genocidev
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
New convictions in Guatemala disappearance
http://ww4report.com/node/9219#comment-451786
Repressive Memories: Terror, Insurgency, and the Drug War in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4534-repressive-memories-terror-insurgency-and-the-drug-war-in-mexico
Taking the Measure of Mexican President Peña Nieto
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1641
Gov’t and Electrical Workers Reach Agreement on Pensions for 1,400 Workers (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1646
Indigenous Migrants Organize (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/indigenous-migrants-organize/
Tijuana 'super-tunnel' discovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541#comment-451782
Mexico: narcos abduct migrants —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12723
Cuba’s Reforms Favor Foreign Investment, Create Low-Wage Sponge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/31/cuba%E2%80%99s-reforms-favor-foreign-investment-create-low-wage-sponge
In Haiti, Cholera Claims New Victims Daily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4535-in-haiti-cholera-claims-new-victims-daily
Land, Migrants and Poets: The Day of the Dead 2013 (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/land-migrants-and-poets-the-day-of-the-dead-2013/
Calls For Immigration Reform Ramp Up, But What Fuels Migration to U.S.?
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10920
U.S. Snooping Makes It a Neighbourhood Pariah (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4539-us-snooping-makes-it-a-neighbourhood-pariah
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1198, November 3, 2013
1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Imprisoned Chiapas Schoolteacher Released
Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a schoolteacher from the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, was freed from imprisonment on Oct. 31 after receiving a pardon that day from President Enrique Peña Nieto. Patishtán had been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in Chiapas’ El Bosque municipality in June of that year [see Update #1192]. He has consistently maintained his innocence. Human rights activists in Mexico and around the world demonstrated and petitioned for his release, charging that the teacher was being persecuted as an indigenous Tzotzil activist and a supporter of the leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Patishtán’s pardon was the first granted under a change to the penal code allowing presidential pardons “when there are consistent indications of grave human rights violations.” President Peña Nieto, from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), announced his plan for the pardon on Oct. 29, one day before the new regulations were to take effect. A presidential pardon was the only option for freeing Patishtán after a federal court in Chiapas turned down his appeal on Sept. 12. Although he accepted the pardon, Patishtán had refused to ask for it, saying the government should ask him to be forgiven for its treatment of him.
Patishtán received the pardon while in the National Institute of Neurology in Mexico City; he had been transferred there from prison to undergo radiation treatment for a brain tumor discovered last year. After his release, two of his children and one grandchild accompanied Patishtán to a press conference at the offices of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Services and Consultancy for Peace (SERAPAZ). “From the first day I arrived at the prison, I felt free,” he told supporters and journalists. “Some people ask me: what sustains you so that you never stop laughing, and I tell them: it’s because I have a clear conscience.” (Washington Post 10/31/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/1/13)
*2. Chile: Barrick Suspends Pascua Lama Construction
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, announced on Oct. 31 that it was temporarily halting work on its unfinished Pascua Lama gold and silver mine high in the Andes on the Chilean-Argentine border. The only operations at the mine will be those required for compliance with environmental protection laws, according to the company, which said resumption of work would depend on costs and the outlook for gold prices. The projected cost of the massive mine, which was originally set to open in the second half of 2014, has risen from $3 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion now. Barrick is short of cash after a dramatic drop in international gold prices in the spring; gold is currently selling for 20% less than it was a year ago. Barrick is cutting 1,850 jobs and is said to be considering the possibility of selling an interest in Pascua Lama, on which it has spent $5.4 billion to date.
The Pascua Lama project was already stalled because of environmental lawsuits in Chile, where the courts suspended construction in April because of problems the work had caused to water supplies in the area of the mine [see Update #1188]. On Oct. 11 the company faced a new setback when the appeals court in Chile’s northern Antofagasta region agreed to examine another legal action charging that the mine is causing environmental damage and compromising the quality of life for local residents. (Reuters 10/11/13; Bloomberg 10/31/13)
Mining companies, which are major consumers of energy, are also facing problems with environmental challenges to hydroelectric projects in Chile. As of late October the appeals court in Coyhaique province, in the southern region of Aysén, had issued a temporary order blocking work at a $733 million hydroelectric dam on the Cuervo river. The government granted an environmental permit for the project in September, but the government’s own environmental prosecutor appealed, saying the permit wasn’t legal. Opponents charge that the dam will harm the environment and will pose a risk because of its location on a fault line. The Supreme Court had temporarily halted work on the dam in May 2012 on the grounds that the owners, Australian-based Origin Energy and the Anglo-Swiss Glencore Xstrata PLC, failed to file a required soil study with the National Geology and Mining Service [see World War 4 Report 5/14/12]. (Reuters 10/25/13)
*3. Cuba: UN Issues 22nd Condemnation of US Embargo
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly voted 188-2 on Oct. 29 to condemn the 53-year-old US economic embargo of Cuba. This was the 22nd year in a row that the General Assembly has passed a resolution rejecting the US policy. Israel and the US were the only countries to oppose the resolution, which was presented by Cuba; last year Palau backed the US, but this year it abstained, along with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki defended the US position, saying: "We don't feel that this annual debate in the United Nations does anything to add to or advance a constructive discussion about these issues.” Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed by the General Assembly have no binding force.
Speaking at the General Assembly, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez asked what had happened to the “change” that US president Barack Obama had promised during his 2008 electoral campaign. According to the Cuban government, the Obama administration has tightened some sanctions, especially the ones relating to banking, although it has relaxed limitations on travel to the island; more than 350,000 Cuban Americans and 98,000 other US citizens visited last year. The two governments are continuing direct negotiations on immigration, postal service and strategies for responding to natural disasters, but the US government seems uninterested in other measures to normalize relations. (CBS News 10/29/13; Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 10/29/13 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/30/13 from correspondent)
On Nov. 1 Mexican finance secretary Luis Videgaray announced that Cuba and Mexico had reached an agreement on a $487 million debt the Cuban government contracted more than 15 years ago. Mexico will forgive 70% of the debt and Cuba will commit to repay the rest over the next 10 years to settle the issue, which has caused some friction between the governments. Videgaray said the two countries would sign a formal agreement during Cuban foreign minister’s Rodríguez’s current visit to Mexico. (LJ 11/2/13)
*4. Nicaragua: CIA-Contra Drug Charges Resurface
The torture death of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique (“Kiki”) Camarena near Guadalajara in the western Mexican state of Jalisco in February 1985 was linked to drug running by the US-backed “contra” rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua, according to two former DEA agents and a former pilot for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camarena was kidnapped by criminals working for Rafael Caro Quintero, a founder of the so-called Guadalajara Cartel, and was executed at one of Caro Quintero’s ranches. According to the US, the cartel targeted Camarena because he had uncovered Caro Quintero’s marijuana growing and processing operation. Under pressure from the US, the Mexican government eventually captured Caro Quintero and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for Camarena’s murder.
The new allegations appeared on an Oct. 10 broadcast by the rightwing US-based Fox television network and in an Oct. 12 article published by the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso. Both reports were based on interviews with Phil Jordan, an ex-director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez, who said he directed the investigation of Camarena’s death; and Tosh Plumlee, who worked as a pilot for SETCO, a CIA-linked airline that flew military supplies to the contras. It isn’t clear why Fox chose to air the allegations now, but attention on the Camarena murder increased after a Mexican judge released Caro Quintero from prison on a technicality on Aug. 9 of this year.
According to the Fox and Proceso reports, CIA operatives had infiltrated Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), many of whose agents provided protection for Caro Quintero’s criminal activities in the 1980s, including the Camarena kidnapping and murder. CIA infiltrators were present when the DEA agent was killed, the reports allege. “I was told by Mexican authorities…that CIA operatives were in there,” Jordan said to Fox News. “Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.” Ex-DEA agent Berrellez gave Proceso the name of at least one CIA operative he claimed was involved. “Two witnesses identified Félix Ismael Rodríguez,” he said.
The Cuban-born Rodríguez was a long-time US agent who was active in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in the Vietnam war and in the October 1967 execution of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara in Bolivia. In the middle 1980s Rodríguez was in El Salvador working with another Cuban-born agent, Luis Posada Carriles, supplying contra operations [see Update #1185]. According to the Proceso report, Rodríguez introduced the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros to the Guadalajara cartel. Matta allegedly used his Colombian connections to supply cocaine to the cartel, with the complicity of the CIA, which received part of the money and used it to supply arms and other military equipment to the contras. The reason for Camarena’s murder, according to Proceso, was that Camarena had “discovered that his own government was collaborating with Mexican narco trafficking in its illicit business.”
The CIA denies the accusations. “[I]t’s ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a US federal agent or the escape of his killer,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News on Oct. 10.
A number of sources reported in the 1980s and early 1990s that the contras were funded in part through drug sales with the help or complicity of the CIA. In 1998 CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz told Congress that the CIA “worked with a variety of ...assets [and] pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.” The “CIA had an operational interest” in the contras and “did nothing to stop” the drug trafficking, Hitz said. Mainstream US media generally avoided the subject. In 1996 the Mercury News of San Jose, California, ran a series linking the contras to the sale of crack in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, but the paper later repudiated the articles. The reporter, Gary Webb, lost his job at the Mercury News and was never employed by a major newspaper again. He died in December 2004, an apparent suicide [see Update #777]. (Fox News 10/10/13; Proceso 10/12/13; El País (Madrid) 10/15/13)
Correction: This item originally read that Caro Quintero had been sentenced to 60 years in prison; the correct number is 40.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Rejects the Extractive Model in the Streets
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10983
Latin America: Report from the II Continental Summit on Indigenous Communication
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4532-latin-america-report-from-the-ii-continental-summit-on-indigenous-communication
Brazilian Judge Halts Belo Monte Dam Construction, Temporarily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4540-brazilian-judge-halts-belo-monte-dam-construction-temporarily
Bolivia: The Politics of Extractivism (Bolivia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4536-bolivia-the-politics-of-extractivism
The Road to Everywhere: The Geopolitics of the TIPNIS Conflict (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/10/30/clacs-student-blog%E2%80%94-road-everywhere-geopolitics-tipnis-conflict
Bolivia: indigenous power at issue in hunger strike
http://ww4report.com/node/12735
The Costs of the War System and the Economic Predicament of Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/1/costs-war-system-and-economic-predicament-colombia
Venezuela’s Maduro Denounces Twitter Attack as Thousands of Pro-Government Accounts Suspended
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
Giving our movements new life — the case of El Salvador
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/giving-movements-new-life-case-el-salvador/
Honduras: Military Police as a Major Electoral Issue
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-military-police-as-a-major-electoral-issue
History on Hold for Victims of Guatemalan Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4533-history-on-hold-for-victims-of-guatemalan-genocidev
“There is No Amnesty for These Crimes”: Guatemalan Massacre Survivor Anselmo Roldán Kicks Off U.S. Speaking Tour
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4541-there-is-no-amnesty-for-these-crimes-guatemalan-massacre-survivor-anselmo-roldan-kicks-off-us-speaking-tour
New convictions in Guatemala disappearance
http://ww4report.com/node/9219#comment-451786
Repressive Memories: Terror, Insurgency, and the Drug War in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4534-repressive-memories-terror-insurgency-and-the-drug-war-in-mexico
Taking the Measure of Mexican President Peña Nieto
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1641
Gov’t and Electrical Workers Reach Agreement on Pensions for 1,400 Workers (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=217#1646
Indigenous Migrants Organize (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/indigenous-migrants-organize/
Tijuana 'super-tunnel' discovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541#comment-451782
Mexico: narcos abduct migrants —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12723
Cuba’s Reforms Favor Foreign Investment, Create Low-Wage Sponge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/31/cuba%E2%80%99s-reforms-favor-foreign-investment-create-low-wage-sponge
In Haiti, Cholera Claims New Victims Daily
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4535-in-haiti-cholera-claims-new-victims-daily
Land, Migrants and Poets: The Day of the Dead 2013 (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/land-migrants-and-poets-the-day-of-the-dead-2013/
Calls For Immigration Reform Ramp Up, But What Fuels Migration to U.S.?
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10920
U.S. Snooping Makes It a Neighbourhood Pariah (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4539-us-snooping-makes-it-a-neighbourhood-pariah
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
WNU #1197: Haiti’s UN Cholera Spreads to Mexico
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1197, October 27, 2013
1. Latin America: Haiti’s UN Cholera Spreads to Mexico
2. Brazil: Protesters Target Oil Auction, Transit Fare
3. Guatemala: Ruling Opens Way for Ríos Montt Amnesty
4. Haiti: Government Tries to Arrest Opposition Lawyer
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Haiti’s UN Cholera Spreads to Mexico
According to Mexican health authorities, 171 cases of cholera had been confirmed as of Oct. 18 in Mexico City and states north and east of the capital; one person had died from the disease. The outbreak, first identified on Sept. 9, apparently involves the South Asian strain of the cholera bacterium responsible for an epidemic that started in Haiti in October 2010. Scientific studies indicate that poor sanitary conditions at a United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) base used by Nepalese troops caused the outbreak in Haiti, infecting at least 682,573 people as of Oct. 10 this year and causing 8,330 deaths and almost 380,000 hospitalizations.
Mexico is the first mainland country in the Americas to report an outbreak from the South Asian strain. The disease hit the Dominican Republic in November 2010 and had killed 458 people there and sickened 31,070 by Oct. 6 of this year. Cases first appeared in Cuba in 2012; Cuban authorities reported 678 cases and three deaths as of Aug. 23 this year. There have also been isolated cases in Chile, Venezuela, Italy, Germany and Holland, apparently affecting people returning from vacations in Cuba.
People would be vulnerable to infection by the disease in much of Latin America because of poor water supply systems, according to Marcos Espinal, director of the transmittable diseases department of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO, OPS in Spanish). The Central American countries are a special concern, Espinal told the Spanish wire service EFE. The last cholera outbreak in Latin America, in 1991, caused 4,000 or more deaths in 16 countries, with 396,536 people infected, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Haitian and international organizations have unsuccessfully called on the United Nations (UN) to accept its responsibility for introducing the South Asian strain to the hemisphere. Several groups filed a class action suit against the UN in a US federal court on Oct. 9 on behalf of the victims in Haiti [see Update #1195]. (National Public Radio blog 10/23/13; EFE 10/26/13 via Terra Peru)
Correction: In Update #1196 we reported that murdered Guerrero activist Rocío Mesino’s brother was disappeared during the “dirty war” of the 1970s. The person disappeared was her father’s brother.
*2. Brazil: Protesters Target Oil Auction, Transit Fare
Hundreds of Brazilian unionists, teachers, students and leftists held a militant demonstration outside the Windsor Hotel in Rio Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca neighborhood on Oct. 21 to protest an auction being held there for rights to develop the Libra oilfield in the Bay of Santos. Denouncing the auction as a partial privatization of the country’s largest source of petroleum, the demonstrators attempted to invade the hotel, confronting some 1,100 soldiers backed by agents of the National Security Force, and the federal, civil and militarized police. Protesters, some of them masked Black Bloc activists, fought with the agents, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. At least six people were injured, and a vehicle belonging to the Rede Record television network was set on fire.
Later that day, the Black Bloc held a second demonstration on the Rio Branco avenue. The slogan for the action, “A million against the auction and oppression and for education,” linked opposition to the auction with support for local teachers striking for better pay and working conditions [see Update #1195}. Another protest, held the same day in São Paulo, resulted in at least three arrests and attacks on two journalists.
The auction itself proceeded without problems. It ended in just 50 minutes, with the development rights going to a consortium of five companies. Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras (Petróleo Brasileiro S.A.), will have a 40% share in the field’s exploitation, followed by Shell Brasil, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Shell company, with 20%; France’s Total, with 20%; and two Chinese companies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC Limited) and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), with 10% each. The only bid came from this consortium; despite concerns that industrial spying by the US might affect the auction [see Update #1193], no US company bid for the Libra field.
The Brazilian government was “extremely pleased,” with the results, President Dilma Rousseff announced in a brief televised address. “The process initiated today will bring enormous resource to bear for the Brazilian people,” Rousseff said. “Education will gain a windfall.” She denied that privatization was involved in the auction, which brought the government $7 billion immediately and the potential for large royalties in the future. Libra is expected to produce 1.4 millions barrels a day; Brazil’s total production currently is 2.1 million barrels a day. (Adital (Brazil) 10/21/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/22/13 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; Dow Jones 10/22/13)
Opposition to the auction was an issue in a weeklong strike that the Only Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), which includes 14 unions, started against Petrobras on Oct. 17. The union was also demanding a 5% increase in real wages, along with better working conditions, guarantees for contract workers, help with drug prescriptions, and other benefits. The unions claimed 90% adherence to the strike. The job action was suspended on Oct. 23, two days after the auction was completed, with the workers winning an 8.56% wage increase—presumably in nominal wages—along with other benefits. The FUP leadership said local assemblies had approved the suspension. (Adital 10/23/13; TeleSUR 10/24/13)
A three-hour march held in São Paulo on Oct. 25 to demand free public transit turned violent when a group of protesters split off and attacked a bus terminal. Masked protesters, some of them reportedly Black Bloc activists, set a bus on fire and vandalized cash and ticket machines. About 60 people were arrested, according to the local press. The march was called by the Free Pass Movement (MPL), a group whose protests against high transit costs helped spark massive nationwide demonstrations in June [see Update #1182]. Also on Oct. 25, President Rousseff announced a $2.4 billion program for improving the São Paulo’s public transit. (BBC News 10/25/13; La Tercera (Chile) 10/25/13 from AFP)
*3. Guatemala: Ruling Opens Way for Ríos Montt Amnesty
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court (CC) voted 5-2 on Oct. 22 to issue a ruling that could lead to amnesty for former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83), who faces charges of genocide for the killings of 1,771 indigenous Ixil from March 1982 to August 1983 in a counterinsurgency campaign he headed. The CC ordered the trial judge, High Risk Cases Court judge Carol Patricia Flores Polanco, to rule on defense lawyers’ motion for a dismissal of the charges based on Decree 8-86, a 1986 blanket amnesty for all crimes committed by the Guatemala military and leftist rebels during Guatemala’s civil war, which started in 1960.
Judge Flores’ court convicted Ríos Montt on the genocide charges on May 10 of this year and sentenced the former dictator to 80 years in prison, but the CC set the conviction aside 10 days later on a technicality and ordered a new trial [see Update #1178].
Human rights groups denounced the CC’s Oct. 22 ruling as a transparent attempt to dismiss the case against Ríos Montt. Decree 8-86’s validity is questionable. It was issued by dictator Gen. Humberto Mejía Víctores (1983-86) shortly before he ceded power to newly elected president Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (1986-1991). According to the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), the decree violates Guatemala’s international treaty commitments and in any case was superseded by a later amnesty in the National Reconciliation Law of 1996, passed as part of the process that ended the civil war. The 1996 law’s Article 8 specifies that the “extinction of penal responsibility referred to in this law will not be applicable to the crimes of genocide, torture and forced disappearance.” (El País (Madrid) 10/23/13 from correspondent; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/23/13 from EFE; Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) blog 10/23/13)
*4. Haiti: Government Tries to Arrest Opposition Lawyer
A failed attempt by Haitian police to search the car of a prominent lawyer, André Michel, the evening of Oct. 22 quickly turned into an embarrassment for the government of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”). Riot police stopped Michel in the capital’s Martissant neighborhood after 6 pm, in violation of a constitutional ban on nighttime arrests except in cases of active crimes. Joined by Port-au-Prince Government Commissioner Francisco René, the city’s chief prosecutor, the agents tried to search Michel’s car. A crowd of local residents gathered to protect the attorney. The agents dispersed the crowd with tear gas and took Michel to the police headquarters, where he spent the night.
Protests broke out in the downtown area the next morning, with several dozen youths throwing rocks and burning tires. Michel was taken to a judge who tried to send him to prison, but protesters and fellow attorneys removed Michel from the courthouse to the bar association office. In the afternoon three senators, who as legislators have immunity from arrest, took the lawyer under their protection. As of Oct. 24 Michel was still free and giving interviews to the media.
Michel represents the plaintiffs in a case charging President Martelly’s wife, Sophia Martelly, and his son, Olivier Martelly, with corruption. Judge Lamarre Bélizaire, who is close to the government, issued an order on July 26 for Michel to appear in court, but the attorney ignored the order [see Update #1188]. He kept a low profile for two months, but then participated in two large anti-government demonstrations starting on Sept. 30. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/23/13; Miami Herald 10/23/13 from correspondent; New York Times 10/24/13 from AP)
The incident with Michel coincided with the Oct. 23 release of a statement by the French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) about threats to radio journalist Jean Monard Métellus, host of the popular weekly political talk show “Ranmase” (“Wrap Up”). Justice Minister Jean Renel Sanon had warned on Oct. 19 of reports about a contract for Métellus to be killed by two motorcycle hit men for $10,000. RSF said “protection needs to materialize quickly, just as a rapid investigation into the origin of the threats is also needed.” Dozens of people demonstrated outside Radio Télévision Caraïbes (RTVC), the station where Métellus works, on Oct. 25 to show their support for the journalist and their opposition to the government. “We’re facing a power which is in the process of constructing a dictatorship in the country,” warned Marie France Claude, a member of the Haitian Christian Democratic Party (PDCH). Opposition representatives regularly voice harsh criticisms of the government on “Ranmase,” although government ministers also appear on the program. (AlterPresse 10/26/13; MH 10/23/13 from correspondent)
In other news, a report released by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) on Oct. 16 confirmed earlier reports that management at Haiti’s 24 garment assembly plants circumvents the current 300 gourde a day (about $6.85) minimum wage requirement by setting unrealistically high quotas for piece work [see Update #1179]. “The majority of Haitian garment workers are being denied nearly a third of the wages they are legally due as a result of the factories’ theft of their income,” according to the report. The offenders include the Caracol Industrial Park (PIC) in northern Haiti, built in part with aid from the US ostensibly intended to help the country recover after a January 2010 earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti. (NYT 10/16/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada, US/immigration
Chile: Police Special Forces Evict Mapuche Community From Contested Lands
http://intercontinentalcry.org/chile-police-special-forces-evict-mapuche-community-contested-lands-20858/
Chile: Time for Starbucks to Stop Union Busting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4528-chile-time-for-starbucks-to-stop-union-busting
Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 2, Resistance, Past and Present
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/24/chile%E2%80%99s-40-year-anniversary-photos-part-2-resistance-past-and-present
Brazil: deadly prison riot sets off angry protests
http://ww4report.com/node/12714
US Speaking Tour - From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4523-us-speaking-tour-from-the-mines-to-the-streets-a-bolivian-activists-life
Indigenous Language Recovery in Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/12704
Colombia-Ecuador: Serious Revelations About Spraying Glyphosate on the Border
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4526-colombia-ecuador-serious-revelations-about-spraying-glyphosate-on-the-border
Colombia: Paramilitary Group Threatens Indigenous Protesters with ‘Social Cleansing’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4520-colombia-paramilitary-group-threatens-indigenous-protesters-with-social-cleansing
This Is Peace: "Walking The Word" in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4527-this-is-peace-qwalking-the-wordq-in-colombia
Opposition Use Presidential Security Decree to Label Venezuelan Government “Dictatorial”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4525-opposition-use-presidential-security-decree-to-label-venezuelan-government-dictatorial
AULA Blog on Venezuela Gets It Wrong
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/aula-blog-on-venezuela-gets-it-wrong
5 Ongoing Media Myths about Nicaragua and Reagan
http://quixote.org/5-ongoing-media-myths-about-nicaragua-and-reagan
The Return of the Nicaraguan Revolution
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19543-the-return-of-the-nicaraguan-revolution
Honduras Elections: Violent Attacks Against Opposition Candidates Provoke Increasing Concern
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-elections-violent-attacks-against-opposition-candidates-provoke-increasing-concern
Chixoy Dam Justice And Reparations Delayed: 31.5 Years And Counting (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4521-chixoy-dam-justice-and-reparations-delayed-315-years-and-counting
Mexico: San Sebastián Bachajón, Six Months after the Assassination of Juan Vázquez Guzmán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4524-mexico-san-sebastian-bachajon-six-months-after-the-assassination-of-juan-vazquez-guzman
An Extermination of Social Leaders (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/an-extermination-of-social-leaders/
Anabel Hernández: Mexico's new narco order
http://ww4report.com/node/12707
Tijuana kingpin killed by gunman in clown costume
http://ww4report.com/node/12521#comment-451748
NSA Spy Revelations Show Need to Recast US-Mexico Security Programs
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10955
IOM Reports Big Drop in IDP Population after Removing 3 Areas from “Official” Camp List (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/iom-reports-big-drop-in-idp-population-after-removing-3-areas-from-official-camp-list
Forced Evictions in Haiti's Top-Down Post-Earthquake Reconstruction
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/23/forced-evictions-haitis-top-down-post-earthquake-reconstruction
30 years on: The legacy of Reagan's invasion of Grenada
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/25/invasion-grenadaronaldreagan.html
Activists Turn to Direct Action (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/activists-turn-to-direct-action/
Until the president stops deportations, we will stop them ourselves (US/immigration)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/president-stops-deportations-will-stop-ourselves/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1197, October 27, 2013
1. Latin America: Haiti’s UN Cholera Spreads to Mexico
2. Brazil: Protesters Target Oil Auction, Transit Fare
3. Guatemala: Ruling Opens Way for Ríos Montt Amnesty
4. Haiti: Government Tries to Arrest Opposition Lawyer
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Haiti’s UN Cholera Spreads to Mexico
According to Mexican health authorities, 171 cases of cholera had been confirmed as of Oct. 18 in Mexico City and states north and east of the capital; one person had died from the disease. The outbreak, first identified on Sept. 9, apparently involves the South Asian strain of the cholera bacterium responsible for an epidemic that started in Haiti in October 2010. Scientific studies indicate that poor sanitary conditions at a United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) base used by Nepalese troops caused the outbreak in Haiti, infecting at least 682,573 people as of Oct. 10 this year and causing 8,330 deaths and almost 380,000 hospitalizations.
Mexico is the first mainland country in the Americas to report an outbreak from the South Asian strain. The disease hit the Dominican Republic in November 2010 and had killed 458 people there and sickened 31,070 by Oct. 6 of this year. Cases first appeared in Cuba in 2012; Cuban authorities reported 678 cases and three deaths as of Aug. 23 this year. There have also been isolated cases in Chile, Venezuela, Italy, Germany and Holland, apparently affecting people returning from vacations in Cuba.
People would be vulnerable to infection by the disease in much of Latin America because of poor water supply systems, according to Marcos Espinal, director of the transmittable diseases department of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO, OPS in Spanish). The Central American countries are a special concern, Espinal told the Spanish wire service EFE. The last cholera outbreak in Latin America, in 1991, caused 4,000 or more deaths in 16 countries, with 396,536 people infected, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Haitian and international organizations have unsuccessfully called on the United Nations (UN) to accept its responsibility for introducing the South Asian strain to the hemisphere. Several groups filed a class action suit against the UN in a US federal court on Oct. 9 on behalf of the victims in Haiti [see Update #1195]. (National Public Radio blog 10/23/13; EFE 10/26/13 via Terra Peru)
Correction: In Update #1196 we reported that murdered Guerrero activist Rocío Mesino’s brother was disappeared during the “dirty war” of the 1970s. The person disappeared was her father’s brother.
*2. Brazil: Protesters Target Oil Auction, Transit Fare
Hundreds of Brazilian unionists, teachers, students and leftists held a militant demonstration outside the Windsor Hotel in Rio Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca neighborhood on Oct. 21 to protest an auction being held there for rights to develop the Libra oilfield in the Bay of Santos. Denouncing the auction as a partial privatization of the country’s largest source of petroleum, the demonstrators attempted to invade the hotel, confronting some 1,100 soldiers backed by agents of the National Security Force, and the federal, civil and militarized police. Protesters, some of them masked Black Bloc activists, fought with the agents, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. At least six people were injured, and a vehicle belonging to the Rede Record television network was set on fire.
Later that day, the Black Bloc held a second demonstration on the Rio Branco avenue. The slogan for the action, “A million against the auction and oppression and for education,” linked opposition to the auction with support for local teachers striking for better pay and working conditions [see Update #1195}. Another protest, held the same day in São Paulo, resulted in at least three arrests and attacks on two journalists.
The auction itself proceeded without problems. It ended in just 50 minutes, with the development rights going to a consortium of five companies. Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras (Petróleo Brasileiro S.A.), will have a 40% share in the field’s exploitation, followed by Shell Brasil, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Shell company, with 20%; France’s Total, with 20%; and two Chinese companies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC Limited) and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), with 10% each. The only bid came from this consortium; despite concerns that industrial spying by the US might affect the auction [see Update #1193], no US company bid for the Libra field.
The Brazilian government was “extremely pleased,” with the results, President Dilma Rousseff announced in a brief televised address. “The process initiated today will bring enormous resource to bear for the Brazilian people,” Rousseff said. “Education will gain a windfall.” She denied that privatization was involved in the auction, which brought the government $7 billion immediately and the potential for large royalties in the future. Libra is expected to produce 1.4 millions barrels a day; Brazil’s total production currently is 2.1 million barrels a day. (Adital (Brazil) 10/21/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/22/13 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; Dow Jones 10/22/13)
Opposition to the auction was an issue in a weeklong strike that the Only Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), which includes 14 unions, started against Petrobras on Oct. 17. The union was also demanding a 5% increase in real wages, along with better working conditions, guarantees for contract workers, help with drug prescriptions, and other benefits. The unions claimed 90% adherence to the strike. The job action was suspended on Oct. 23, two days after the auction was completed, with the workers winning an 8.56% wage increase—presumably in nominal wages—along with other benefits. The FUP leadership said local assemblies had approved the suspension. (Adital 10/23/13; TeleSUR 10/24/13)
A three-hour march held in São Paulo on Oct. 25 to demand free public transit turned violent when a group of protesters split off and attacked a bus terminal. Masked protesters, some of them reportedly Black Bloc activists, set a bus on fire and vandalized cash and ticket machines. About 60 people were arrested, according to the local press. The march was called by the Free Pass Movement (MPL), a group whose protests against high transit costs helped spark massive nationwide demonstrations in June [see Update #1182]. Also on Oct. 25, President Rousseff announced a $2.4 billion program for improving the São Paulo’s public transit. (BBC News 10/25/13; La Tercera (Chile) 10/25/13 from AFP)
*3. Guatemala: Ruling Opens Way for Ríos Montt Amnesty
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court (CC) voted 5-2 on Oct. 22 to issue a ruling that could lead to amnesty for former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83), who faces charges of genocide for the killings of 1,771 indigenous Ixil from March 1982 to August 1983 in a counterinsurgency campaign he headed. The CC ordered the trial judge, High Risk Cases Court judge Carol Patricia Flores Polanco, to rule on defense lawyers’ motion for a dismissal of the charges based on Decree 8-86, a 1986 blanket amnesty for all crimes committed by the Guatemala military and leftist rebels during Guatemala’s civil war, which started in 1960.
Judge Flores’ court convicted Ríos Montt on the genocide charges on May 10 of this year and sentenced the former dictator to 80 years in prison, but the CC set the conviction aside 10 days later on a technicality and ordered a new trial [see Update #1178].
Human rights groups denounced the CC’s Oct. 22 ruling as a transparent attempt to dismiss the case against Ríos Montt. Decree 8-86’s validity is questionable. It was issued by dictator Gen. Humberto Mejía Víctores (1983-86) shortly before he ceded power to newly elected president Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (1986-1991). According to the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), the decree violates Guatemala’s international treaty commitments and in any case was superseded by a later amnesty in the National Reconciliation Law of 1996, passed as part of the process that ended the civil war. The 1996 law’s Article 8 specifies that the “extinction of penal responsibility referred to in this law will not be applicable to the crimes of genocide, torture and forced disappearance.” (El País (Madrid) 10/23/13 from correspondent; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/23/13 from EFE; Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) blog 10/23/13)
*4. Haiti: Government Tries to Arrest Opposition Lawyer
A failed attempt by Haitian police to search the car of a prominent lawyer, André Michel, the evening of Oct. 22 quickly turned into an embarrassment for the government of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”). Riot police stopped Michel in the capital’s Martissant neighborhood after 6 pm, in violation of a constitutional ban on nighttime arrests except in cases of active crimes. Joined by Port-au-Prince Government Commissioner Francisco René, the city’s chief prosecutor, the agents tried to search Michel’s car. A crowd of local residents gathered to protect the attorney. The agents dispersed the crowd with tear gas and took Michel to the police headquarters, where he spent the night.
Protests broke out in the downtown area the next morning, with several dozen youths throwing rocks and burning tires. Michel was taken to a judge who tried to send him to prison, but protesters and fellow attorneys removed Michel from the courthouse to the bar association office. In the afternoon three senators, who as legislators have immunity from arrest, took the lawyer under their protection. As of Oct. 24 Michel was still free and giving interviews to the media.
Michel represents the plaintiffs in a case charging President Martelly’s wife, Sophia Martelly, and his son, Olivier Martelly, with corruption. Judge Lamarre Bélizaire, who is close to the government, issued an order on July 26 for Michel to appear in court, but the attorney ignored the order [see Update #1188]. He kept a low profile for two months, but then participated in two large anti-government demonstrations starting on Sept. 30. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/23/13; Miami Herald 10/23/13 from correspondent; New York Times 10/24/13 from AP)
The incident with Michel coincided with the Oct. 23 release of a statement by the French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) about threats to radio journalist Jean Monard Métellus, host of the popular weekly political talk show “Ranmase” (“Wrap Up”). Justice Minister Jean Renel Sanon had warned on Oct. 19 of reports about a contract for Métellus to be killed by two motorcycle hit men for $10,000. RSF said “protection needs to materialize quickly, just as a rapid investigation into the origin of the threats is also needed.” Dozens of people demonstrated outside Radio Télévision Caraïbes (RTVC), the station where Métellus works, on Oct. 25 to show their support for the journalist and their opposition to the government. “We’re facing a power which is in the process of constructing a dictatorship in the country,” warned Marie France Claude, a member of the Haitian Christian Democratic Party (PDCH). Opposition representatives regularly voice harsh criticisms of the government on “Ranmase,” although government ministers also appear on the program. (AlterPresse 10/26/13; MH 10/23/13 from correspondent)
In other news, a report released by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) on Oct. 16 confirmed earlier reports that management at Haiti’s 24 garment assembly plants circumvents the current 300 gourde a day (about $6.85) minimum wage requirement by setting unrealistically high quotas for piece work [see Update #1179]. “The majority of Haitian garment workers are being denied nearly a third of the wages they are legally due as a result of the factories’ theft of their income,” according to the report. The offenders include the Caracol Industrial Park (PIC) in northern Haiti, built in part with aid from the US ostensibly intended to help the country recover after a January 2010 earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti. (NYT 10/16/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada, US/immigration
Chile: Police Special Forces Evict Mapuche Community From Contested Lands
http://intercontinentalcry.org/chile-police-special-forces-evict-mapuche-community-contested-lands-20858/
Chile: Time for Starbucks to Stop Union Busting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4528-chile-time-for-starbucks-to-stop-union-busting
Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 2, Resistance, Past and Present
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/24/chile%E2%80%99s-40-year-anniversary-photos-part-2-resistance-past-and-present
Brazil: deadly prison riot sets off angry protests
http://ww4report.com/node/12714
US Speaking Tour - From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4523-us-speaking-tour-from-the-mines-to-the-streets-a-bolivian-activists-life
Indigenous Language Recovery in Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/12704
Colombia-Ecuador: Serious Revelations About Spraying Glyphosate on the Border
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4526-colombia-ecuador-serious-revelations-about-spraying-glyphosate-on-the-border
Colombia: Paramilitary Group Threatens Indigenous Protesters with ‘Social Cleansing’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4520-colombia-paramilitary-group-threatens-indigenous-protesters-with-social-cleansing
This Is Peace: "Walking The Word" in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4527-this-is-peace-qwalking-the-wordq-in-colombia
Opposition Use Presidential Security Decree to Label Venezuelan Government “Dictatorial”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4525-opposition-use-presidential-security-decree-to-label-venezuelan-government-dictatorial
AULA Blog on Venezuela Gets It Wrong
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/aula-blog-on-venezuela-gets-it-wrong
5 Ongoing Media Myths about Nicaragua and Reagan
http://quixote.org/5-ongoing-media-myths-about-nicaragua-and-reagan
The Return of the Nicaraguan Revolution
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19543-the-return-of-the-nicaraguan-revolution
Honduras Elections: Violent Attacks Against Opposition Candidates Provoke Increasing Concern
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-elections-violent-attacks-against-opposition-candidates-provoke-increasing-concern
Chixoy Dam Justice And Reparations Delayed: 31.5 Years And Counting (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4521-chixoy-dam-justice-and-reparations-delayed-315-years-and-counting
Mexico: San Sebastián Bachajón, Six Months after the Assassination of Juan Vázquez Guzmán
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4524-mexico-san-sebastian-bachajon-six-months-after-the-assassination-of-juan-vazquez-guzman
An Extermination of Social Leaders (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/an-extermination-of-social-leaders/
Anabel Hernández: Mexico's new narco order
http://ww4report.com/node/12707
Tijuana kingpin killed by gunman in clown costume
http://ww4report.com/node/12521#comment-451748
NSA Spy Revelations Show Need to Recast US-Mexico Security Programs
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10955
IOM Reports Big Drop in IDP Population after Removing 3 Areas from “Official” Camp List (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/iom-reports-big-drop-in-idp-population-after-removing-3-areas-from-official-camp-list
Forced Evictions in Haiti's Top-Down Post-Earthquake Reconstruction
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/23/forced-evictions-haitis-top-down-post-earthquake-reconstruction
30 years on: The legacy of Reagan's invasion of Grenada
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/25/invasion-grenadaronaldreagan.html
Activists Turn to Direct Action (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/activists-turn-to-direct-action/
Until the president stops deportations, we will stop them ourselves (US/immigration)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/president-stops-deportations-will-stop-ourselves/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
WNU #1196: Chilean Police Raid Mapuche Community
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1196, October 20, 2013
1. Chile: Special Forces Raid Mapuche Community
2. Mexico: US Spied on Former President Calderón
3. Mexico: Guerrero Campesino Leader Gunned Down
4. Dominican Republic: CARICOM Condemns Anti-Immigrant Ruling
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Special Forces Raid Mapuche Community
Some 300 Chilean police agents carried out a raid on the morning of Oct. 9 at an estate occupied by members of the indigenous Mapuche community of Temucuicui in the southern region of Araucanía. According to community members, agents from the carabineros militarized police destroyed houses and crops, beat residents and ran over sheep with their vehicles, killing 15 animals and injuring many others. At least four people were arrested, including werken (spokesperson) Mijael Carbone Queipul; his wife, Susana Venegas Curinao; werken Jorge Huenchullán; and his brother, who was reportedly wounded by a bullet.
The police operation took place at the Nilontraru estate, which is claimed by landowners René Urban and Luis Valenzuela. The Temucuicui community says the estate is on ancestral Mapuche land, and community members have been living and farming there for two years. Temucuicui residents are actively reclaiming land from estate owners, including estates officially belonging to the landowner Martín Ruf and the Zeit family. These actions have apparently brought reprisals from the government, including a raid on May 23 of this year. Police also attacked community residents on July 23, 2012, shortly after the Mapuche occupied another estate; the agents shot two minors at close range with rubber bullets, provoking outrage and protests in other parts of Chile [see Update #1138, where the landowners’ names are given as “Ruff” and “Seinz”].
Temucuicui werken Jorge Huenchullán traveled to Europe in September and addressed the 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the situation of the Mapuche in Chile. He also presented the Mapuche case in meetings with members of the European Parliament. The Temucuicui community believes that the Oct. 9 raid was the government’s response to Huenchullán’s European visit. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/9/13; UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization) 10/10/13; Adital (Brazil) 10/15/13)
The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile, and the Mapuche organization Meli Wixan Mapu sponsored an indigenous rights march in Santiago on Oct. 12, the official anniversary of the arrival of Spanish colonizer Christopher Columbus in the Americas. “Today is not a day to celebrate,” one protester said. “It is a day to condemn and repudiate all the abuses that we've suffered for more than 500 years.” The march, which drew thousands of indigenous people and their supporters, was peaceful until the end, when some confrontations broke out between police agents and protesters at the corner of Miraflores and Agustinas streets. (CNN Chile 10/12/13; Huffington Post 10/15/13)
Mapuche activists in Melipeuco, a town in Cautín province in Araucanía, won a victory at the beginning of October when the Ingeniería y Construcción Madrid Limitada company withdrew its plan to build a $24 million hydroelectric plant on the Truful-Truful river [see Update #1167]. Mapuche organizations were joined by tourism interests in filing complaints against the plan with the government’s Environmental Evaluation Service (SEA) charging that the dam would compromise the Trayenko area, which is sacred to the Mapuche. (Kaos en la Red 10/8/13)
*2. Mexico: US Spied on Former President Calderón
The US National Security Agency (NSA) hacked into the public email accounts of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) and members of his cabinet, according to an Oct. 20 report in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel; the report was based on a secret NSA document leaked by former US intelligence technician Edward Snowden. This is the second revelation in less than two months about US spying on a Mexican president. On Sept. 1 Brazil’s Globo television network presented other documents leaked by Snowden showing that the NSA intercepted text messages from current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in June 2012, while he was still running for the presidency [see Update #1191]. Former president Calderón, a leader in the center-right National Action Party (PAN), was an exceptionally close ally of the US government.
The US accessed Calderón’s email in an operation codenamed “Flatliquid” and run by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) department. “TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderón’s public email account,” an NSA document reported in May 2010. Since cabinet ministers also used the Presidencia email domain, the NSA now had access to “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability,” the agency reported. It described the president’s office as “a lucrative source.”
Other NSA documents show intensive US spying on the Mexican government. In August 2009, the agency gained access to the emails of officials in the Public Security Secretariat (SSP), a federal ministry which was replaced early this year by the National Security Commission (CNS). An NSA document from 2009 highlights the agency’s “tremendous success” in spying on Mexico and looks forward to “future successes”: “These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning--we intend to go much further against this important target.”
Asked by Der Spiegel to comment, the NSA responded: “We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.” (Der Spiegel 10/20/13 (English language edition))
*3. Mexico: Guerrero Campesino Leader Gunned Down
An unidentified man assassinated Rocío Mesino Mesino, the director of the leftist South Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS), in the early afternoon of Oct. 19 near the community of Mexcaltepec, Atoyac de Alvarez municipality, in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. Mesino was hit by four bullets, apparently from an AK-47 assault rifle. The killer escaped in a vehicle driven by another man; the military and the municipal police searched for the assailants but reported no success.
The killing was carried out in front of dozens of witnesses. Mesino was standing with her sister Nora and other family members at a site where some 60 workers were repairing a bridge damaged in mid-September by the tropical storms Manuel and Ingrid. The OCSS leader, who held a local office from 2009 to 2012 as a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), had opened a canteen for the workers a week before the assassination.
The Mesino family has been the subject of attacks since the time of the federal government’s “dirty war” against Guerrero leftists in the 1970s, when Mesino’s 20-year-old uncle Alberto was disappeared. The Mesinos and other local leaders formed the OCSS on Jan. 14, 1994; a little more than one year later, on June 28, 1995, state police killed 17 OCSS members in what is known as the Aguas Blancas massacre. Rocío Mesino’s father, Hilario Mesino Acosta, was detained by the federal government along with then-OCSS director Benigno Guzmán Martínez for a period in the late 1990s. Her brother Miguel Angel Mesino was held on homicide charges for 10 months in 2003 but was released; three unidentified men gunned him down in broad daylight on Sept. 18, 2005, near the police station in the Atoyac town center [see Update #818]. Rocío Mesino herself was detained on Mar. 13 of this year in connection with the homicide of Victorino Luengas García, who was kidnapped and then murdered in June 2011 in Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero, but Judge Marco Antonio Ordorica released her after six days for lack of evidence.
At least six other leftist leaders have been murdered recently in Guerrero. Arturo Hernández Cardona, Félix Rafael Bandera Román and Angel Román Ramírez, three of the eight leaders of the Iguala Popular Unity, were found dead on June 3, a few days after they were kidnapped near the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. Raymundo Velázquez Flores, director of the Emiliano Zapata Revolutionary Agrarian League, and two colleagues were murdered on Aug. 5 in the outskirts of Coyuca de Benítez. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/20/13)
Correction: Alberto Mesino was originally identified as Rocío Mesino’s brother; he was her father’s brother.
*4. Dominican Republic: CARICOM Condemns Anti-Immigrant Ruling
The Guyana-based Secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an organization of 15 Caribbean countries, issued a statement on Oct. 17 criticizing a ruling by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) that denied citizenship to people born in the country to undocumented immigrant parents [see Update #1194]. Immigrant rights activists say the TC’s Sept. 23 ruling affects more than 200,000 Dominicans, mostly the descendants of Haitian immigrants, and includes people born as early as 1929 who have been recognized as Dominican citizens for more than a half century. The ruling makes people “stateless in violation of international human rights obligations,” the CARICOM statement charged; the Secretariat called on the Dominican government to protect the rights of “those made vulnerable by this ruling and its grievous effects.” Haiti is a CARICOM member; the Dominican government has indicated that it plans to join. (New York Times 10/17/13 from AP)
The ruling has sparked demonstrations in Haiti and at least two protests in New York City, which has large Dominican and Haitian communities. A group called the Haitian Diaspora for Civic and Human Rights (HDCHR) held a protest on Oct. 17 in front of the Dominican consulate in New York. “Stop racism,” “End apartheid,” “No ethnic cleansing” and “There’s genocide in the Dominican Republic” were among the slogans on protesters’ signs. A number of Dominican community organizations endorsed the action, including La Aurora Community Action, the Association of Progressive Women and the Dominican Woman’s Center. About a dozen Dominican activists had held a separate protest earlier in the month in front of Boricua College in Northern Manhattan and announced plans for further demonstrations. (Diario Horizonte (Santo Domingo) 10/4/13; Diario Libre (Santo Domingo) 10/14/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/17/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada
Latin America Builds Momentum Against U.S.-Backed Drug War
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10903
Sustainable Food Systems for Security and Nutrition: The Need for Social Movements (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10938
“The Rise of the Middle Class” in Latin America? The World Bank is Still Tone Deaf After all These Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4514-the-rise-of-the-middle-class-in-latin-america-the-world-bank-is-still-tone-deaf-after-all-these-years
Indigenous March in Chile’s Capital on Columbus Day
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4509--indigenous-march-in-chiles-capital-on-columbus-day
Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 1, Recovering Memories
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/10/chile%E2%80%99s-40-year-anniversary-photos-part-1-recovering-memories
Good News for World Food Day: Suicide Seeds Are Dead… for the moment (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10931
Lawfare: Ecuador’s New Style of Governance?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4515-lawfare-ecuadors-new-style-of-governance
From Intag: An Open Letter to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4512-from-intag-an-open-letter-to-ecuadorian-president-rafael-correa
The Venezuelan Revolution Has Brought Substantial Improvements to Working-Class Neighbourhoods
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4519-the-venezuelan-revolution-has-brought-substantial-improvements-to-working-class-neighbourhoods
Diego de Holguín Boulevard: A Case of Rampant Corruption in El Salvador and One Government’s Quest for Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4511-diego-de-holguin-boulevard-a-case-of-rampant-corruption-in-el-salvador-and-one-governments-quest-for-justice
El Salvador: Activists Struggle to Recover Human Rights Archives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4518-activists-struggle-to-recover-human-rights-archives
Are Honduran Election Polls Reliable?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/are-honduran-election-polls-reliable
Columbus Day, Chiapas Style (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/columbus-day-chiapas-style/
Mexican Federal Court Halts Invasion of Genetically Modified Corn
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10931
U.S. Crisis Unsettles Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/u-s-crisis-unsettles-mexico/
Mexico: Bracero Guestworkers, Unpaid
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4513-mexico-bracero-guestworkers-unpaid
Photo essay: One-year Anniversary of the Death of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/16/photo-essay-one-year-anniversary-death-jos%C3%A9-antonio-elena-rodr%C3%ADguez
Haiti’s Apparel Factories: Reports Find Wage Theft, Sexual Harassment, and Poor Safety and Sanitation Standards
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haitis-apparel-factories-reports-find-wage-theft-sexual-harassment-and-poor-safety-and-sanitation-standards
Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court Against UN over Cholera (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/lawsuit-filed-in-federal-court-against-un-over-cholera
Grenada Preparing Unique Approach to Debt Restructuring
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/16/grenada-preparing-unique-approach-debt-restructuring
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1196, October 20, 2013
1. Chile: Special Forces Raid Mapuche Community
2. Mexico: US Spied on Former President Calderón
3. Mexico: Guerrero Campesino Leader Gunned Down
4. Dominican Republic: CARICOM Condemns Anti-Immigrant Ruling
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Chile: Special Forces Raid Mapuche Community
Some 300 Chilean police agents carried out a raid on the morning of Oct. 9 at an estate occupied by members of the indigenous Mapuche community of Temucuicui in the southern region of Araucanía. According to community members, agents from the carabineros militarized police destroyed houses and crops, beat residents and ran over sheep with their vehicles, killing 15 animals and injuring many others. At least four people were arrested, including werken (spokesperson) Mijael Carbone Queipul; his wife, Susana Venegas Curinao; werken Jorge Huenchullán; and his brother, who was reportedly wounded by a bullet.
The police operation took place at the Nilontraru estate, which is claimed by landowners René Urban and Luis Valenzuela. The Temucuicui community says the estate is on ancestral Mapuche land, and community members have been living and farming there for two years. Temucuicui residents are actively reclaiming land from estate owners, including estates officially belonging to the landowner Martín Ruf and the Zeit family. These actions have apparently brought reprisals from the government, including a raid on May 23 of this year. Police also attacked community residents on July 23, 2012, shortly after the Mapuche occupied another estate; the agents shot two minors at close range with rubber bullets, provoking outrage and protests in other parts of Chile [see Update #1138, where the landowners’ names are given as “Ruff” and “Seinz”].
Temucuicui werken Jorge Huenchullán traveled to Europe in September and addressed the 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the situation of the Mapuche in Chile. He also presented the Mapuche case in meetings with members of the European Parliament. The Temucuicui community believes that the Oct. 9 raid was the government’s response to Huenchullán’s European visit. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/9/13; UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization) 10/10/13; Adital (Brazil) 10/15/13)
The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile, and the Mapuche organization Meli Wixan Mapu sponsored an indigenous rights march in Santiago on Oct. 12, the official anniversary of the arrival of Spanish colonizer Christopher Columbus in the Americas. “Today is not a day to celebrate,” one protester said. “It is a day to condemn and repudiate all the abuses that we've suffered for more than 500 years.” The march, which drew thousands of indigenous people and their supporters, was peaceful until the end, when some confrontations broke out between police agents and protesters at the corner of Miraflores and Agustinas streets. (CNN Chile 10/12/13; Huffington Post 10/15/13)
Mapuche activists in Melipeuco, a town in Cautín province in Araucanía, won a victory at the beginning of October when the Ingeniería y Construcción Madrid Limitada company withdrew its plan to build a $24 million hydroelectric plant on the Truful-Truful river [see Update #1167]. Mapuche organizations were joined by tourism interests in filing complaints against the plan with the government’s Environmental Evaluation Service (SEA) charging that the dam would compromise the Trayenko area, which is sacred to the Mapuche. (Kaos en la Red 10/8/13)
*2. Mexico: US Spied on Former President Calderón
The US National Security Agency (NSA) hacked into the public email accounts of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) and members of his cabinet, according to an Oct. 20 report in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel; the report was based on a secret NSA document leaked by former US intelligence technician Edward Snowden. This is the second revelation in less than two months about US spying on a Mexican president. On Sept. 1 Brazil’s Globo television network presented other documents leaked by Snowden showing that the NSA intercepted text messages from current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in June 2012, while he was still running for the presidency [see Update #1191]. Former president Calderón, a leader in the center-right National Action Party (PAN), was an exceptionally close ally of the US government.
The US accessed Calderón’s email in an operation codenamed “Flatliquid” and run by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) department. “TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderón’s public email account,” an NSA document reported in May 2010. Since cabinet ministers also used the Presidencia email domain, the NSA now had access to “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability,” the agency reported. It described the president’s office as “a lucrative source.”
Other NSA documents show intensive US spying on the Mexican government. In August 2009, the agency gained access to the emails of officials in the Public Security Secretariat (SSP), a federal ministry which was replaced early this year by the National Security Commission (CNS). An NSA document from 2009 highlights the agency’s “tremendous success” in spying on Mexico and looks forward to “future successes”: “These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning--we intend to go much further against this important target.”
Asked by Der Spiegel to comment, the NSA responded: “We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.” (Der Spiegel 10/20/13 (English language edition))
*3. Mexico: Guerrero Campesino Leader Gunned Down
An unidentified man assassinated Rocío Mesino Mesino, the director of the leftist South Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS), in the early afternoon of Oct. 19 near the community of Mexcaltepec, Atoyac de Alvarez municipality, in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. Mesino was hit by four bullets, apparently from an AK-47 assault rifle. The killer escaped in a vehicle driven by another man; the military and the municipal police searched for the assailants but reported no success.
The killing was carried out in front of dozens of witnesses. Mesino was standing with her sister Nora and other family members at a site where some 60 workers were repairing a bridge damaged in mid-September by the tropical storms Manuel and Ingrid. The OCSS leader, who held a local office from 2009 to 2012 as a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), had opened a canteen for the workers a week before the assassination.
The Mesino family has been the subject of attacks since the time of the federal government’s “dirty war” against Guerrero leftists in the 1970s, when Mesino’s 20-year-old uncle Alberto was disappeared. The Mesinos and other local leaders formed the OCSS on Jan. 14, 1994; a little more than one year later, on June 28, 1995, state police killed 17 OCSS members in what is known as the Aguas Blancas massacre. Rocío Mesino’s father, Hilario Mesino Acosta, was detained by the federal government along with then-OCSS director Benigno Guzmán Martínez for a period in the late 1990s. Her brother Miguel Angel Mesino was held on homicide charges for 10 months in 2003 but was released; three unidentified men gunned him down in broad daylight on Sept. 18, 2005, near the police station in the Atoyac town center [see Update #818]. Rocío Mesino herself was detained on Mar. 13 of this year in connection with the homicide of Victorino Luengas García, who was kidnapped and then murdered in June 2011 in Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero, but Judge Marco Antonio Ordorica released her after six days for lack of evidence.
At least six other leftist leaders have been murdered recently in Guerrero. Arturo Hernández Cardona, Félix Rafael Bandera Román and Angel Román Ramírez, three of the eight leaders of the Iguala Popular Unity, were found dead on June 3, a few days after they were kidnapped near the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. Raymundo Velázquez Flores, director of the Emiliano Zapata Revolutionary Agrarian League, and two colleagues were murdered on Aug. 5 in the outskirts of Coyuca de Benítez. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/20/13)
Correction: Alberto Mesino was originally identified as Rocío Mesino’s brother; he was her father’s brother.
*4. Dominican Republic: CARICOM Condemns Anti-Immigrant Ruling
The Guyana-based Secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an organization of 15 Caribbean countries, issued a statement on Oct. 17 criticizing a ruling by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) that denied citizenship to people born in the country to undocumented immigrant parents [see Update #1194]. Immigrant rights activists say the TC’s Sept. 23 ruling affects more than 200,000 Dominicans, mostly the descendants of Haitian immigrants, and includes people born as early as 1929 who have been recognized as Dominican citizens for more than a half century. The ruling makes people “stateless in violation of international human rights obligations,” the CARICOM statement charged; the Secretariat called on the Dominican government to protect the rights of “those made vulnerable by this ruling and its grievous effects.” Haiti is a CARICOM member; the Dominican government has indicated that it plans to join. (New York Times 10/17/13 from AP)
The ruling has sparked demonstrations in Haiti and at least two protests in New York City, which has large Dominican and Haitian communities. A group called the Haitian Diaspora for Civic and Human Rights (HDCHR) held a protest on Oct. 17 in front of the Dominican consulate in New York. “Stop racism,” “End apartheid,” “No ethnic cleansing” and “There’s genocide in the Dominican Republic” were among the slogans on protesters’ signs. A number of Dominican community organizations endorsed the action, including La Aurora Community Action, the Association of Progressive Women and the Dominican Woman’s Center. About a dozen Dominican activists had held a separate protest earlier in the month in front of Boricua College in Northern Manhattan and announced plans for further demonstrations. (Diario Horizonte (Santo Domingo) 10/4/13; Diario Libre (Santo Domingo) 10/14/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/17/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Grenada
Latin America Builds Momentum Against U.S.-Backed Drug War
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10903
Sustainable Food Systems for Security and Nutrition: The Need for Social Movements (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10938
“The Rise of the Middle Class” in Latin America? The World Bank is Still Tone Deaf After all These Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4514-the-rise-of-the-middle-class-in-latin-america-the-world-bank-is-still-tone-deaf-after-all-these-years
Indigenous March in Chile’s Capital on Columbus Day
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4509--indigenous-march-in-chiles-capital-on-columbus-day
Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 1, Recovering Memories
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/10/chile%E2%80%99s-40-year-anniversary-photos-part-1-recovering-memories
Good News for World Food Day: Suicide Seeds Are Dead… for the moment (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10931
Lawfare: Ecuador’s New Style of Governance?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4515-lawfare-ecuadors-new-style-of-governance
From Intag: An Open Letter to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4512-from-intag-an-open-letter-to-ecuadorian-president-rafael-correa
The Venezuelan Revolution Has Brought Substantial Improvements to Working-Class Neighbourhoods
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4519-the-venezuelan-revolution-has-brought-substantial-improvements-to-working-class-neighbourhoods
Diego de Holguín Boulevard: A Case of Rampant Corruption in El Salvador and One Government’s Quest for Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4511-diego-de-holguin-boulevard-a-case-of-rampant-corruption-in-el-salvador-and-one-governments-quest-for-justice
El Salvador: Activists Struggle to Recover Human Rights Archives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4518-activists-struggle-to-recover-human-rights-archives
Are Honduran Election Polls Reliable?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/are-honduran-election-polls-reliable
Columbus Day, Chiapas Style (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/columbus-day-chiapas-style/
Mexican Federal Court Halts Invasion of Genetically Modified Corn
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10931
U.S. Crisis Unsettles Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/u-s-crisis-unsettles-mexico/
Mexico: Bracero Guestworkers, Unpaid
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4513-mexico-bracero-guestworkers-unpaid
Photo essay: One-year Anniversary of the Death of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/16/photo-essay-one-year-anniversary-death-jos%C3%A9-antonio-elena-rodr%C3%ADguez
Haiti’s Apparel Factories: Reports Find Wage Theft, Sexual Harassment, and Poor Safety and Sanitation Standards
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haitis-apparel-factories-reports-find-wage-theft-sexual-harassment-and-poor-safety-and-sanitation-standards
Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court Against UN over Cholera (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/lawsuit-filed-in-federal-court-against-un-over-cholera
Grenada Preparing Unique Approach to Debt Restructuring
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/10/16/grenada-preparing-unique-approach-debt-restructuring
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
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