Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #987, April 26, 2009
1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
On Apr. 14 Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared illegal a strike that the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) has led since July 30, 2007 over safety issues at Grupo México's giant copper mine at Cananea, in the northwestern state of Sonora [see Update #969]. The JFCA ruling cleared the way for the company, owned by billionaire Germán Larrea, to proceed with plans to close the mine and fire all 1,200 workers; it announced the firings the next day. On Apr. 23 the second district judge in labor matters for the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), Antonio Rebollo Torres, issued a temporary injunction suspending the firings and the JFCA decision. [In what was supposed to be a final decision, the JFCA had ruled in the workers’ favor in April 2008; see Update #945.]
The SNTMMSRM responded to Grupo México efforts to fire the Cananea workers by calling on its steelworker members in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, an industrial seaport and steel center on Mexico’s west coast, to take action to block the port. In other cities, such as Taxco, miners blocked highways and seized tollbooths.
The effort to close the mine is the latest development in a three-year struggle between the union and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which has held Mexico’s presidency since 2000 and strongly backs Grupo México. The fight in early 2006 when the federal government officially removed SNTMMSRM head Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, charging him with corruption. Gómez Urrutia, who fled the country, inherited the union leadership position from his father, but many union members consider him effective in fighting for their rights and continue to support him as he directs the SNTMMSRM from Vancouver, British Columbia. The struggle between the union and the government has included a number of strikes and other actions; the strike at Cananea has lasted the longest.
For most of the past two years Grupo México seemed willing to wait out the strike despite large losses. Some analysts think the company is forcing the issue now because of its likely loss of the bankrupt US mining company ASARCO LLC, which owns Southern Copper Corporation (formerly Southern Peru Copper Corporation). Grupo México took over ASARCO in 1999 but lost control when the company went bankrupt. US judges have been ruling against the Mexican company in the proceedings, and on Apr. 22 Judge Richard Schmidt of the US bankruptcy court in Corpus Christi, Texas, approved a plan to sell ASARCO to India's Sterlite Industries for $1.7 billion. There is speculation that Grupo México intends to close the Cananea mine to eliminate the SNTMMSRM and then reopen it more profitably with a new, pro-company union.
The confrontation between the SNTMMSRM and the government is heating up just as Mexican unions plan their traditional massive marches for May 1. On Apr. 22 former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the 2006 presidential candidate of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), led a delegation of senators from the PRD, the Workers Party (PT) and the Convergence to Cananea to express support for the union. López Obrador said he was forming a National Committee of Defense and Solidarity with the Miners of Cananea to help to supply basic necessities and medicine to the strikers and their families. In the past he and the PRD have generally avoided taking strong positions in labor struggles. (Mexican Labor News & Analysis April 2009, Vol. 14, No. 4; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/25/09, 4/26/09; Reuters 4/22/09; Milenio (Mexico) 4/23/09; El Universal (Mexico) 4/23/09)
*2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
Chilean judge formally charged three retired military officers in Santiago on Apr. 20 with the murder of 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in northern Chile on Oct. 19, 1973, near the beginning of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The deaths of the 14 prisoners, mostly members of the Socialist Party, occurred on the “Caravan of Death,” in which a military group headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark executed more than 90 political prisoners as it traveled through the country. The three officers are Gen. Gonzalo Santelices, Maj. Patricio Ferrer and Lt. Pablo Martinez Latorre. Santelices was head of the Santiago garrison, the nation’s largest, in February 2008 when the investigation into the murders resulted in his retirement. (123.cl (Chile) 4/20/09; MS-NBC 4/20/09 from AP; La Tercera (Chile) 4/23/09)
*3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
In a ceremony in Managua on Apr. 24, Nicaraguan National Police director Aminta Granera and US ambassador Robert Callahan signed an agreement making Nicaragua a member of the Mérida Initiative, a program the US government started in 2007 ostensibly to fight drug cartels and organized crime. Nicaragua is to receive $1.5 million in US aid to improve the sharing of fingerprint information among Central American countries, develop a special investigations unit and equip agents better, according to a statement from the US State Department. The government of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has frequently criticized US policies, but Nicaragua’s only criticism of the Mérida Initiative--expressed at the ceremony by Deputy Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke--was that the aid was inadequate. (AFP 4/24/09; La Prensa (Nicaragua) 4/25/09)
[Most of the program’s aid goes to Mexico. Many Mexican and US activists have opposed the initiative, calling it “Plan México” in reference to the US-sponsored Plan Colombia program; in that program much of the aid has reportedly ended up supporting the military’s counterinsurgency operations. See Update #952.]
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
Argentina Remembers: Mobilizations Mark 33rd Anniversary of Military Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1825/1/
Bolivia: Unraveling the Conspiracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1831/68/
Peru: indigenous peoples block Amazon tributary to resist oil operations
http://ww4report.com/node/7246
Terminating Food Sovereignty in Ecuador? President Correa Opens Door to Terminator Seeds
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1827/68/
Nineteen Reasons Why Nortec Ventures Should Stay Out of the Intag Region of Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1828/1/
Paramilitary commander appeals to Colombian authorities from US prison
http://ww4report.com/node/7250
San José de Apartado: Colombian Peace Community Stands Up for Humanity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1821/1/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1826/1/
Military-backed Mapping Project in Oaxaca Under Fire
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1830/1/
Chiapas: Zapatistas protest renewed repression
http://ww4report.com/node/7249
Migrant workers lose out in NAFTA nations: studies
http://ww4report.com/node/7248
Mexico: Piedras Negras police strike to protest militarization
http://ww4report.com/node/7247
Mexico: Tijuana Cartel operative busted —as narco wars grind on
http://ww4report.com/node/7233
The Wrong Solution to Mexico's Security Crisis
http://nacla.org/node/5714
Without Corn There is No Country: Open Letter to President Obama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1824/68/
"An Equal Partnership" at the Summit: Matching Words with Deeds
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6068
Mr. President: Calderon is not Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6058
Earth Day 2009 Special Report: Fighting to Save Mexico's Mangroves
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6059
Haiti Donors Conference: A New Paradigm or New Packaging?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1823/68/
Haiti: Fanmi Lavalas Banned, Voter Apprehension Widespread
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1820/68/
April Biodiversity Report
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6053
The Declaration of Cumaná
http://nacla.org/node/5723
ALBA Summit Ratifies Regional Currency, Prepares for Trinidad
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1819/68/
Summit: Behind the Smiles and Handshakes
http://nacla.org/node/5718
Mixed Feelings About Obama's First Meeting with Hemispheric Leaders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1822/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
WNU #986: Indigenous Peruvians Occupy Airport
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #986, April 19, 2009
1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
On the morning of Apr. 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru’s Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) had been leading a strike since Apr. 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the “Law of the Forest,” which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.
Aidesep vice president Daysi Zapata Fasabi said Prime Minister Yehude Simon had promised to hold a dialogue with the indigenous groups on Apr. 16, but the government announced on Apr. 13 that the meeting was postponed until Apr. 20. “The government is laughing at the indigenous people,” she told the media. “We’ve been disrespected again.” The occupation of the airport was said to be disrupting operations by the Repsol, Pluspetrol and Petrobras oil companies since it kept employees from reaching the companies’ camps. Aidesep leaders said 1,350 indigenous communities supported the strike, which could escalate to include the blockage of rivers like the Urubamba if the government doesn’t pay attention to the demands. (El Comercio (Peru) 4/16/09; La Primera (Peru) 4/17/09; La República (Peru) 4/20/09)
According to a report released in March by the government’s Office of the Ombudsperson (the Defensoría del Pueblo), during the past year conflicts over mining and drilling have grown to make up 49% of the country’s social conflicts; 13% were over local government issues and 9% concerned labor issues. Sociologist Nelson Manrique says the increase in conflicts about environmental issues resulted both from the government’s style of encouraging development and from a growing awareness of the issue in the population. He predicted that these conflicts would continue but that labor disputes would increase sharply over the next few months because of the economic crisis affecting Peru. (Adital 4/17/09 from Ecoportal)
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on Apr. 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d’eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.
Senator Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, who took refuge in Mirebalais’ Mirage hotel with the candidate of her Fusion Center party, charged that there was a plot by President René Préval’s Lespwa (“Hope”) party and the Haitian Citizens Union for Democracy, Development and Education (UCADDE) to prevent the likely victory of the Fusion candidate. The UCADDE’s Willot Joseph was reportedly carrying a Galil assault rifle and threatening to kill Beauzile if he saw her.
Voting continued in the rest of the country; 12 of the 30 seats in the national Senate were up for renewal. “The people have voted,” CEP president Frantz-Gérard S. Verret said at the end of the day, “but not massively.” “[W]e’ve done our duty,” he added. “We’ve carried out good elections.” There were no official figures on turnout nationwide, but observers said it was very low. The CEP had rejected the candidates of Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), who refused to file paperwork from his exile in South Africa [see Updates #978, 979, 980], and the party called for a boycott of the election. Verret complimented FL members for their “citizen-like behavior” and said they had not been blamed for any of the violence. (AlterPresse 4/19/09, __, __; Radio Kiskeya 4/19/09)
[Low turnout has been the norm in recent Haitian legislative elections. International observers said turnout was as low as 15% in runoff elections in April 2006; see Update #848.]
Correction: This item originally gave Aristide’s first term as 1990-1996; Aristide was elected in December 1990 and was inaugurated in February 1991.
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
Six striking doctors were lightly injured on Apr. 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren’t serious, he added, but “the consequences could have been greater.” The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn’t have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.
Doctors and nurses had called a four-day strike starting on Apr. 15, halting consultations and surgery at the country’s 126 hospitals. The doctors’ demands included a pay raise from the current rate of $500–$1,000 a month to about $1,700 a month; the creation of positions for interns; and improvements in the pension system for medical workers. This was the 16th strike by the medical workers in a year and a half; there are about 16,300 doctors in the CMD.
On Apr. 15 Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gómez denied that the strike was effective, but the newspaper Listin Diario reported widespread complaints from patients on Apr. 17. Rafaela Figueroa, president of the National Union of Nursing Services, warned that the government’s efforts to suppress the strike would just radicalize the strikers. CMD president Suero said that on Apr. 20 the medical workers would announce plans for more actions. (Univision 4/15/09 from AP; LD 4/18/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
Brazil: New Offensive for Faster Land Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1816/68/
Bolivia: Croatian militants in Evo Morales assassination plot?
http://ww4report.com/node/7212
Morales Ends Hunger Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1811/68
Mining Co. Bailout Eclipses Environmental Disaster in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1809/1/
Peru: Sendero pledges more attacks; army uses child soldiers?
http://ww4report.com/node/7189
Proof and Consequence: Peru Convicts Fujimori
http://nacla.org/node/5707
Colombia: top kingpin "Don Mario" captured
http://ww4report.com/node/7190
Venezuela: opposition leader goes into hiding
http://ww4report.com/node/7191
Thailand's Thaksin to take refuge in Nicaragua?
http://ww4report.com/node/7213
The Left Triumphs in El Salvador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5989
False Charges on San Salvador Vendors Dismissed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1813/1/
Guatemala: Popular resistance to Xalala Dam finds international law on its side
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1815/68/
Social Movements Reject the EU-Central America Free Trade Agreement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1812/68/
Obama moves against Mexican cartel finances
http://ww4report.com/node/7194
Mexico: Obama met with protests demanding immigration reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7193
Mexico debates marijuana legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/7192
Indigenous Community Radio in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5977
Mexico: eight federales dead in Nayarit narco-ambush
http://ww4report.com/node/7215
The IDB—50 Years, Zero Reflection
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6008
Obama in Latin America: How The Nation Magazine Saved the American Empire
http://nacla.org/node/5709
Latin America Changes: Hunger Strikes in Bolivia, Summits in the Caribbean
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1814/1/
Summit of the Americas: Obama Should Begin Working with Castro and Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1818/1/
Latin leftists bash Obama at Caribbean confab
http://ww4report.com/node/7216
March Monthly Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5990
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events;
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #986, April 19, 2009
1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
On the morning of Apr. 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru’s Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) had been leading a strike since Apr. 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the “Law of the Forest,” which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.
Aidesep vice president Daysi Zapata Fasabi said Prime Minister Yehude Simon had promised to hold a dialogue with the indigenous groups on Apr. 16, but the government announced on Apr. 13 that the meeting was postponed until Apr. 20. “The government is laughing at the indigenous people,” she told the media. “We’ve been disrespected again.” The occupation of the airport was said to be disrupting operations by the Repsol, Pluspetrol and Petrobras oil companies since it kept employees from reaching the companies’ camps. Aidesep leaders said 1,350 indigenous communities supported the strike, which could escalate to include the blockage of rivers like the Urubamba if the government doesn’t pay attention to the demands. (El Comercio (Peru) 4/16/09; La Primera (Peru) 4/17/09; La República (Peru) 4/20/09)
According to a report released in March by the government’s Office of the Ombudsperson (the Defensoría del Pueblo), during the past year conflicts over mining and drilling have grown to make up 49% of the country’s social conflicts; 13% were over local government issues and 9% concerned labor issues. Sociologist Nelson Manrique says the increase in conflicts about environmental issues resulted both from the government’s style of encouraging development and from a growing awareness of the issue in the population. He predicted that these conflicts would continue but that labor disputes would increase sharply over the next few months because of the economic crisis affecting Peru. (Adital 4/17/09 from Ecoportal)
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on Apr. 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d’eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.
Senator Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, who took refuge in Mirebalais’ Mirage hotel with the candidate of her Fusion Center party, charged that there was a plot by President René Préval’s Lespwa (“Hope”) party and the Haitian Citizens Union for Democracy, Development and Education (UCADDE) to prevent the likely victory of the Fusion candidate. The UCADDE’s Willot Joseph was reportedly carrying a Galil assault rifle and threatening to kill Beauzile if he saw her.
Voting continued in the rest of the country; 12 of the 30 seats in the national Senate were up for renewal. “The people have voted,” CEP president Frantz-Gérard S. Verret said at the end of the day, “but not massively.” “[W]e’ve done our duty,” he added. “We’ve carried out good elections.” There were no official figures on turnout nationwide, but observers said it was very low. The CEP had rejected the candidates of Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), who refused to file paperwork from his exile in South Africa [see Updates #978, 979, 980], and the party called for a boycott of the election. Verret complimented FL members for their “citizen-like behavior” and said they had not been blamed for any of the violence. (AlterPresse 4/19/09, __, __; Radio Kiskeya 4/19/09)
[Low turnout has been the norm in recent Haitian legislative elections. International observers said turnout was as low as 15% in runoff elections in April 2006; see Update #848.]
Correction: This item originally gave Aristide’s first term as 1990-1996; Aristide was elected in December 1990 and was inaugurated in February 1991.
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
Six striking doctors were lightly injured on Apr. 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren’t serious, he added, but “the consequences could have been greater.” The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn’t have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.
Doctors and nurses had called a four-day strike starting on Apr. 15, halting consultations and surgery at the country’s 126 hospitals. The doctors’ demands included a pay raise from the current rate of $500–$1,000 a month to about $1,700 a month; the creation of positions for interns; and improvements in the pension system for medical workers. This was the 16th strike by the medical workers in a year and a half; there are about 16,300 doctors in the CMD.
On Apr. 15 Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gómez denied that the strike was effective, but the newspaper Listin Diario reported widespread complaints from patients on Apr. 17. Rafaela Figueroa, president of the National Union of Nursing Services, warned that the government’s efforts to suppress the strike would just radicalize the strikers. CMD president Suero said that on Apr. 20 the medical workers would announce plans for more actions. (Univision 4/15/09 from AP; LD 4/18/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
Brazil: New Offensive for Faster Land Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1816/68/
Bolivia: Croatian militants in Evo Morales assassination plot?
http://ww4report.com/node/7212
Morales Ends Hunger Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1811/68
Mining Co. Bailout Eclipses Environmental Disaster in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1809/1/
Peru: Sendero pledges more attacks; army uses child soldiers?
http://ww4report.com/node/7189
Proof and Consequence: Peru Convicts Fujimori
http://nacla.org/node/5707
Colombia: top kingpin "Don Mario" captured
http://ww4report.com/node/7190
Venezuela: opposition leader goes into hiding
http://ww4report.com/node/7191
Thailand's Thaksin to take refuge in Nicaragua?
http://ww4report.com/node/7213
The Left Triumphs in El Salvador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5989
False Charges on San Salvador Vendors Dismissed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1813/1/
Guatemala: Popular resistance to Xalala Dam finds international law on its side
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1815/68/
Social Movements Reject the EU-Central America Free Trade Agreement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1812/68/
Obama moves against Mexican cartel finances
http://ww4report.com/node/7194
Mexico: Obama met with protests demanding immigration reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7193
Mexico debates marijuana legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/7192
Indigenous Community Radio in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5977
Mexico: eight federales dead in Nayarit narco-ambush
http://ww4report.com/node/7215
The IDB—50 Years, Zero Reflection
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6008
Obama in Latin America: How The Nation Magazine Saved the American Empire
http://nacla.org/node/5709
Latin America Changes: Hunger Strikes in Bolivia, Summits in the Caribbean
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1814/1/
Summit of the Americas: Obama Should Begin Working with Castro and Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1818/1/
Latin leftists bash Obama at Caribbean confab
http://ww4report.com/node/7216
March Monthly Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5990
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events;
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
WNU #985: US Files New Posada Indictment
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #985, April 12, 2009
1. Cuba: US Files New Posada Indictment
2. Chile: Police Victimize Mapuche?
3. Dominican Republic: Layoffs Hit FTZs
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, US Policy
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Cuba: US Files New Posada Indictment
On the night of Apr. 8 US federal prosecutors filed an 11-count indictment in El Paso, Texas, charging that Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" Luis Posada Carriles perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when he told immigration authorities he was not involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo was killed in one of the attacks, at the Copacabana Hotel. Posada was quoted in a 1998 New York Times article as saying that he was in fact involved, and there is speculation that federal agents have found additional information linking him to the attacks. A New Jersey grand jury has also been investigating the bombings, although no charges have been filed in that case. Posada is scheduled to go on trial before US district judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso on Aug. 10.
This is the first time the US has filed charges connecting Posada to terrorist acts. Venezuela has been asking since 2005 for the US to extradite Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who entered the US illegally that year, so that he can face trial on charges of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which 73 people died. The US government has never acted on the extradition request. The US has ordered Posada deported, but since US immigration authorities refused to deport him either to Cuba or to Venezuela, he has been living in Miami on conditional release since 2007. The US charged him previously for immigration fraud not connected with the terrorism cases, but Judge Cardone threw the charges out on May 8, 2007 as “outrageous.” [Cuban authorities agreed with the judge, calling that case “phony” and “a charade”; see Updates #895, 898.] According to the Cuban newspaper Granma, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reinstated the charges in 2008, but apparently the new charges supersede the earlier ones.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías said on Apr. 10 that the new indictment “seems like a good sign from the US, of the change that apparently is occurring,” but that noted that the trial will be for lying, not for the attacks themselves. “[T]hey’ve known that for some time, that he’s lying,” Chávez said. Cuban media called the indictment “a surprising change of strategy” and suggested that the US government’s “new posture” was connected to the Fifth Summit of the Americas, to be held in Trinidad and Tobago starting on Apr. 17. Analysts expected the question of Venezuela’s extradition request to come up at the summit, US president Barack Obama’s first meeting with the heads of state of the hemisphere.
The indictment appears to be part of a broader US strategy to improve relations with Cuba. The Obama administration was expected to make an announcement in time for the summit that it is lifting restrictions on travel to the island by Cuban Americans and on remittances to relatives in Cuba; it may also allow more academic and cultural visits. On Apr. 6 a delegation of US Congress members met with Cuban president Raúl Castro as part of a five-day visit to the island; they had a conversation the next day with former president Fidel Castro. On Apr. 9 the rightwing Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which for decades has backed stronger restrictions, changed course and called for ''people-to-people'' exchanges.
Posada will be formally presented with the charges against him in El Paso on Apr. 17, the first day of the Trinidad summit and the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs incident, the CIA’s failed 1961 attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Communist government. The anniversary may be “a legal Bay of Pigs” for Posada, remarked José Pertierra, the DC-based attorney who is handling the Venezuelan extradition request. (Prensa Latina 4/9/09; Time 4/10/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/10/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 4/11/09; Miami Herald, 4/10/09; Inter-Press Service 4/7/09; Reuters 4/7/09)
*2. Chile: Police Victimize Mapuche?
After a five-day visit to Chile the week of Apr. 6, United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights James Anaya said there was evidence that police agents use excessive violence against the indigenous Mapuche communities, which make up about 4% of Chile’s population. Chilean human rights groups and international organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported that the police break up Mapuche street protests violently and have raided Mapuche communities without proper authorization.
"I've received a lot of documentation from NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that I consider to do high quality investigative work," Anaya said. “I do find, I do feel, there is sufficient basis for taking these allegations very seriously." Anaya also heard from individuals and met with government officials, including President Michelle Bachelet. He said Bachelet’s government had helped the country's indigenous communities by reducing rural poverty and giving them greater access to health care, but he insisted that there was still much more to do. On Apr. 13 Interior Subsecretary Patricio Rosende denied “categorically that there is discriminatory treatment of the Mapuche people” in police operations, which he said are carried out in conformity with legal norms. (BBC News 4/10/09; Univision 4/13/09 from EFE)
On Apr. 11 the police arrested 11 leaders and members of the Arauco Mapuche Coordinating Committee (CAM) and charged them with involvement in an ambush against prosecutor Mario Elgueta and a police convoy on Oct. 6, 2008, in the Puerto Choque sector of Tirúa in southern Chile; Elgueta, the chief prosecutor in Mapuche cases, was shot in the hand, and five police agents were lightly injured. The CAM members were taken to the Lebu prison, where they can be held for six months while the investigation continues. Some 130 civilian police agents were involved the arrests, which an Apr. 13 communiqué from the CAM called “a repressive attack” to “smooth the way…for forestry investment in the zone” and for mining operations in Lleu Lleu lake. This “would mean the final annihilation of the Mapuche communities in this zone,” CAM said. (ANSA 4/12/09; Univision 4/13/09 from EFE)
Expansion of the agricultural industry in neighboring Argentina is putting pressure on Mapuche, Wichi, Guaraní and other indigenous communities there. In 1994 Argentina incorporated indigenous rights into its Constitution, but indigenous communities began being evicted in northern and central Argentina in 2002 as courts gave big farming company owners land titles to some of these areas for profitable soy cultivation. In 2006 legislators suspended the evictions for four years, but little has been done to grant land titles to the indigenous communities. (Latinamérica Press 3/25/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Layoffs Hit FTZs
At least 5,000 workers have been laid off recently in free trade zone (FTZ) factories in the Dominican Republic's Santiago province, according to the United Unions Federation, which is made up of 38 unions in the northern Dominican Republic. FTZs are industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export. The job cuts included layoffs of 1,000 workers at FM Industries, which makes pants for export to the US, on Apr. 7; the dismissal of 2,000 workers by a plant that made cigars for export to the US and Europe; and the loss of 600 jobs when a footwear company closed after 50 years in business. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/9/09 from EFE) The report on job losses came as the United Nations was preparing for an Apr. 14 donors conference in Washington, DC, with a focus on a two-year program for creating 150,000 jobs in Haiti, the Dominican Republic’s neighbor. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former US president Bill Clinton are to participate; they have been promoting FTZ expansion as an engine for Haiti’s economic development [see Update #984]. (Agence France Presse 4/10/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, US Policy
Interview with Brazilian Squatter Activist Nete Araujo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1805/1/
Bolivia: Evo Morales on hunger strike to press election law
http://ww4report.com/node/7175
Peru: ex-president Fujimori convicted of rights abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7159
Fujimori Found Guilty of Human Rights Crimes
http://nacla.org/node/5684
Peru: Rights Groups Applaud Fujimori Conviction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1801/68/
Peru: Ayacucho under siege following Sendero attacks
http://ww4report.com/node/7179
Colombia: More Attacks and Defamation Against ACIN's Communication Network
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1796/68/
The Revolution Will Not Be Destabilized: Ottawa’s Democracy Promoters Target Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1800/1/
Economy in El Salvador: Passing the Poisoned Chalice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1798/68/
Scorched Earth: The Rio Negro Massacre at Pak'oxom, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1802/1/
Mexican ambassador calls US to task on gun trade; Fox, Gun Lobby return fire
http://ww4report.com/node/7178
US deports Gulf Cartel kingpin back to Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/7177
Toxic smoke on the border
http://ww4report.com/node/7176
Empire and Latin America in the Obama Era
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1803/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #985, April 12, 2009
1. Cuba: US Files New Posada Indictment
2. Chile: Police Victimize Mapuche?
3. Dominican Republic: Layoffs Hit FTZs
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, US Policy
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Cuba: US Files New Posada Indictment
On the night of Apr. 8 US federal prosecutors filed an 11-count indictment in El Paso, Texas, charging that Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" Luis Posada Carriles perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when he told immigration authorities he was not involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo was killed in one of the attacks, at the Copacabana Hotel. Posada was quoted in a 1998 New York Times article as saying that he was in fact involved, and there is speculation that federal agents have found additional information linking him to the attacks. A New Jersey grand jury has also been investigating the bombings, although no charges have been filed in that case. Posada is scheduled to go on trial before US district judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso on Aug. 10.
This is the first time the US has filed charges connecting Posada to terrorist acts. Venezuela has been asking since 2005 for the US to extradite Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who entered the US illegally that year, so that he can face trial on charges of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which 73 people died. The US government has never acted on the extradition request. The US has ordered Posada deported, but since US immigration authorities refused to deport him either to Cuba or to Venezuela, he has been living in Miami on conditional release since 2007. The US charged him previously for immigration fraud not connected with the terrorism cases, but Judge Cardone threw the charges out on May 8, 2007 as “outrageous.” [Cuban authorities agreed with the judge, calling that case “phony” and “a charade”; see Updates #895, 898.] According to the Cuban newspaper Granma, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reinstated the charges in 2008, but apparently the new charges supersede the earlier ones.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías said on Apr. 10 that the new indictment “seems like a good sign from the US, of the change that apparently is occurring,” but that noted that the trial will be for lying, not for the attacks themselves. “[T]hey’ve known that for some time, that he’s lying,” Chávez said. Cuban media called the indictment “a surprising change of strategy” and suggested that the US government’s “new posture” was connected to the Fifth Summit of the Americas, to be held in Trinidad and Tobago starting on Apr. 17. Analysts expected the question of Venezuela’s extradition request to come up at the summit, US president Barack Obama’s first meeting with the heads of state of the hemisphere.
The indictment appears to be part of a broader US strategy to improve relations with Cuba. The Obama administration was expected to make an announcement in time for the summit that it is lifting restrictions on travel to the island by Cuban Americans and on remittances to relatives in Cuba; it may also allow more academic and cultural visits. On Apr. 6 a delegation of US Congress members met with Cuban president Raúl Castro as part of a five-day visit to the island; they had a conversation the next day with former president Fidel Castro. On Apr. 9 the rightwing Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which for decades has backed stronger restrictions, changed course and called for ''people-to-people'' exchanges.
Posada will be formally presented with the charges against him in El Paso on Apr. 17, the first day of the Trinidad summit and the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs incident, the CIA’s failed 1961 attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Communist government. The anniversary may be “a legal Bay of Pigs” for Posada, remarked José Pertierra, the DC-based attorney who is handling the Venezuelan extradition request. (Prensa Latina 4/9/09; Time 4/10/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/10/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 4/11/09; Miami Herald, 4/10/09; Inter-Press Service 4/7/09; Reuters 4/7/09)
*2. Chile: Police Victimize Mapuche?
After a five-day visit to Chile the week of Apr. 6, United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights James Anaya said there was evidence that police agents use excessive violence against the indigenous Mapuche communities, which make up about 4% of Chile’s population. Chilean human rights groups and international organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported that the police break up Mapuche street protests violently and have raided Mapuche communities without proper authorization.
"I've received a lot of documentation from NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that I consider to do high quality investigative work," Anaya said. “I do find, I do feel, there is sufficient basis for taking these allegations very seriously." Anaya also heard from individuals and met with government officials, including President Michelle Bachelet. He said Bachelet’s government had helped the country's indigenous communities by reducing rural poverty and giving them greater access to health care, but he insisted that there was still much more to do. On Apr. 13 Interior Subsecretary Patricio Rosende denied “categorically that there is discriminatory treatment of the Mapuche people” in police operations, which he said are carried out in conformity with legal norms. (BBC News 4/10/09; Univision 4/13/09 from EFE)
On Apr. 11 the police arrested 11 leaders and members of the Arauco Mapuche Coordinating Committee (CAM) and charged them with involvement in an ambush against prosecutor Mario Elgueta and a police convoy on Oct. 6, 2008, in the Puerto Choque sector of Tirúa in southern Chile; Elgueta, the chief prosecutor in Mapuche cases, was shot in the hand, and five police agents were lightly injured. The CAM members were taken to the Lebu prison, where they can be held for six months while the investigation continues. Some 130 civilian police agents were involved the arrests, which an Apr. 13 communiqué from the CAM called “a repressive attack” to “smooth the way…for forestry investment in the zone” and for mining operations in Lleu Lleu lake. This “would mean the final annihilation of the Mapuche communities in this zone,” CAM said. (ANSA 4/12/09; Univision 4/13/09 from EFE)
Expansion of the agricultural industry in neighboring Argentina is putting pressure on Mapuche, Wichi, Guaraní and other indigenous communities there. In 1994 Argentina incorporated indigenous rights into its Constitution, but indigenous communities began being evicted in northern and central Argentina in 2002 as courts gave big farming company owners land titles to some of these areas for profitable soy cultivation. In 2006 legislators suspended the evictions for four years, but little has been done to grant land titles to the indigenous communities. (Latinamérica Press 3/25/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Layoffs Hit FTZs
At least 5,000 workers have been laid off recently in free trade zone (FTZ) factories in the Dominican Republic's Santiago province, according to the United Unions Federation, which is made up of 38 unions in the northern Dominican Republic. FTZs are industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export. The job cuts included layoffs of 1,000 workers at FM Industries, which makes pants for export to the US, on Apr. 7; the dismissal of 2,000 workers by a plant that made cigars for export to the US and Europe; and the loss of 600 jobs when a footwear company closed after 50 years in business. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/9/09 from EFE) The report on job losses came as the United Nations was preparing for an Apr. 14 donors conference in Washington, DC, with a focus on a two-year program for creating 150,000 jobs in Haiti, the Dominican Republic’s neighbor. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former US president Bill Clinton are to participate; they have been promoting FTZ expansion as an engine for Haiti’s economic development [see Update #984]. (Agence France Presse 4/10/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, US Policy
Interview with Brazilian Squatter Activist Nete Araujo
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1805/1/
Bolivia: Evo Morales on hunger strike to press election law
http://ww4report.com/node/7175
Peru: ex-president Fujimori convicted of rights abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7159
Fujimori Found Guilty of Human Rights Crimes
http://nacla.org/node/5684
Peru: Rights Groups Applaud Fujimori Conviction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1801/68/
Peru: Ayacucho under siege following Sendero attacks
http://ww4report.com/node/7179
Colombia: More Attacks and Defamation Against ACIN's Communication Network
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1796/68/
The Revolution Will Not Be Destabilized: Ottawa’s Democracy Promoters Target Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1800/1/
Economy in El Salvador: Passing the Poisoned Chalice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1798/68/
Scorched Earth: The Rio Negro Massacre at Pak'oxom, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1802/1/
Mexican ambassador calls US to task on gun trade; Fox, Gun Lobby return fire
http://ww4report.com/node/7178
US deports Gulf Cartel kingpin back to Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/7177
Toxic smoke on the border
http://ww4report.com/node/7176
Empire and Latin America in the Obama Era
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1803/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
WNU #984: UN Head Pushes FTZs for Haiti
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #984, April 5, 2009
1. Haiti: UN Head Pushes More FTZs
2. Guatemala: Attorney Kidnapped, Journalist Killed
3. Honduras: Chortí Occupy Mayan Site
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Guadeloupe
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: UN Head Pushes More FTZs
In an op-ed in the Mar. 31 New York Times, United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon announced economic development plans for Haiti based on the expansion of “free-trade zones” (FTZs), industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export (maquiladoras). Ban said this will enable Haiti to take advantage of 2008 US legislation known as HOPE II, which gives Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to US markets for nine years. At an international donors conference in Washington, DC in mid-April, Ban will seek aid for “creating the sort of industrial ‘clusters’ that have come to dominate global trade...dramatically expanding the country’s export zones, so that a new generation of textile firms can invest and do business in one place.” This export strategy was worked out by Ban’s special adviser, Oxford University development economist Paul Collier, along with the government of President René Préval, according to the op-ed. Ban and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) visited Haiti on Mar. 9 in preparation for the donors conference [see Update #983]. (NYT 3/31/09)
Charles Arthur of the Haiti Support Group (HSG), a British solidarity organization, said his group was “appalled” by the plan. He noted that international lending institutions have pushed an export strategy for decades with no positive results for Haiti. In the early 1980s the Haitian garment assembly sector employed some 60,000 workers, but the number has declined as foreign contractors moved production to other countries. Prospects for the sector seem even worse now that the global economic crisis is driving down demand for imports. Arthur called Ban’s plan "a slap in the face" for President Préval and Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis. Since the outbreak of food riots in April 2008 and widespread destruction by four tropical storms in August and September, the president has stressed the importance of expanding national production, especially in agriculture, Arthur said [see Update #943]. (No Sweat website 3/31/09)
Meanwhile, Haitian business groups have been lobbying against legislation which would raise the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from the current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies passed the raise earlier this year, but the measure has been stalled in the Senate. On Mar. 24 the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee held a two-hour closed door meeting with business leaders. Participants wouldn’t say what the results were, but Haiti Chamber of Commerce and Industry president (CCIH) Reginald Boulos warned afterwards that while wages need to be increased, a 200 gourde minimum wage might provoke inflation and lead to massive layoffs and could hurt the government’s job-creation program—apparently a reference to the plan for FTZ expansion. (Haiti Press Network 3/25/09; Radio Métropole 3/25/09, 3/28/09)
*2. Guatemala: Attorney Kidnapped, Journalist Killed
Three masked men kidnapped Guatemalan attorney and university professor Gladys Monterroso on Mar. 25 as she was eating breakfast in a restaurant in Guatemala City and held her for 13 hours before leaving her on a street in the Atlántida neighborhood. She said the men burned her with cigarettes, beat her and subjected her to sexual and psychological abuse; at one point they put a pistol in her mouth and said they would kill her. They didn’t demand a ransom.
Monterroso’s husband, Sergio Morales, is the government’s human rights prosecutor (ombudsperson). On Mar. 24, the day before the kidnapping, he released a report, “The Right to Know,” documenting evidence in recently discovered government archives linking officials to human rights violations during the 1960-1996 civil war. “I think there could be something fundamental about the National Police archives or the army archives that is in the process of being declassified,” Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom said in an interview with the South American television network TeleSUR, “and there are people with a commitment to the past who could be worried about the release of these archives.” Secret documents on the structure and functioning of the National Police from 1975 to 1985 were discovered in July 2005.
The New York-based organization Human Rights First has posted a sample letter to its website demanding an investigation of Monterrosa’s kidnapping; go to http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Gladys . (Human Rights First alert 4/3/09; Siglo 21 (Guatemala) 3/31/09; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 4/1/09, 4/2/09)
On Apr. 1 two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed Rolando Santis, a reporter for Telecentro Trece television, and seriously wounded Juan Antonio de León Villatoro, a camera operator. Santis is the fourth Guatemalan journalist killed in the past year; the others were Jorge Mérida, Rubén Bazarreyes and Abel Girón. During the same year 13 journalists were assaulted and 10 received death threats. (Adital 4/2/09; Univision 4/3/09 from AFP)
*3. Honduras: Chortí Occupy Mayan Site
From Apr. 2 to Apr. 3 hundreds of indigenous Chortí blocked access to Copán archeological park, probably Honduras’ most important ancient Mayan site, to press demands for land. Tourism minister Ricardo Martínez said the protesters agreed to leave after the government offered to start negotiations on Apr. 15. An estimated 400 European and US tourists visit Copán a day, each paying a $15 entrance fee.
The Chortí are demanding that the government grant them 14,700 hectares for cultivation in Copán and Ocotepeque departments, bordering Guatemala in western Honduras. In the past 12 years they have received about one third of the territory they are asking for. Maya Chortí National Council spokesperson Cristóbal Pineda said the Chortí were tired of waiting and were ready “to act…so that [the government] won’t go on deceiving us.” The government has signed a number of accords with the Chortí since 1995; the most recent, in May 2008, promised $1 million for land that year, of which only $800,000 has been paid out. The Chortí have carried out similar occupations five times since 1997.
There are seven indigenous peoples in Honduras, with a total of about 400,000 members living in 100 communities. The Chortí account for 52 of these communities. (El Universal (Mexico) 4/5/09 from AP)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Guadeloupe
UN human rights report blasts Bolivian opposition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1785/68/
Peru: oil rush accelerates, government weighs new reserves for uncontacted
tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/7125
Colombia: Fighting Development Banks for the Human Right to Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1786/1/
Venezuela: Coca-Cola plant replaced with "socialist commune"
http://ww4report.com/node/7127
Chávez disses G20, opens joint bank with Iran
http://ww4report.com/node/7126
Hugo Chávez offers to accept Gitmo detainees
http://ww4report.com/node/7123
What's Next for Venezuela's Opposition?
http://nacla.org/node/5663
Crime in Venezuela: Opposition Weapon or Serious Problem?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1792/68/
Venezuela Expropriates Cargill Rice Plant that Evaded Price Controls
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1791/68/
Photo Essay: El Salvador's Historic Election
http://nacla.org/node/5654
El Salvador Elections: The Ghosts of Izalco
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1795/68/
Mexico: authorities crack down on "Santa Muerte" narco-cult
http://ww4report.com/node/7149
Narco wars leave trail of bodies across Mexico's southwest
http://ww4report.com/node/7148
Mexico, US pledge new era of cooperation against cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/7147
Mexican senate approves pre-conviction property seizures in narco cases
http://ww4report.com/node/7146
U.S. Military Funded Mapping Project in Oaxaca: University Geographers Used to Gather Intelligence?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1794/1/
Guadeloupe on Strike: A New Political Chapter in the French Antilles
http://nacla.org/node/5668
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #984, April 5, 2009
1. Haiti: UN Head Pushes More FTZs
2. Guatemala: Attorney Kidnapped, Journalist Killed
3. Honduras: Chortí Occupy Mayan Site
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Guadeloupe
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: UN Head Pushes More FTZs
In an op-ed in the Mar. 31 New York Times, United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon announced economic development plans for Haiti based on the expansion of “free-trade zones” (FTZs), industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export (maquiladoras). Ban said this will enable Haiti to take advantage of 2008 US legislation known as HOPE II, which gives Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to US markets for nine years. At an international donors conference in Washington, DC in mid-April, Ban will seek aid for “creating the sort of industrial ‘clusters’ that have come to dominate global trade...dramatically expanding the country’s export zones, so that a new generation of textile firms can invest and do business in one place.” This export strategy was worked out by Ban’s special adviser, Oxford University development economist Paul Collier, along with the government of President René Préval, according to the op-ed. Ban and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) visited Haiti on Mar. 9 in preparation for the donors conference [see Update #983]. (NYT 3/31/09)
Charles Arthur of the Haiti Support Group (HSG), a British solidarity organization, said his group was “appalled” by the plan. He noted that international lending institutions have pushed an export strategy for decades with no positive results for Haiti. In the early 1980s the Haitian garment assembly sector employed some 60,000 workers, but the number has declined as foreign contractors moved production to other countries. Prospects for the sector seem even worse now that the global economic crisis is driving down demand for imports. Arthur called Ban’s plan "a slap in the face" for President Préval and Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis. Since the outbreak of food riots in April 2008 and widespread destruction by four tropical storms in August and September, the president has stressed the importance of expanding national production, especially in agriculture, Arthur said [see Update #943]. (No Sweat website 3/31/09)
Meanwhile, Haitian business groups have been lobbying against legislation which would raise the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from the current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies passed the raise earlier this year, but the measure has been stalled in the Senate. On Mar. 24 the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee held a two-hour closed door meeting with business leaders. Participants wouldn’t say what the results were, but Haiti Chamber of Commerce and Industry president (CCIH) Reginald Boulos warned afterwards that while wages need to be increased, a 200 gourde minimum wage might provoke inflation and lead to massive layoffs and could hurt the government’s job-creation program—apparently a reference to the plan for FTZ expansion. (Haiti Press Network 3/25/09; Radio Métropole 3/25/09, 3/28/09)
*2. Guatemala: Attorney Kidnapped, Journalist Killed
Three masked men kidnapped Guatemalan attorney and university professor Gladys Monterroso on Mar. 25 as she was eating breakfast in a restaurant in Guatemala City and held her for 13 hours before leaving her on a street in the Atlántida neighborhood. She said the men burned her with cigarettes, beat her and subjected her to sexual and psychological abuse; at one point they put a pistol in her mouth and said they would kill her. They didn’t demand a ransom.
Monterroso’s husband, Sergio Morales, is the government’s human rights prosecutor (ombudsperson). On Mar. 24, the day before the kidnapping, he released a report, “The Right to Know,” documenting evidence in recently discovered government archives linking officials to human rights violations during the 1960-1996 civil war. “I think there could be something fundamental about the National Police archives or the army archives that is in the process of being declassified,” Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom said in an interview with the South American television network TeleSUR, “and there are people with a commitment to the past who could be worried about the release of these archives.” Secret documents on the structure and functioning of the National Police from 1975 to 1985 were discovered in July 2005.
The New York-based organization Human Rights First has posted a sample letter to its website demanding an investigation of Monterrosa’s kidnapping; go to http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Gladys . (Human Rights First alert 4/3/09; Siglo 21 (Guatemala) 3/31/09; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 4/1/09, 4/2/09)
On Apr. 1 two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed Rolando Santis, a reporter for Telecentro Trece television, and seriously wounded Juan Antonio de León Villatoro, a camera operator. Santis is the fourth Guatemalan journalist killed in the past year; the others were Jorge Mérida, Rubén Bazarreyes and Abel Girón. During the same year 13 journalists were assaulted and 10 received death threats. (Adital 4/2/09; Univision 4/3/09 from AFP)
*3. Honduras: Chortí Occupy Mayan Site
From Apr. 2 to Apr. 3 hundreds of indigenous Chortí blocked access to Copán archeological park, probably Honduras’ most important ancient Mayan site, to press demands for land. Tourism minister Ricardo Martínez said the protesters agreed to leave after the government offered to start negotiations on Apr. 15. An estimated 400 European and US tourists visit Copán a day, each paying a $15 entrance fee.
The Chortí are demanding that the government grant them 14,700 hectares for cultivation in Copán and Ocotepeque departments, bordering Guatemala in western Honduras. In the past 12 years they have received about one third of the territory they are asking for. Maya Chortí National Council spokesperson Cristóbal Pineda said the Chortí were tired of waiting and were ready “to act…so that [the government] won’t go on deceiving us.” The government has signed a number of accords with the Chortí since 1995; the most recent, in May 2008, promised $1 million for land that year, of which only $800,000 has been paid out. The Chortí have carried out similar occupations five times since 1997.
There are seven indigenous peoples in Honduras, with a total of about 400,000 members living in 100 communities. The Chortí account for 52 of these communities. (El Universal (Mexico) 4/5/09 from AP)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Guadeloupe
UN human rights report blasts Bolivian opposition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1785/68/
Peru: oil rush accelerates, government weighs new reserves for uncontacted
tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/7125
Colombia: Fighting Development Banks for the Human Right to Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1786/1/
Venezuela: Coca-Cola plant replaced with "socialist commune"
http://ww4report.com/node/7127
Chávez disses G20, opens joint bank with Iran
http://ww4report.com/node/7126
Hugo Chávez offers to accept Gitmo detainees
http://ww4report.com/node/7123
What's Next for Venezuela's Opposition?
http://nacla.org/node/5663
Crime in Venezuela: Opposition Weapon or Serious Problem?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1792/68/
Venezuela Expropriates Cargill Rice Plant that Evaded Price Controls
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1791/68/
Photo Essay: El Salvador's Historic Election
http://nacla.org/node/5654
El Salvador Elections: The Ghosts of Izalco
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1795/68/
Mexico: authorities crack down on "Santa Muerte" narco-cult
http://ww4report.com/node/7149
Narco wars leave trail of bodies across Mexico's southwest
http://ww4report.com/node/7148
Mexico, US pledge new era of cooperation against cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/7147
Mexican senate approves pre-conviction property seizures in narco cases
http://ww4report.com/node/7146
U.S. Military Funded Mapping Project in Oaxaca: University Geographers Used to Gather Intelligence?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1794/1/
Guadeloupe on Strike: A New Political Chapter in the French Antilles
http://nacla.org/node/5668
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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