Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #988, May 3, 2009
1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.
About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s largest labor confederation. CUT president Arturo Martínez demanded “a new law that distributes the wealth,” a right to strike without the threat of firings and replacement workers, and an end to the practice of letting firms lay workers off “because of the company’s needs.” After the main demonstration had ended, small groups of people wearing masks attacked the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Dozens of people were arrested. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 5/2/09 from AP)
Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in downtown Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). Their supporters in the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) face serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government,” said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). “What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."
Argentina experienced massive privatizations and corruption under the neoliberal policies of president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999), which were followed by a financial collapse in 2001. Economic growth returned under Kirchner and Fernández but halted with the onset of the global crisis in 2008. Moyano has reportedly persuaded Kirchner to include union officials on the PJ ticket in June. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/30/09 from EFE)
In Brazil thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the Bolivian subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP in a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz’s Plaza de Armas. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni and Pando. Morales--who had previously nationalized oil and telecommunications companies--also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees. (AFP 5/1/09; La Tribuna (Honduras) 5/1/09 from AFP)
Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador’s main cities carrying signs with slogans such as “Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis,” and “Reject the government’s labor policy.” At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. “But we criticize others,” Bedoya said, “like the layoffs of the compañeros at Petroecuador” (Empresa Estatal Petróleos del Ecuador, the state-owned oil company).
In Colombia, unions and retirees’ organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Alvaro Uribe’s bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here,” Unitary Workers Central (CUT) president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogotá, calling the government’s neoliberal economic model a failure.
Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez held a massive march in Caracas, which also witnessed confrontations between police agents and opposition unionists at a separate march which the police dispersed with tear gas and water cannons.
Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This was the fourth year in a row that the three main labor federations marched together despite their political differences.
Thousands of Cubans took part in the traditional government-sponsored march, headed by President Raúl Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government, established by the 1959 Revolution. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
Mexico’s three main labor federations--the centrist Congress of Labor (CT), the independent National Workers Union (UNT) and the more radical Mexican Union Front (FSM)--called off their planned May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”). Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos ordered a suspension of all non-essential services from May 1 to May 5; the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) said its members didn’t have to pay wages to workers during the forced layoffs. (MRzine 5/1/09)
More than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of May Day activities in Mexico City. The largest march was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla. Some 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups participated in a UNT march to the city’s zócalo (main plaza). “Face masks aren’t enough to silence the conscience of the people” and “More harmful than the influenza—the government without shame” were among the chants. The largest contingent was made up of dissidents from sections 23 and 51 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Teachers were also a major force in a march of about 3,000 workers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southeastern state of Chiapas and in a protest by 1,000 workers in Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos, where teachers fought the government’s Alliance for Quality Education (ACE) program last fall [see Update #968]. Smaller marches were held in other states, including Oaxaca, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/09)
Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, causing panic and minor injuries. The marchers—organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage [see Update #984]--regrouped later in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main plaza, where the government of President René Préval was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: “solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production.” “It’s not normal for us to be unable to demonstrate peacefully and freely on May 1,” said a member of the organizing committee of the collective, which is made up of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle") and other groups. (AlterPresse 5/1/09, __)
In the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year [see Update #982]. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island’s leading labor organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), led by Elie Domota; the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG), led by Jean-Marie Nomertin; and the more radical Central of United Workers (CTU). But the march showed signs of tensions in the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), the coalition that led the general strike: the CTU’s Alex Lollia denounced the LKP as a “petit bourgeois movement.” (Le Monde (France) 5/2/09)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest what unionists said was a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuño to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and by “dismantling” the state through “the privatization of the country’s essential public services.” According to the police, 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan, during which Rafael Feliciano, leader of the militant Teachers’ Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), shouted “murderer” at Police Superintendent José Figueroa Sancha. (Feliciano said later that Figueroa was involved in the killing of independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005.) Gov. Fortuño, of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), said he was studying alternatives for the workers to be laid off by the law he has proposed; he claimed that 40 states in the US have laid off public employees because of the crisis without giving any thought to situation of the workers. (TeleSUR 5/1/09; El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) 5/1/09).
*2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
Millionaire supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli of the conservative Democratic Change (CD) party easily won Panama’s presidential election on May 3. With 80% of the ballots counted at around 10 pm, Martinelli had 60.62% of the votes, against 36.97% for Balbina Herrera of the governing center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under current president Martín Torrijos, Panama has had economic growth rates approaching double digits, but growth has slowed with the global crisis. Media analysts note that Martinelli’s victory goes against the recent trend in Latin America for voters to replace conservative governments with left or center-left governments. The PRD had been losing support from the left; at Panama’s May 1 celebrations, labor and activist organizations urged the thousands of participants to abstain from the voting or leave their ballots blank. Herrera was also hurt by her ties to former dictator Manual Noriega. (Reuters 5/3/09; La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
Argentina: Water is Worth More Than Gold! 300 Organizations Collectively Say "No To Open-Pit Mining"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Argentine May Day Massacre-100 Years Ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1843/68/
Paraguay: Protests and Rubber Bullets Greet Return of Dictatorship Criminal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1842/1/
Webs of intrigue tangle Bolivia conspiracy case
http://ww4report.com/node/7262
Oil, neo-Nazi connections claimed in Bolivian conspiracy
http://ww4report.com/node/7262#comment-317129
Peruvian Indigenous Peoples Mobilize Across the Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1833/68/
Correa Triumphs in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1838/68/
Colombia: Paramilitary Chief Says He Helped Finance Uribe’s Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1834/68/
The US-Colombia FTA and National Insecurity: A Call for Ethical Foreign Policy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1835/1/
Chávez refuses cooperation against FARC guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7277
Debrief: New Report on Venezuela's Re-Election Referendum
https://nacla.org/node/5741
Curaçao: Hezbollah connection in narco bust?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Nicaraguan workers' case against Dole dismissed
http://ww4report.com/node/3827#comment-317110
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1839/1/
El Salvador’s LGBT Movement Continues the Fight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1832/1/
Mexico’s Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/04/mexicos-swine-flu-and-globalization-of.html
May Day: Juárez workers defy flu curfew
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7279
Rights group urges Mexico to hold soldiers accountable for abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7266
Juárez femicide cases go before Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://ww4report.com/node/7264
The Political Opportunism of Drug War "Spillover"
https://nacla.org/node/5745
The Bigger Picture of the Cuban Embargo and Travel Ban
https://nacla.org/node/5769
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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