Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1030, April 25, 2010
1. Puerto Rico: Students Strike Against Budget Cuts
2. Honduras: Anti-Sweatshop Campaign Hits Nike
3. Guatemala: NGO Blasts Maquilas’ Abuse of Women
4. Haiti: Government Suspends Forced Evictions
5. Uruguay: Junta Foreign Minister Gets Jail Term
6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Haiti, US
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. Puerto Rico: Students Strike Against Budget Cuts
As of Apr. 25 students were continuing an occupation of the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in San Juan to protest plans to cut next year’s budget by $100 million. The cutbacks might mean an end to exemptions for students with less resources at the public university. About 65,000 students are enrolled in the UPR’s 11 campuses, of which Río Piedras is the largest.
The occupation began on Apr. 21 as a 48-hour protest; two days later the students announced that the protest would be open-ended strike. Student representatives met with UPR president José Ramón de la Torre on Apr. 23, but the strikers said on Apr. 25 that the university still hadn’t responded to the demands they presented at the meeting. According to press reports, about 70 students were carrying out the occupation at the Río Piedras campus. Giovanni Roberto, a spokesperson for the strikers, said the number of protesters had stayed about the same since the beginning, with some students joining during the weekend while others went home to visit their families.
Support for the strikers has come from a number of groups, including the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR) and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition, which had led the struggle against layoffs of government employees last fall [see Updates #1006, 1008]. Supporters have come to the locked gates of the campus to demonstrate, hold press conferences and visit the strikers. “Support has been growing from the beginning,” Roberto said on Apr. 25. “We thought we were going to die of hunger, but it was the opposite—people have come by bringing us food. We expect the support to go on increasing and that this will get to the administration.” (EFE 4/23/10; Primero Hora (Puerto Rico) 4/25/10 from Inter News Service, 4/25/10 from staff reporter)
*2. Honduras: Anti-Sweatshop Campaign Hits Nike
On Apr. 9 Biddy Martin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin (UW) in Madison, announced that the institution was cancelling its sports apparel contract with Oregon-based Nike, Inc because of the company’s failure to provide legally mandated back pay and severance packages worth some $2.1 million to more than 1,600 workers for two Nike contractors in Honduras. This was the first victory in a campaign started by students at various North American campuses last fall around the closing of two plants, Vision Tex and Hugger de Honduras, in January 2009 [see Update #1016]. UW made some $49,000 in 2008 and 2009 for allowing Nike to use the university logo on its clothing and products.
Chancellor Martin’s decision followed organizing on the campus by the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) and a rally of more than 100 students on Apr. 8, with the support of two campus unions, AFSCME Local 171 and the Teaching Assistant Association. A week later, on Apr. 17, two of the Nike subcontractors’ former employees, Gina Cano and Lowlee Urquia, visited the campus as part of a North American tour. The workers said the management of the two maquiladoras—tax-exempt assembly plants producing mainly for export—didn’t compensate them for overtime, imposed unreasonable quotas, and failed to pay required contributions to the national health benefit program. (Socialist Worker 4/14/10; In These Times 4/21/10)
Meanwhile, the California-based Dole Food Company, Inc--formerly Standard Fruit Company--has announced plans to close 13 estates in Yoro department in northern Honduras, leaving about 2,300 agricultural workers without jobs. The company said the estates are unprofitable and indicated that it would pay the workers their benefits.
The employees are represented by the Unified Union of Standard Fruit Company Workers (Sutrasfco), which is affiliated with the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH), one of the country’s three main labor federations. Hilario Espinoza, the CTH’s general secretary, has said that the company was really trying to destroy Sutrasfco by replacing the unionized workers with a non-union workforce. “We would need to carry out a strike if it’s necessary,” he added, “because it’s not possible that they should be able to fire workers to bring in other people.” (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 4/10/10; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 4/23/10, 4/24/10)
[Toro department is near the Aguán River Valley, recently the scene of tension over a land dispute between campesinos and influential landowners; see Update #1029.]
*3. Guatemala: NGO Blasts Maquilas’ Abuse of Women
On Apr. 22 the French nongovernmental organization (NGO) Doctors of the World (MdM) released a report on the condition of women in Guatemalan maquiladoras in the apparel and food processing industries. “The job is unstable and badly paid, the work is dangerous for health, there is psychological and sexual harassment, insults, physical abuse, unjustified firings and interminable workdays,” according to the report, based on interviews in 2006-2009 with 530 women working in 16 factories in Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez departments in western Guatemala.
The investigators found that workdays were as long as 11 hours, while the pay was 51.75 quetzales a day ($6.46), below the minimum wage of 56 quetzales ($7). In the apparel maquiladoras, 65% of the women received less than 1,500 quetzales a month ($187.5), while in the food processing plants some 70.5% of the women got less than 1,000 quetzales ($125) a month. About 34% of the food processing workers interviewed were minors, while 4% of the apparel workers were minors. Some 56.2% of the food processors were indigenous, while 41% of the garment workers were indigenous. Just one third could read and write. Seven out of 10 of the women in food processing were single mothers, as were more than half of the women in the apparel plants.
The report found that 90% of the women interviewed had suffered either psychological or physical abuse. The workers put up with the abuse because “they are regularly threatened with being fired if they try to defend their rights,” said Pilar Giraux, the head of the MdM mission in Guatemala. There are 180 maquiladoras in Guatemala, employing 75,000-100,000 people. (EFE 4/22/10 via terra.com (Spain))
*4. Haiti: Government Suspends Forced Evictions
The Haitian government decided on Apr. 22 to declare a three-week moratorium on forced evictions of homeless Port-au-Prince residents from improvised encampments at schools and other private property where they have been living since a Jan. 12 earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti. The government made the decision because “there are a lot of tensions,” Edmond Mulet, a Guatemalan diplomat and the acting head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), said at a press conference later on Apr. 22. “There are pupils who want to return to their schools to continue their studies; there are displaced people who are installed in the schools,” Mulet explained. “Well, instead of having confrontations, a moratorium has been established.” (Radio Métropole 4/23/10 from AFP)
The Haitian government had been evicting thousands of people from the encampments since early April, from sites that included private schools, a golf course and a soccer stadium [see Updates #1028 and 1029]. Although the government claimed the homeless would be moved to two new camps prepared outside the city, by most accounts many people were left living in the street.
On Apr. 14 the nonprofit Bagay Dwol [“Strange Things”] Haiti Relief Fund reported on evictions at Caradeux Delmas 75, in eastern Port-au-Prince, where it said some 3,200 families were living in five camps: Camp Benediction, “Toto” Terrain Crisis Committee (CCTT), Camp Canaan, Refugee Camp and Camp Toussaint Louverture. Residents said government bulldozers came without warning the evening of Apr. 4 with Haitian National Police (PNH) escorts. “The use of batons [was] reported, and firearms were discharged into the air six times. The residents then reported that their homes were destroyed, first by the officers and then by the…bulldozers.” This continued for three nights, driving out 500 residents, who are “now living on the streets,” according to the remaining camp residents. (Bagay Dwol blog 4/14/10; Christian Science Monitor 4/20/10)
*5. Uruguay: Junta Foreign Minister Gets Jail Term
On Apr. 20 Uruguayan criminal judge Juan Carlos Fernández Lecchini handed down a 20-year prison sentence to Juan Carlos Blanco--foreign relations minister from 1973 to 1976, at the beginning of a 1973-1985 military dictatorship—for "especially aggravated homicide" in the case of the schoolteacher Elena Quinteros. With the judge’s decision, all the principal figures accused of human rights violations during the dictatorship have received prison sentences, although some face additional charges. Former dictator Juan Bordaberry (1973-1976) has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, former dictator Gregorio (“Goyo”) Alvarez (1981-1985) to 25 years, and eight other former officials to 20-25 years for homicides, kidnappings and forced disappearances.
Quinteros was abducted from the grounds of the Venezuelan embassy in Montevideo on June 28, 1976, when she sought asylum there. The abduction led to a break in diplomatic relations with Venezuela until 1985. Blanco still faces charges, along with Bordaberry, in the homicide of four Uruguayans in Buenos Aires. Under Uruguayan law, his sentence in the Quintero case will be appealed automatically. (Prensa Latina 4/21/10; AFP 4/22/10 via Notiero Legal)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Haiti, US
Protests Mark Auction of Brazil's Belo Monte Dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2462-protests-mark-auction-of-brazils-belo-monte-dam-
Cochabamba: Evo offends global gays
http://ww4report.com/node/8553
Cochabamba: police bar Ecuadoran indigenous march
http://ww4report.com/node/8551#comment-320086
Climate Change Conference in Bolivia: In Defense of Pachamama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2457-climate-change-conference-in-bolivia-in-defense-of-pachamama
Bolivia: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of Cochabamba Water War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2456-reflection-on-the-tenth-anniversary-of-cochabamba-water-war
Photo Essay From Bolivia: Memories of the Water War and Preparation for the World Climate Conference
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/2455-bolivia-memories-of-the-water-war-and-preparation-for-the-world-climate-conference
News Roundup: World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/component/content/article/2458-news-round-up-world-peoples-conference-on-climate-change-and-the-rights-of-mother-earth
Bolivian Climate Conference: Morales and International Peoples' Proposals for Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/2460-bolivia-climate-conference-morales-and-international-peoples-proposals-for-change-
Scenes From the People’s Climate Change Summit in Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/6523
Colombia: An Anti-Coke Campaign Effervesces at NYU
https://nacla.org/node/6527
Colombia’s DAS Carried Out “Political Warfare” Against Journalist Hollman Morris, Files Indicate
http://latindispatch.com/2010/04/16/colombias-das-carried-out-political-warfare-against-journalist-hollman-morris-files-indicate/
U.S. Advises Security Apprenticeships in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2463-us-advises-security-apprenticeships-in-colombia
Honduras and the Political Uses of the Drug War
https://nacla.org/node/6519
Broadcasting Women's Voices in Haiti's Reconstruction: Women's Community Radio
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/broadcasting-womens-voice_b_547686.html
Defense Secretary Gates' week in Latin America
http://justf.org/blog/2010/04/20/defense-secretary-gates-week-latin-america
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
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Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Friday, 23 April 2010
Reports from Cochabamba: Climate Summit Closes, Calls for Ecological Tribunal
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
[World War 4 Report editor and WBAI host Bill Weinberg was in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the World People's Conference on Climate Change. These are his last two on-the-scene reports.]
Cochabamba: Evo agrees to meet with Table 18
April 21, 2010
As the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) convened for a third day April 21 at Tiquipaya, outside the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, Aymara indigenous leaders and their supporters continued to meet just outside the official summit at the dissident "Table 18," on social conflicts related to climate change. Greivances centered on ecological impacts of mineral projects, including the Japanese-owned San Cristobal mine in southern Potosi department and the state-owned Corocoro mine in La Paz department. [...]
Read the full report:
http://ww4report.com/node/8551
Cochabamba summit calls for ecological tribunal
April 22, 2010
The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) at the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba closed on Earth Day, April 22, issuing several resolutions, including: that the UN adopt a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth; that an International Committee be organized to hold a global referendum on climate change on Earth Day 2011; that the industrialized nations provide annual financing equivalent to 6% of their GDP to confront climate change in the developing world; and that an International Tribunal on Environmental and Climate Justice be created, with its seat in Bolivia. The conference called for a new global organization to press for these demands, tentatively dubbed the World Movement for Mother Earth--or, by its Spanish acronym, MAMA-Tierra. [...]
Read the full report:
http://ww4report.com/node/8552
[World War 4 Report editor and WBAI host Bill Weinberg was in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the World People's Conference on Climate Change. These are his last two on-the-scene reports.]
Cochabamba: Evo agrees to meet with Table 18
April 21, 2010
As the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) convened for a third day April 21 at Tiquipaya, outside the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, Aymara indigenous leaders and their supporters continued to meet just outside the official summit at the dissident "Table 18," on social conflicts related to climate change. Greivances centered on ecological impacts of mineral projects, including the Japanese-owned San Cristobal mine in southern Potosi department and the state-owned Corocoro mine in La Paz department. [...]
Read the full report:
http://ww4report.com/node/8551
Cochabamba summit calls for ecological tribunal
April 22, 2010
The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) at the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba closed on Earth Day, April 22, issuing several resolutions, including: that the UN adopt a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth; that an International Committee be organized to hold a global referendum on climate change on Earth Day 2011; that the industrialized nations provide annual financing equivalent to 6% of their GDP to confront climate change in the developing world; and that an International Tribunal on Environmental and Climate Justice be created, with its seat in Bolivia. The conference called for a new global organization to press for these demands, tentatively dubbed the World Movement for Mother Earth--or, by its Spanish acronym, MAMA-Tierra. [...]
Read the full report:
http://ww4report.com/node/8552
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Report from Cochabamba: Dissidents Push Limits of Free Speech
Despite "the anti-capitalist discourse of Brother Evo," Pablo Regalsky charged that "foreign capital" still often plays a decisive role in Bolivia's development policies.
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
April 20, 2010
[World War 4 Report editor and WBAI host Bill Weinberg is in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the World People's Conference on Climate Change. He plans to post daily on-the-scene reports.]
As the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) convened for a second day April 20 at Tiquipaya, outside the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, Aymara indigenous leaders held their own dissident "Table 18" on social conflicts related to climate change. Barred by organizers from the official summit grounds on the campus of the University del Valle (Univalle), Aymara elders of the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Cullasuyu (CONAMAQ) and their allies convened the dissident forum in a Brazilian restaurant just off the campus.
Cleared of tables to make room for rows of chairs, the premises filled with pungent smoke as incense and coca leaves were ritually burned for the opening ceremony. With many drawn by the controversy, the unofficial Table 18 was as well-attended as the many tables held at the official proceedings on the campus--despite a contingent of UTOP, the national police anti-riot force, stationed at the restaurant's door. [...]
Read the full report:
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8550
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
April 20, 2010
[World War 4 Report editor and WBAI host Bill Weinberg is in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the World People's Conference on Climate Change. He plans to post daily on-the-scene reports.]
As the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) convened for a second day April 20 at Tiquipaya, outside the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, Aymara indigenous leaders held their own dissident "Table 18" on social conflicts related to climate change. Barred by organizers from the official summit grounds on the campus of the University del Valle (Univalle), Aymara elders of the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Cullasuyu (CONAMAQ) and their allies convened the dissident forum in a Brazilian restaurant just off the campus.
Cleared of tables to make room for rows of chairs, the premises filled with pungent smoke as incense and coca leaves were ritually burned for the opening ceremony. With many drawn by the controversy, the unofficial Table 18 was as well-attended as the many tables held at the official proceedings on the campus--despite a contingent of UTOP, the national police anti-riot force, stationed at the restaurant's door. [...]
Read the full report:
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8550
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
WNU #1029: Honduras Government Settles With Campesinos
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1029, April 18, 2010
1. Honduras: Lobo Settles With Aguán Campesinos
2. Honduras: OAS Annual Report Cites Violations
3. Haiti: Government, UN Evict More Quake Victims
4. Haiti: Clinton Warns of Violence Like Mexico’s
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: Lobo Settles With Aguán Campesinos
On Apr. 18 Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa signed an agreement with the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) granting some 2,600 campesino families about 11,000 hectares of land in the lower Aguán River Valley in northern Honduras. MUCA has fought since 2001 for 20,000 hectares which the group says were bought illegally by three wealthy business owners, Miguel Facussé Barjum, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales. The agreement came after several months of heightened tension in the area, with four murders of MUCA members in March and April; around Apr. 11 Lobo’s government launched an unprecedented mobilization of soldiers and police agents into the area, with troops surrounding some campesino communities [see Update #1028].
Under the agreement the government is to grant the campesino families 3,000 hectares of land for planting African oil palm trees and 3,000 hectares of uncultivated land; within a year the government will turn over another 1,000 hectares for African palms and 4,000 hectares of uncultivated land. In exchange, the families will leave the private estates they have been occupying. Despite early reports, the government apparently didn’t agree to a withdrawal of the troops and police agents.
Government and MUCA negotiators worked out a preliminary agreement on Apr. 14 after a 14-hour bargaining session. All but three of the 28 cooperatives that make up the MUCA ratified the agreement on Apr. 17. The remaining cooperatives will continue with pending court actions to regain land that they claim should be theirs.
Hundreds of campesinos and other activists used the Apr. 18 signing ceremony, which took place in the colonial city of Trujillo in Colón department, to protest President Lobo’s rightwing policies. “Golpistas [coup perpetrators] out of the Aguán,” they chanted, referring to a June 28, 2009 coup d’état that removed then-president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales; current president Lobo backed the coup and was elected in a vote organized in November by the de facto government that replaced Zelaya. Protesters also repeated a demand of the grassroots resistance for a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution.
"This agreement isn’t a definitive solution to the conflict,” Rafael Alegría, who heads the local branch of the international campesino organization Vía Campesina, said on Apr. 14, “but it brings calm to the region.” The big landowners involved seemed less satisfied, although the government is apparently compensating them for any land taken from them. A few hours after the signing ceremony a report circulated that Miguel Facussé Barjum had filed a legal action against the president’s decision. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/14/10; Prensa Latina 4/14/20; Nicaragua y Más blog 4/18/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras))
*2. Honduras: OAS Annual Report Cites Violations
On Apr. 15 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), a Washington, DC-based agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued its 2009 report on human rights in the hemisphere. For the first time the IACHR included Honduras among the countries that it “believed warranted special attention.” The inclusion of Honduras is based on a report, “Honduras: Human Rights and the Coup d’État,” by an IACHR commission that visited Honduras in August 2009 to investigate the human rights situation following a June 28 military coup [see Update #1001].
According to an IACHR press release from Apr. 15, the commission “confirmed during its visit to Honduras that…there have been grave human rights violations, including deaths, arbitrary declaration of a state of siege, repression of public demonstrations using disproportionate force, criminalization of social protest, arbitrary arrests of thousands of people, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and poor conditions of detention, militarization of the territory, an increase in instances of racial discrimination, violations of the rights of women, serious and arbitrary restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, and grave violations of political rights.”
The four other countries cited in the 2009 report have been criticized in previous IACHR annual reports: Colombia for a “persistent pattern of violation of the rights to life and to humane treatment”; Cuba for “structural situations that seriously affect the full enjoyment of human rights”; Haiti for “structural situations that seriously affect the enjoyment of the fundamental rights of its inhabitants”; and Venezuela for problems including the absence of “conditions…for human rights defenders and journalists to freely perform their occupations.” The report also criticized the US for its 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. (Hoy Digital (Dominican Republic) 4/15/10 from EFE; IACHR press release 4/15/10, English and Spanish)
In remarks published on Apr. 16 the Honduran government’s national human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio [see Update #979] said the IACHR had the “bad faith to want to damage the interests of the Honduran state and people.” It has “stopped being an ethical organization,” he said. “It’s an organization that serves political interests. Its president is a Venezuelan professional of recognized political membership.” (La Tribuna (Honduras) 4/17/10) [Apparently Custodio was implying that IACHR president Luz Patricia Mejía Guerrero had acted in support of Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, despite the report's criticisms of Venezuela.]
*3. Haiti: Government, UN Evict More Quake Victims
The Haitian government, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration (OIM) have been intensifying efforts to relocate Port-au-Prince area residents left homeless by a Jan. 12 earthquake and now living in as many as 900 improvised encampments in the capital and its suburbs. After having forcibly removed some 7,335 people from the Sylvio Cator soccer stadium the weekend of Apr. 9 [see Update #1028], on Apr. 12 the government said it was starting to relocate another 10,000 people.
The government opened a site it had prepared at Corail–Cesselesse, 20 km north of the city, on Apr. 12, and as of Apr. 16 it had moved 248 families, 896 individuals, there from a golf course in the upscale suburb of Pétionville. The OIM said it was expecting to move 2,500 people from an encampment in the Bourdon Valley in Port-au-Prince to a site in Tabarre Issa (apparently in the northwestern suburb of Tabarre).
According to the government, earthquake survivors needed to be moved to safer locations as the rainy season begins; it said the relocations were voluntary. But observers found that many of the homeless were unwilling to relocate and that the removals seemed to target improvised camps on private property that the owners wanted to put back into service. “We were told we had a week to leave, and we could go in Tabarre Issa,” Mathieu Thomson, who had been living in a tent near the Saint-Louis de Gonzague prep school, told the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service. “But there's nothing there. No toilets, no showers.” According to the OIM, the Tabarre Issa site has sanitation services, schools, a community garden and a soccer field.
The site in Corail–Cesselesse is “isolated,” residents told the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GAAR), a Haitian nonprofit group, on Apr. 14 at “Camp KID,” where about 2,000 people were living at the entrance to Christ-Roi Street. People who were to be moved to Corail from the Pétionville golf course told GARR on Apr. 10 that they didn’t know how they would get to their schools and their jobs. “We’ll be far away from downtown Port-au-Prince, where, for better or worse, you could find little jobs,” one said, “but what will there be for us up there? Nothing.” “Sending us to Corail, isn’t that another way of leaving us to our fate, of exiling us?” asked a group of young girls. (AFP (English) 4/13/10 via France 24); Radio Métropole, Haiti, 4/16/10, 4/17/10, __)
On Apr. 17 members of Haiti Response Coalition (HRC), a coalition of nonprofits and international solidarity groups, reported on plans to remove 213 families, about 1,000 individuals, that morning from the grounds of a church and a private school, the Centre Pédagogique Rural Protestant, Ecole Normale de Frères, at Delmas 95. There seemed to be no effort to provide a new location for the temporary residents, who said the Methodist pastors who ran the school hadn’t spoken to them for two weeks and that they had been denied use of the facility’s water and the restrooms. The residents, many of them camped out on a basketball court, thought private security guards would be carrying out the eviction. A sign at the camp’s gate read, in French: “NOTICE TO CAMP, the Methodist yard must be cleared out on Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010.” (Email report from HRC 4/17/2010)
*4. Haiti: Clinton Warns of Violence Like Mexico’s
Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for Haiti, said on Apr. 17 that the international community needs to stay involved in Haiti if it wants to prevent violence from breaking out there. "We know one thing for sure: If you like the gunfight that's going on in northwest Mexico, you will love Haiti 10 years from now," he told reporters during a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. "If that's what thrills you--this horrible chaos from Monterrey to the border--you will just love Haiti if you walk away from it."
Clinton--who apologized on Mar. 10 for his role in the virtual destruction of Haitian rice production [see Update #1026]--said he loved Haiti and its people and was optimistic about plans to rebuild the country. Along with former president George W. Bush (2001-2009), Clinton sent a letter to the US Congress earlier in the week asking it to extend the 2008 Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE II) to 2025. The act gives preferential treatment to Haitian apparel exports to encourage the development of garment assembly plants in Haiti. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 4/17/10, some from AP; Examiner.com 4/17/10 from AP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Locals and Indigenous Groups Combat Big Real Estate in Greater Buenos Aires
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2445-preserving-culture-protecting-the-environment-locals-and-indigenous-groups-combat-big-real-estate-in-greater-buenos-aires-
A Short Talk With Fernando Henrique Cardoso
https://nacla.org/node/6513
Indians and Activists March Against Amazon Mega-dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2449-indians-and-activists-march-against-amazon-mega-dam
Bolivia: remains of "disappeared" guerilla exhumed
http://ww4report.com/node/8540
Masonic connection seen in Bolivian separatist plot
http://ww4report.com/node/8539
Campesino, squatter actions rock Bolivia
http://ww4report.com/node/8538
Bolivia’s Lithium Challenge
https://nacla.org/node/6510
World War 4 Report to blog Bolivia climate confab
http://ww4report.com/node/8543
Peru: campesinos block roads to protest mining operation
http://ww4report.com/node/8541
Colombia: indigenous journalist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8531
Indigenous Justice Threatened in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2448-indigenous-justice-threatened-in-colombia
Fighting Corruption or Persecuting Political Opponents in Venezuela?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2450-fighting-corruption-or-persecuting-political-opponents-in-venezuela-a-response-to-the-new-york-times
Honduran campesinos under the gun
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5013
WOLA Statement on Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2451-wola-statement-on-honduras
Disappearing Truth in Honduras: Commissions Cover Up Demands for New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/component/content/article/2443-disappearing-truth-in-honduras-commissions-cover-up-demands-for-new-constitution
The Second Killing of Pablo Bac: Deafened by Canadian Silence and Impunity in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2452-the-second-killing-of-pablo-bac-deafened-by-canadian-silence-and-impunity-in-guatemala
Mexico: US consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed following attack
http://ww4report.com/node/8532
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1029, April 18, 2010
1. Honduras: Lobo Settles With Aguán Campesinos
2. Honduras: OAS Annual Report Cites Violations
3. Haiti: Government, UN Evict More Quake Victims
4. Haiti: Clinton Warns of Violence Like Mexico’s
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: Lobo Settles With Aguán Campesinos
On Apr. 18 Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa signed an agreement with the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) granting some 2,600 campesino families about 11,000 hectares of land in the lower Aguán River Valley in northern Honduras. MUCA has fought since 2001 for 20,000 hectares which the group says were bought illegally by three wealthy business owners, Miguel Facussé Barjum, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales. The agreement came after several months of heightened tension in the area, with four murders of MUCA members in March and April; around Apr. 11 Lobo’s government launched an unprecedented mobilization of soldiers and police agents into the area, with troops surrounding some campesino communities [see Update #1028].
Under the agreement the government is to grant the campesino families 3,000 hectares of land for planting African oil palm trees and 3,000 hectares of uncultivated land; within a year the government will turn over another 1,000 hectares for African palms and 4,000 hectares of uncultivated land. In exchange, the families will leave the private estates they have been occupying. Despite early reports, the government apparently didn’t agree to a withdrawal of the troops and police agents.
Government and MUCA negotiators worked out a preliminary agreement on Apr. 14 after a 14-hour bargaining session. All but three of the 28 cooperatives that make up the MUCA ratified the agreement on Apr. 17. The remaining cooperatives will continue with pending court actions to regain land that they claim should be theirs.
Hundreds of campesinos and other activists used the Apr. 18 signing ceremony, which took place in the colonial city of Trujillo in Colón department, to protest President Lobo’s rightwing policies. “Golpistas [coup perpetrators] out of the Aguán,” they chanted, referring to a June 28, 2009 coup d’état that removed then-president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales; current president Lobo backed the coup and was elected in a vote organized in November by the de facto government that replaced Zelaya. Protesters also repeated a demand of the grassroots resistance for a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution.
"This agreement isn’t a definitive solution to the conflict,” Rafael Alegría, who heads the local branch of the international campesino organization Vía Campesina, said on Apr. 14, “but it brings calm to the region.” The big landowners involved seemed less satisfied, although the government is apparently compensating them for any land taken from them. A few hours after the signing ceremony a report circulated that Miguel Facussé Barjum had filed a legal action against the president’s decision. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/14/10; Prensa Latina 4/14/20; Nicaragua y Más blog 4/18/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras))
*2. Honduras: OAS Annual Report Cites Violations
On Apr. 15 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), a Washington, DC-based agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued its 2009 report on human rights in the hemisphere. For the first time the IACHR included Honduras among the countries that it “believed warranted special attention.” The inclusion of Honduras is based on a report, “Honduras: Human Rights and the Coup d’État,” by an IACHR commission that visited Honduras in August 2009 to investigate the human rights situation following a June 28 military coup [see Update #1001].
According to an IACHR press release from Apr. 15, the commission “confirmed during its visit to Honduras that…there have been grave human rights violations, including deaths, arbitrary declaration of a state of siege, repression of public demonstrations using disproportionate force, criminalization of social protest, arbitrary arrests of thousands of people, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and poor conditions of detention, militarization of the territory, an increase in instances of racial discrimination, violations of the rights of women, serious and arbitrary restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, and grave violations of political rights.”
The four other countries cited in the 2009 report have been criticized in previous IACHR annual reports: Colombia for a “persistent pattern of violation of the rights to life and to humane treatment”; Cuba for “structural situations that seriously affect the full enjoyment of human rights”; Haiti for “structural situations that seriously affect the enjoyment of the fundamental rights of its inhabitants”; and Venezuela for problems including the absence of “conditions…for human rights defenders and journalists to freely perform their occupations.” The report also criticized the US for its 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. (Hoy Digital (Dominican Republic) 4/15/10 from EFE; IACHR press release 4/15/10, English and Spanish)
In remarks published on Apr. 16 the Honduran government’s national human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio [see Update #979] said the IACHR had the “bad faith to want to damage the interests of the Honduran state and people.” It has “stopped being an ethical organization,” he said. “It’s an organization that serves political interests. Its president is a Venezuelan professional of recognized political membership.” (La Tribuna (Honduras) 4/17/10) [Apparently Custodio was implying that IACHR president Luz Patricia Mejía Guerrero had acted in support of Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, despite the report's criticisms of Venezuela.]
*3. Haiti: Government, UN Evict More Quake Victims
The Haitian government, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration (OIM) have been intensifying efforts to relocate Port-au-Prince area residents left homeless by a Jan. 12 earthquake and now living in as many as 900 improvised encampments in the capital and its suburbs. After having forcibly removed some 7,335 people from the Sylvio Cator soccer stadium the weekend of Apr. 9 [see Update #1028], on Apr. 12 the government said it was starting to relocate another 10,000 people.
The government opened a site it had prepared at Corail–Cesselesse, 20 km north of the city, on Apr. 12, and as of Apr. 16 it had moved 248 families, 896 individuals, there from a golf course in the upscale suburb of Pétionville. The OIM said it was expecting to move 2,500 people from an encampment in the Bourdon Valley in Port-au-Prince to a site in Tabarre Issa (apparently in the northwestern suburb of Tabarre).
According to the government, earthquake survivors needed to be moved to safer locations as the rainy season begins; it said the relocations were voluntary. But observers found that many of the homeless were unwilling to relocate and that the removals seemed to target improvised camps on private property that the owners wanted to put back into service. “We were told we had a week to leave, and we could go in Tabarre Issa,” Mathieu Thomson, who had been living in a tent near the Saint-Louis de Gonzague prep school, told the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service. “But there's nothing there. No toilets, no showers.” According to the OIM, the Tabarre Issa site has sanitation services, schools, a community garden and a soccer field.
The site in Corail–Cesselesse is “isolated,” residents told the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GAAR), a Haitian nonprofit group, on Apr. 14 at “Camp KID,” where about 2,000 people were living at the entrance to Christ-Roi Street. People who were to be moved to Corail from the Pétionville golf course told GARR on Apr. 10 that they didn’t know how they would get to their schools and their jobs. “We’ll be far away from downtown Port-au-Prince, where, for better or worse, you could find little jobs,” one said, “but what will there be for us up there? Nothing.” “Sending us to Corail, isn’t that another way of leaving us to our fate, of exiling us?” asked a group of young girls. (AFP (English) 4/13/10 via France 24); Radio Métropole, Haiti, 4/16/10, 4/17/10, __)
On Apr. 17 members of Haiti Response Coalition (HRC), a coalition of nonprofits and international solidarity groups, reported on plans to remove 213 families, about 1,000 individuals, that morning from the grounds of a church and a private school, the Centre Pédagogique Rural Protestant, Ecole Normale de Frères, at Delmas 95. There seemed to be no effort to provide a new location for the temporary residents, who said the Methodist pastors who ran the school hadn’t spoken to them for two weeks and that they had been denied use of the facility’s water and the restrooms. The residents, many of them camped out on a basketball court, thought private security guards would be carrying out the eviction. A sign at the camp’s gate read, in French: “NOTICE TO CAMP, the Methodist yard must be cleared out on Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010.” (Email report from HRC 4/17/2010)
*4. Haiti: Clinton Warns of Violence Like Mexico’s
Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for Haiti, said on Apr. 17 that the international community needs to stay involved in Haiti if it wants to prevent violence from breaking out there. "We know one thing for sure: If you like the gunfight that's going on in northwest Mexico, you will love Haiti 10 years from now," he told reporters during a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. "If that's what thrills you--this horrible chaos from Monterrey to the border--you will just love Haiti if you walk away from it."
Clinton--who apologized on Mar. 10 for his role in the virtual destruction of Haitian rice production [see Update #1026]--said he loved Haiti and its people and was optimistic about plans to rebuild the country. Along with former president George W. Bush (2001-2009), Clinton sent a letter to the US Congress earlier in the week asking it to extend the 2008 Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE II) to 2025. The act gives preferential treatment to Haitian apparel exports to encourage the development of garment assembly plants in Haiti. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 4/17/10, some from AP; Examiner.com 4/17/10 from AP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Locals and Indigenous Groups Combat Big Real Estate in Greater Buenos Aires
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2445-preserving-culture-protecting-the-environment-locals-and-indigenous-groups-combat-big-real-estate-in-greater-buenos-aires-
A Short Talk With Fernando Henrique Cardoso
https://nacla.org/node/6513
Indians and Activists March Against Amazon Mega-dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2449-indians-and-activists-march-against-amazon-mega-dam
Bolivia: remains of "disappeared" guerilla exhumed
http://ww4report.com/node/8540
Masonic connection seen in Bolivian separatist plot
http://ww4report.com/node/8539
Campesino, squatter actions rock Bolivia
http://ww4report.com/node/8538
Bolivia’s Lithium Challenge
https://nacla.org/node/6510
World War 4 Report to blog Bolivia climate confab
http://ww4report.com/node/8543
Peru: campesinos block roads to protest mining operation
http://ww4report.com/node/8541
Colombia: indigenous journalist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/8531
Indigenous Justice Threatened in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2448-indigenous-justice-threatened-in-colombia
Fighting Corruption or Persecuting Political Opponents in Venezuela?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2450-fighting-corruption-or-persecuting-political-opponents-in-venezuela-a-response-to-the-new-york-times
Honduran campesinos under the gun
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5013
WOLA Statement on Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2451-wola-statement-on-honduras
Disappearing Truth in Honduras: Commissions Cover Up Demands for New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/component/content/article/2443-disappearing-truth-in-honduras-commissions-cover-up-demands-for-new-constitution
The Second Killing of Pablo Bac: Deafened by Canadian Silence and Impunity in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2452-the-second-killing-of-pablo-bac-deafened-by-canadian-silence-and-impunity-in-guatemala
Mexico: US consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed following attack
http://ww4report.com/node/8532
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
WNU #1028: Haitian Cops Evict Earthquake Survivors
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1028, April 11, 2010
1. Haiti: Cops Evict Earthquake Survivors
2. Haiti: President Satisfied With Donor Meeting
3. Honduras: Army Moving in on Aguán Campesinos?
4. Mexico: Electrical Workers Plan Hunger Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Operation Condor, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Cops Evict Earthquake Survivors
On the evening of Apr. 9 agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) began removing some 1,300 families—about 7,335 people—from Port-au-Prince’s Sylvio Cator soccer stadium, where they had camped out since a Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed much of the city, killing as many as 230,000 people and leaving some 1.3 million without homes. “Soccer has to be brought back to life,” said stadium director Rolny Saint-Louis. “There are players waiting to be able to play and feed their families from their work.” The stadium’s managers say the Taiwanese are planning to repair the bleachers and replace the artificial turf, which the earthquake survivors had reportedly damaged.
“When they throw us out without telling us where we’re going to sleep in the evening, without offering us an alternative, it’s irresponsible, because families are going to end up in the street,” one camp resident told the local station Radio Métropole. “Nothing’s been prepared to receive them in another center,” said a man wandering in the stadium. “The government’s not serious.” The stadium managers offered each family a tent to replace the improvised shelters the police agents had smashed during the removal, but one resident said the tents were too small: only two or three people could fit in each tent, while many of the families were quite large.
Heavy rains fell on the city in the evening as some of the stadium’s former residents were still looking for a new place to camp out. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/10/10; Haiti Press Network 4/9/10; Asia One News (Singapore) 4/12/10 from AFP)
There are about 400 encampments in the metropolitan area, many on private property. Some 11,000 people are living on the St-Louis Gonzague prep school’s field. The school failed to reopen on Apr. 5, the date the government set for a partial resumption of classes. Other homeless people are camped out at a golf course in Pétionville, an upscale suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince; the authorities say the encampment is overcrowded and prone to mudslides and flooding.
The Haitian government and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have a plan to move people out of many of these camps as the rainy season starts. In contrast to the forced removal at the Sylvio Cator stadium, the authorities claim that people in other encampments will voluntarily relocate to two new sites the government has prepared. One is at Corail–Cesselesse, 20 km north of the city; the other isn’t ready yet.
People are understandably reluctant to leave the existing camps, where residents have often organized themselves and some aid groups have set up facilities. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has established a field hospital at the St-Louis Gonzague field and has constructed latrines. "We’ll see what the government’s going to do, and then we’ll react,” Salha Issoufou, MSF’s mission head in Haiti, said about the plan to move the homeless people. “It’s not in our nature to help displacements of population.” (L’Express (France) 4/8/10 from correspondent; Asia One News (Singapore) 4/12/10 from AFP)
*2. Haiti: President Satisfied With Donor Meeting
Speaking at an Apr. 6 press conference at the ruined National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haitian president René Préval expressed his satisfaction with the results of an international donors meeting held by the United Nations (UN) in New York on Mar. 31 to discuss the reconstruction of Haiti after the devastation of the Jan. 12 earthquake [see Update #1026]. The donors pledged nearly $10 billion in aid and about $350 million in direct support for the government’s 2010 budget. During the next 18 months the management of the various projects will be overseen by a commission made up of Haitians and international representatives. Haitian prime minister Jean Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the UN’s special envoy for Haiti, are currently the co-chairs of the commission. Préval insisted that the Haitian president would always have the last word on the plans.
Préval, who is not permitted to succeed himself when his term ends on Feb. 7, 2011, insisted that national elections will be organized in the fall. These would combine the presidential election with legislative elections that were scheduled for Feb. 28 but were postponed because of the earthquake. “Elections are necessary,” he said. “It’s important for stability, for the reconstruction.” He admitted that there are serious administrative problems, including the destruction of voting offices and the displacement of a large number of voters from their places of residence. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/6/10)
*3. Honduras: Army Moving in on Aguán Campesinos?
The pro-government Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo reported on Apr. 11 that Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa had ordered a “strong militarization” of the lower Aguán River Valley in northern Honduras, the site of a land conflict between influential landowners and some 3,000 campesino families. “Today, the lower Aguán has been totally militarized, and we’ve detected at least 30 military vehicles with troops carrying high-caliber weapons,” said Yony Rivas, a member of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which has fought since 2001 for some 20,000 hectares of land it claims were bought illegally by three wealthy business owners, Miguel Facussé Barjum, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales.
Andrés Pavón, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), said the troop movements are unusual, since “the police, not the military, resolve conflicts of a civilian character.” (El Heraldo 4/11/10; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/11/10)
The militarization followed a week of growing tension in the Aguán region.
On Apr. 2 MUCA charged that the military, police and paramilitaries were planning to remove thousands of campesinos “in a violent and bloody manner” from lands they had occupied in the Aguán region. The area is used for cultivating African oil palm trees, a source of cooking oil; a Facussé family business, Grupo Dinant, is exploring ways to use palm oil in biofuel production as well [see Update #1027].
On Apr. 5 the government rejected a plan from MUCA that would restore 28 cooperatives formed under the country’s agrarian reform law, giving each of the 3,000 campesino families about five hectares of land. The government has proposed buying 4,500 hectares from the landowners and distributing the land to the campesinos, which would give about 1.5 hectares for each family. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/9/10)
On Apr. 7, two men on a motorcycle killed a MUCA leader, José Manuel Álvarez Guerra, with five shots as he arrived at his home in the Manga Seca neighborhood in Tocoa, capital of Colón department. This was the fourth murder of a MUCA member in less than a month [see Update #1027]. (El Financiero (Mexico) 4/7/10, some from Notimex; Prensa Latina 4/8/10)
On Apr. 9 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP, apparently the former National Front Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of labor and social organizations) charged that US soldiers were carrying out patrols in two Black Hawk helicopters on both sides of the Aguán River. The helicopters were taking off from the US miliary’s Soto Cano Air Base (the former Palmerola base) in the central department of Comayagua, the FNRP said. From inside the Black Hawks “US military personnel take photographs and carry out observation, search and intelligence-gathering work over the terrain.” (Prensa Latina 4/9/10)
On Apr. 12 the Quixote Center, a Washington, DC-based human rights group, called for people to contact Ambassador Craig Kelly at the US State Department (202-647-6754), the State Department Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs (202-647-0834, WHAAsstSecty@state.gov ) and the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/ or 202-456-1111) to “express alarm” over the situation in the Aguán region and possible US air support for Honduran military repression. (Quixote Center email 4/12/10)
*4. Mexico: Electrical Workers Plan Hunger Strike
On Apr. 11 the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) announced that some 2,300 members were planning to start a mass hunger strike in Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zócalo, as part of the union’s continuing protest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. The union says 17,247 of the 44,000 LFC workers laid off in the liquidation have refused to accept the government’s severance package; they are demanding either the reopening of the LFC or jobs at the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which has taken over LFC’s operations. These workers have carried out a series of protests, often large and militant, over the last six months, but without success [see Update #1020].
The SME leadership said some 5,000 workers volunteered for the hunger strike. A medical laboratory provided examinations and determined that 2,300 of the workers were healthy enough to undertake a hunger strike. “The strike will be open-ended,” SME labor secretary Eduardo Bobadilla said. The protest “isn’t an act of desperation, but a sign that we electrical workers will fight to the end.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Operation Condor, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Americas Program Biodiversity Report—March 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6706
New Evidence: Kissinger Rescinded Warning Against Condor Assassinations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2442-new-evidence-kissinger-rescinded-warning-against-condor-assassinations
Argentina: Central Bank Independence ... Independent from Whom?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6691
Earthquake and Tsunami in Chile: The Militarization of Natural Disasters
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6700
Brazil: A Tragedy of Local and Global Dimensions
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50985
Bolivia: Moderate Gains for Morales' MAS Party
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/2440-bolivia-moderate-gains-for-morales-mas-party
Peru to Investigate Uncontacted Tribes’ ‘Possible’ Existence
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2436-peru-to-investigate-uncontacted-tribes-possible-existence
Terrorist Attack Points to Ongoing Violence in Key City for US-Colombia FTA
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2434-terrorist-attack-points-to-ongoing-violence-in-key-city-for-us-colombia-fta-
Chavez Fuels the South Bronx
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2441-chavez-fuels-the-south-bronx
Venezuelan Yukpa Appeal for Use of Indigenous Legal Customs in Murder Case
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2437-venezuelan-yukpa-appeal-for-use-of-indigenous-legal-customs-in-murder-case-
El Salvador: Monsignor Romero, 30 years later
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/2431-el-salvador-monsignor-romero-30-years-later
U.S. covering up reality in Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4977
WOLA vs. Honduran Democracy
http://www.counterpunch.org/pine04122010.html
Coca-Cola Sued for ‘Campaign of Violence’ in Guatemala
https://nacla.org/node/6504
Goldcorp Mining Project in Guatemala Faces Cross Border Opposition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2435-goldcorp-mining-project-in-guatemala-faces-cross-border-opposition
Mexican Soldiers Murder Two Children, US Media Covers Up the Crime
http://mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com/2010/04/mexican-soldiers-murder-two-children-us.html
Cananea Mine Battle Reveals Anti-Labor Offensive in Mexico, United States
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6694
Mexico: Phase 2 of the Drug War
http://americas.irc-online.org/updater/6715#1
National Assembly of Environmentally Affected Groups Warns of an "Environmental Disaster" in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6675
Mexico's New Dirty War
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6714
NGOs and the Business of Poverty in Haiti
https://nacla.org/node/6501
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1028, April 11, 2010
1. Haiti: Cops Evict Earthquake Survivors
2. Haiti: President Satisfied With Donor Meeting
3. Honduras: Army Moving in on Aguán Campesinos?
4. Mexico: Electrical Workers Plan Hunger Strike
5. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Operation Condor, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Cops Evict Earthquake Survivors
On the evening of Apr. 9 agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) began removing some 1,300 families—about 7,335 people—from Port-au-Prince’s Sylvio Cator soccer stadium, where they had camped out since a Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed much of the city, killing as many as 230,000 people and leaving some 1.3 million without homes. “Soccer has to be brought back to life,” said stadium director Rolny Saint-Louis. “There are players waiting to be able to play and feed their families from their work.” The stadium’s managers say the Taiwanese are planning to repair the bleachers and replace the artificial turf, which the earthquake survivors had reportedly damaged.
“When they throw us out without telling us where we’re going to sleep in the evening, without offering us an alternative, it’s irresponsible, because families are going to end up in the street,” one camp resident told the local station Radio Métropole. “Nothing’s been prepared to receive them in another center,” said a man wandering in the stadium. “The government’s not serious.” The stadium managers offered each family a tent to replace the improvised shelters the police agents had smashed during the removal, but one resident said the tents were too small: only two or three people could fit in each tent, while many of the families were quite large.
Heavy rains fell on the city in the evening as some of the stadium’s former residents were still looking for a new place to camp out. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/10/10; Haiti Press Network 4/9/10; Asia One News (Singapore) 4/12/10 from AFP)
There are about 400 encampments in the metropolitan area, many on private property. Some 11,000 people are living on the St-Louis Gonzague prep school’s field. The school failed to reopen on Apr. 5, the date the government set for a partial resumption of classes. Other homeless people are camped out at a golf course in Pétionville, an upscale suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince; the authorities say the encampment is overcrowded and prone to mudslides and flooding.
The Haitian government and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have a plan to move people out of many of these camps as the rainy season starts. In contrast to the forced removal at the Sylvio Cator stadium, the authorities claim that people in other encampments will voluntarily relocate to two new sites the government has prepared. One is at Corail–Cesselesse, 20 km north of the city; the other isn’t ready yet.
People are understandably reluctant to leave the existing camps, where residents have often organized themselves and some aid groups have set up facilities. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has established a field hospital at the St-Louis Gonzague field and has constructed latrines. "We’ll see what the government’s going to do, and then we’ll react,” Salha Issoufou, MSF’s mission head in Haiti, said about the plan to move the homeless people. “It’s not in our nature to help displacements of population.” (L’Express (France) 4/8/10 from correspondent; Asia One News (Singapore) 4/12/10 from AFP)
*2. Haiti: President Satisfied With Donor Meeting
Speaking at an Apr. 6 press conference at the ruined National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haitian president René Préval expressed his satisfaction with the results of an international donors meeting held by the United Nations (UN) in New York on Mar. 31 to discuss the reconstruction of Haiti after the devastation of the Jan. 12 earthquake [see Update #1026]. The donors pledged nearly $10 billion in aid and about $350 million in direct support for the government’s 2010 budget. During the next 18 months the management of the various projects will be overseen by a commission made up of Haitians and international representatives. Haitian prime minister Jean Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the UN’s special envoy for Haiti, are currently the co-chairs of the commission. Préval insisted that the Haitian president would always have the last word on the plans.
Préval, who is not permitted to succeed himself when his term ends on Feb. 7, 2011, insisted that national elections will be organized in the fall. These would combine the presidential election with legislative elections that were scheduled for Feb. 28 but were postponed because of the earthquake. “Elections are necessary,” he said. “It’s important for stability, for the reconstruction.” He admitted that there are serious administrative problems, including the destruction of voting offices and the displacement of a large number of voters from their places of residence. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/6/10)
*3. Honduras: Army Moving in on Aguán Campesinos?
The pro-government Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo reported on Apr. 11 that Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa had ordered a “strong militarization” of the lower Aguán River Valley in northern Honduras, the site of a land conflict between influential landowners and some 3,000 campesino families. “Today, the lower Aguán has been totally militarized, and we’ve detected at least 30 military vehicles with troops carrying high-caliber weapons,” said Yony Rivas, a member of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which has fought since 2001 for some 20,000 hectares of land it claims were bought illegally by three wealthy business owners, Miguel Facussé Barjum, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales.
Andrés Pavón, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), said the troop movements are unusual, since “the police, not the military, resolve conflicts of a civilian character.” (El Heraldo 4/11/10; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/11/10)
The militarization followed a week of growing tension in the Aguán region.
On Apr. 2 MUCA charged that the military, police and paramilitaries were planning to remove thousands of campesinos “in a violent and bloody manner” from lands they had occupied in the Aguán region. The area is used for cultivating African oil palm trees, a source of cooking oil; a Facussé family business, Grupo Dinant, is exploring ways to use palm oil in biofuel production as well [see Update #1027].
On Apr. 5 the government rejected a plan from MUCA that would restore 28 cooperatives formed under the country’s agrarian reform law, giving each of the 3,000 campesino families about five hectares of land. The government has proposed buying 4,500 hectares from the landowners and distributing the land to the campesinos, which would give about 1.5 hectares for each family. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/9/10)
On Apr. 7, two men on a motorcycle killed a MUCA leader, José Manuel Álvarez Guerra, with five shots as he arrived at his home in the Manga Seca neighborhood in Tocoa, capital of Colón department. This was the fourth murder of a MUCA member in less than a month [see Update #1027]. (El Financiero (Mexico) 4/7/10, some from Notimex; Prensa Latina 4/8/10)
On Apr. 9 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP, apparently the former National Front Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of labor and social organizations) charged that US soldiers were carrying out patrols in two Black Hawk helicopters on both sides of the Aguán River. The helicopters were taking off from the US miliary’s Soto Cano Air Base (the former Palmerola base) in the central department of Comayagua, the FNRP said. From inside the Black Hawks “US military personnel take photographs and carry out observation, search and intelligence-gathering work over the terrain.” (Prensa Latina 4/9/10)
On Apr. 12 the Quixote Center, a Washington, DC-based human rights group, called for people to contact Ambassador Craig Kelly at the US State Department (202-647-6754), the State Department Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs (202-647-0834, WHAAsstSecty@state.gov ) and the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/ or 202-456-1111) to “express alarm” over the situation in the Aguán region and possible US air support for Honduran military repression. (Quixote Center email 4/12/10)
*4. Mexico: Electrical Workers Plan Hunger Strike
On Apr. 11 the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) announced that some 2,300 members were planning to start a mass hunger strike in Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zócalo, as part of the union’s continuing protest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. The union says 17,247 of the 44,000 LFC workers laid off in the liquidation have refused to accept the government’s severance package; they are demanding either the reopening of the LFC or jobs at the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which has taken over LFC’s operations. These workers have carried out a series of protests, often large and militant, over the last six months, but without success [see Update #1020].
The SME leadership said some 5,000 workers volunteered for the hunger strike. A medical laboratory provided examinations and determined that 2,300 of the workers were healthy enough to undertake a hunger strike. “The strike will be open-ended,” SME labor secretary Eduardo Bobadilla said. The protest “isn’t an act of desperation, but a sign that we electrical workers will fight to the end.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Operation Condor, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Americas Program Biodiversity Report—March 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6706
New Evidence: Kissinger Rescinded Warning Against Condor Assassinations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2442-new-evidence-kissinger-rescinded-warning-against-condor-assassinations
Argentina: Central Bank Independence ... Independent from Whom?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6691
Earthquake and Tsunami in Chile: The Militarization of Natural Disasters
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6700
Brazil: A Tragedy of Local and Global Dimensions
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50985
Bolivia: Moderate Gains for Morales' MAS Party
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/2440-bolivia-moderate-gains-for-morales-mas-party
Peru to Investigate Uncontacted Tribes’ ‘Possible’ Existence
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2436-peru-to-investigate-uncontacted-tribes-possible-existence
Terrorist Attack Points to Ongoing Violence in Key City for US-Colombia FTA
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2434-terrorist-attack-points-to-ongoing-violence-in-key-city-for-us-colombia-fta-
Chavez Fuels the South Bronx
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2441-chavez-fuels-the-south-bronx
Venezuelan Yukpa Appeal for Use of Indigenous Legal Customs in Murder Case
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2437-venezuelan-yukpa-appeal-for-use-of-indigenous-legal-customs-in-murder-case-
El Salvador: Monsignor Romero, 30 years later
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/2431-el-salvador-monsignor-romero-30-years-later
U.S. covering up reality in Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4977
WOLA vs. Honduran Democracy
http://www.counterpunch.org/pine04122010.html
Coca-Cola Sued for ‘Campaign of Violence’ in Guatemala
https://nacla.org/node/6504
Goldcorp Mining Project in Guatemala Faces Cross Border Opposition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2435-goldcorp-mining-project-in-guatemala-faces-cross-border-opposition
Mexican Soldiers Murder Two Children, US Media Covers Up the Crime
http://mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com/2010/04/mexican-soldiers-murder-two-children-us.html
Cananea Mine Battle Reveals Anti-Labor Offensive in Mexico, United States
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6694
Mexico: Phase 2 of the Drug War
http://americas.irc-online.org/updater/6715#1
National Assembly of Environmentally Affected Groups Warns of an "Environmental Disaster" in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6675
Mexico's New Dirty War
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6714
NGOs and the Business of Poverty in Haiti
https://nacla.org/node/6501
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 5 April 2010
WNU #1027: New Violence in Honduran Land Dispute
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1027, April 4, 2010
1. Honduras: New Violence in Aguán Land Dispute
2. Dominican Republic: Thousands March Against Barrick Gold
3. Argentina: “Dirty War” Witness Murdered
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: New Violence in Aguán Land Dispute
A private guard shot Honduran campesino Miguel Alonso Oliva dead on Apr. 1 when a group of campesinos attempted to occupy an African palms farm in the northern Honduran department of Colón, according to the German-based organization FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). The victim was a member of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a group based in the Aguán River Valley that has fought since 2001 for some 20,000 hectares of land it claims were bought illegally by a group of influential landowners, Miguel Facussé, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales [see Update #1022]. Morales holds the title to the farm where the Apr. 1 killing took place.
FIAN reports that this was the third killing of MUCA members in less than a month. José Antonio Cardoza and José Carías, directors of the Brisas de COHDEFOR cooperative in Bonito Oriental, were murdered on Mar. 17, according to FIAN. (Prensa Latina 4/2/10, 4/4/10; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/4/10)
On Apr. 2 MUCA charged that the military, police and paramilitaries were planning to remove thousands of campesinos “in a violent and bloody manner” from the land they are living on in the Aguán region, and that this operation might come as early as Apr. 6. The security forces to be used were trained in the Fourth Infantry Battalion facilities in La Ceiba, Atlántida department, MUCA said, under the command of retired captain Fernando “Billy” Joya Amendola. There was also training in a number of other locations, according to MUCA, including a factory belonging to Exportadora del Atlántico, a subsidiary of the Facussé family’s food company, Grupo Dinant.
Billy Joya was a notorious leader of the Battalion 316 death squad in the 1980s. A Honduran court ordered him and nine others arrested in October 1995 in connection with the 1982 abduction and torture of six students; at the time he was living in Spain [see Update #445]. Apparently Joya has been operating freely in Honduras at least since the military carried out a coup in June 2009. (Prensa Latina 4/4/10; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/3/10)
Conservative Honduran media have been depicting MUCA as a violent and intransigent armed group receiving help from Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. The Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo reported that the campesinos were armed during the Apr. 1 incident at the Morales farm and that two security guards were killed, although the paper gave no further information about the guards. According to El Heraldo, the government of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa was trying to resolve the conflict by offering to buy 3,000 hectares where Miguel Facussé now grows African palms; presumably the land would be distributed to the campesinos. El Heraldo said MUCA hadn’t responded as of Apr. 2.
The paper also reported that “thousands of Hondurans employed by the Dinant company took to the streets to demand that private property be respected, along with national investment and the right to have a job. At the head of the peaceful demonstration was business leader Miguel Facussé himself; it ended in the Presidential House” in Tegucigalpa. The article didn’t give the date of the demonstration. (EH 4/2/10; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 3/4/10)
Founded by Miguel Facussé Barjum in 1960, Grupo Dinant produces snacks, other food products and cooking oil (including the Central American brand of Mazola). In June 2009 the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) approved a $7 million loan for Dinant, in part to help finance increased cultivation of palm trees. At that time the company had started working on biodiesel production based on oil from palm trees, jatropha, and tempate. (CentralAmericaData.com 6/16/09; ICC 1/16/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Thousands March Against Barrick Gold
Up to 3,000 Dominicans marched in Cotuí in the central province of Sánchez Ramírez on Apr. 3 to protest against the Pueblo Viejo gold mine, which is operated by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. Many of the protesters were local, but several dozen youths had walked the 105 km from Santo Domingo, starting on Mar. 31. An encampment was set up in Cotuí by the same young activists that successfully demonstrated last year for a suspension of construction of the Consorcio Minero Dominicano’s cement factory near Los Haitises National Park [see Update #994].
The protests against Barrick targeted what the organizers said were irregularities in the government’s contract with the company, which owns 60% of the mine--the Vancouver-based multinational Goldcorp Inc. owns the other 40%. The protesters also accused Barrick of damaging the environment and archeological sites.
Rice farmers joined the protest because of pollution issues; Mauricio María, president of the National Rice Producers Federation, said the rice farmers of the northeast would disappear if Barrick and the government couldn’t control pollution of the water going into the Hatillo dam near Cotuí, a source of water for rice farms. Juan Rodríguez Acosta, director of the Museum of the Dominican Man, has charged that Barrick Gold is dynamiting mountains whose caves contain traces of the indigenous Taino culture.
Adding to the bad publicity for Barrick, 326 workers from the mine’s night shift had to be hospitalized on Mar. 15 for food poisoning—nearly 10% of the operation’s 3,500 employees. Barrick said the problem was bacterial and blamed it on the company that contracts to supply food at the mine, but the Academy of Sciences and the Autonomous University said the cause was a toxic agent of chemical origin. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 4/3/10; El Nacional (DR) 4/3/10; La Raza (Chicago) 4/3/10 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; Primicias (DR) 4/4/10; Winnipeg Free Press 3/15/10 from AP)
*3. Argentina: “Dirty War” Witness Murdered
On the morning of Mar. 29 unidentified people assaulted and stabbed Silvia Suppo in her crafts shop in the small town of Rafaela in Argentina’s northeastern Santa Fe province; she suffered 22 knife wounds and died later that day in a hospital.
As a teenager Suppo was kidnapped, tortured and raped by the military during the “dirty war” carried out against leftists by a 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Recently Suppo was a witness in the trial of former federal Víctor Brusa, Juan Calixto Perizotti, Héctor Colombini, María Eva Aebi, Mario Facino and Eduardo Ramos, who on Dec. 21, 2009 were given prison sentences of 19 to 21 years for the crimes they had committed against her in the 1970s. Suppo was also pursuing the case of Reinaldo Hammeter, her companion at the time of her kidnapping; he was kidnapped and disappeared on Jan. 25, 1977.
Police say some objects were missing from the shop, pointing to a robbery, but Supppo’s friends and local human rights activists considered the killing political. This was “a murder in her capacity as a witness,” said attorney Lucila Puyol, from H.I.J.O.S. Santa Fe, the local branch of an organization dedicated to seeking justice for the crimes of the dictatorship. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/2/10 from correspondent; H.I.J.O.S. communiqué 3/30/10 via argentina.indymedia.org
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: Fathers of the Disappeared
https://nacla.org/node/6494
Update: Communitarian Socialism in Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/6499
Climate Change: From Copenhagen to Cochabamba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2425-climate-change-from-copenhagen-to-cochabamba
Latin America's Indigenous Reject Market Mechanisms as Solution to Climate Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2427-latin-americas-indigenous-reject-market-mechanisms-as-solution-to-climate-change
Freed FARC Hostage Thanks Efforts of Venezuelan President to Win His Liberation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2426-freed-farc-hostage-thanks-efforts-of-venezuelan-president-to-win-his-liberation
A Human Rights Perspective on Clinton's Visit to Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2428-a-human-rights-perspective-on-clintons-visit-to-central-america
Honduras: Deadliest Month Ever for Reporters
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50872
Disappeared But Not Forgotten: A Guatemalan Community Achieves a Landmark Verdict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2429-disappeared-but-not-forgotten-a-guatemalan-community-achieves-a-landmark-verdict-
Mexico: Coalition Takes on the PRI in Oaxaca's Crucial 2010 Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2422-mexico-coalition-takes-on-the-pri-in-oaxacas-crucial-2010-elections
Interview: Climate Justice Organizing in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2424-interview-climate-justice-organizing-in-mexico
Mexico Backslides on the Merida Initiative’s Human Rights Conditions
https://nacla.org/node/6491
The Upcoming Donors' Conference for Haiti Tectonic Shifts?
http://www.counterpunch.org/schuller03262010.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1027, April 4, 2010
1. Honduras: New Violence in Aguán Land Dispute
2. Dominican Republic: Thousands March Against Barrick Gold
3. Argentina: “Dirty War” Witness Murdered
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: New Violence in Aguán Land Dispute
A private guard shot Honduran campesino Miguel Alonso Oliva dead on Apr. 1 when a group of campesinos attempted to occupy an African palms farm in the northern Honduran department of Colón, according to the German-based organization FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). The victim was a member of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a group based in the Aguán River Valley that has fought since 2001 for some 20,000 hectares of land it claims were bought illegally by a group of influential landowners, Miguel Facussé, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales [see Update #1022]. Morales holds the title to the farm where the Apr. 1 killing took place.
FIAN reports that this was the third killing of MUCA members in less than a month. José Antonio Cardoza and José Carías, directors of the Brisas de COHDEFOR cooperative in Bonito Oriental, were murdered on Mar. 17, according to FIAN. (Prensa Latina 4/2/10, 4/4/10; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/4/10)
On Apr. 2 MUCA charged that the military, police and paramilitaries were planning to remove thousands of campesinos “in a violent and bloody manner” from the land they are living on in the Aguán region, and that this operation might come as early as Apr. 6. The security forces to be used were trained in the Fourth Infantry Battalion facilities in La Ceiba, Atlántida department, MUCA said, under the command of retired captain Fernando “Billy” Joya Amendola. There was also training in a number of other locations, according to MUCA, including a factory belonging to Exportadora del Atlántico, a subsidiary of the Facussé family’s food company, Grupo Dinant.
Billy Joya was a notorious leader of the Battalion 316 death squad in the 1980s. A Honduran court ordered him and nine others arrested in October 1995 in connection with the 1982 abduction and torture of six students; at the time he was living in Spain [see Update #445]. Apparently Joya has been operating freely in Honduras at least since the military carried out a coup in June 2009. (Prensa Latina 4/4/10; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/3/10)
Conservative Honduran media have been depicting MUCA as a violent and intransigent armed group receiving help from Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. The Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo reported that the campesinos were armed during the Apr. 1 incident at the Morales farm and that two security guards were killed, although the paper gave no further information about the guards. According to El Heraldo, the government of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa was trying to resolve the conflict by offering to buy 3,000 hectares where Miguel Facussé now grows African palms; presumably the land would be distributed to the campesinos. El Heraldo said MUCA hadn’t responded as of Apr. 2.
The paper also reported that “thousands of Hondurans employed by the Dinant company took to the streets to demand that private property be respected, along with national investment and the right to have a job. At the head of the peaceful demonstration was business leader Miguel Facussé himself; it ended in the Presidential House” in Tegucigalpa. The article didn’t give the date of the demonstration. (EH 4/2/10; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 3/4/10)
Founded by Miguel Facussé Barjum in 1960, Grupo Dinant produces snacks, other food products and cooking oil (including the Central American brand of Mazola). In June 2009 the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) approved a $7 million loan for Dinant, in part to help finance increased cultivation of palm trees. At that time the company had started working on biodiesel production based on oil from palm trees, jatropha, and tempate. (CentralAmericaData.com 6/16/09; ICC 1/16/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Thousands March Against Barrick Gold
Up to 3,000 Dominicans marched in Cotuí in the central province of Sánchez Ramírez on Apr. 3 to protest against the Pueblo Viejo gold mine, which is operated by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. Many of the protesters were local, but several dozen youths had walked the 105 km from Santo Domingo, starting on Mar. 31. An encampment was set up in Cotuí by the same young activists that successfully demonstrated last year for a suspension of construction of the Consorcio Minero Dominicano’s cement factory near Los Haitises National Park [see Update #994].
The protests against Barrick targeted what the organizers said were irregularities in the government’s contract with the company, which owns 60% of the mine--the Vancouver-based multinational Goldcorp Inc. owns the other 40%. The protesters also accused Barrick of damaging the environment and archeological sites.
Rice farmers joined the protest because of pollution issues; Mauricio María, president of the National Rice Producers Federation, said the rice farmers of the northeast would disappear if Barrick and the government couldn’t control pollution of the water going into the Hatillo dam near Cotuí, a source of water for rice farms. Juan Rodríguez Acosta, director of the Museum of the Dominican Man, has charged that Barrick Gold is dynamiting mountains whose caves contain traces of the indigenous Taino culture.
Adding to the bad publicity for Barrick, 326 workers from the mine’s night shift had to be hospitalized on Mar. 15 for food poisoning—nearly 10% of the operation’s 3,500 employees. Barrick said the problem was bacterial and blamed it on the company that contracts to supply food at the mine, but the Academy of Sciences and the Autonomous University said the cause was a toxic agent of chemical origin. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 4/3/10; El Nacional (DR) 4/3/10; La Raza (Chicago) 4/3/10 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; Primicias (DR) 4/4/10; Winnipeg Free Press 3/15/10 from AP)
*3. Argentina: “Dirty War” Witness Murdered
On the morning of Mar. 29 unidentified people assaulted and stabbed Silvia Suppo in her crafts shop in the small town of Rafaela in Argentina’s northeastern Santa Fe province; she suffered 22 knife wounds and died later that day in a hospital.
As a teenager Suppo was kidnapped, tortured and raped by the military during the “dirty war” carried out against leftists by a 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Recently Suppo was a witness in the trial of former federal Víctor Brusa, Juan Calixto Perizotti, Héctor Colombini, María Eva Aebi, Mario Facino and Eduardo Ramos, who on Dec. 21, 2009 were given prison sentences of 19 to 21 years for the crimes they had committed against her in the 1970s. Suppo was also pursuing the case of Reinaldo Hammeter, her companion at the time of her kidnapping; he was kidnapped and disappeared on Jan. 25, 1977.
Police say some objects were missing from the shop, pointing to a robbery, but Supppo’s friends and local human rights activists considered the killing political. This was “a murder in her capacity as a witness,” said attorney Lucila Puyol, from H.I.J.O.S. Santa Fe, the local branch of an organization dedicated to seeking justice for the crimes of the dictatorship. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/2/10 from correspondent; H.I.J.O.S. communiqué 3/30/10 via argentina.indymedia.org
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: Fathers of the Disappeared
https://nacla.org/node/6494
Update: Communitarian Socialism in Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/6499
Climate Change: From Copenhagen to Cochabamba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2425-climate-change-from-copenhagen-to-cochabamba
Latin America's Indigenous Reject Market Mechanisms as Solution to Climate Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2427-latin-americas-indigenous-reject-market-mechanisms-as-solution-to-climate-change
Freed FARC Hostage Thanks Efforts of Venezuelan President to Win His Liberation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2426-freed-farc-hostage-thanks-efforts-of-venezuelan-president-to-win-his-liberation
A Human Rights Perspective on Clinton's Visit to Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2428-a-human-rights-perspective-on-clintons-visit-to-central-america
Honduras: Deadliest Month Ever for Reporters
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50872
Disappeared But Not Forgotten: A Guatemalan Community Achieves a Landmark Verdict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2429-disappeared-but-not-forgotten-a-guatemalan-community-achieves-a-landmark-verdict-
Mexico: Coalition Takes on the PRI in Oaxaca's Crucial 2010 Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2422-mexico-coalition-takes-on-the-pri-in-oaxacas-crucial-2010-elections
Interview: Climate Justice Organizing in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2424-interview-climate-justice-organizing-in-mexico
Mexico Backslides on the Merida Initiative’s Human Rights Conditions
https://nacla.org/node/6491
The Upcoming Donors' Conference for Haiti Tectonic Shifts?
http://www.counterpunch.org/schuller03262010.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
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