Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1050, September 26, 2010
1. Haiti: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
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: US Pushes Sweatshops for “Unrealistic” Quake Victims
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive met in New York on Sept. 20 to discuss international efforts to help Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated much of the capital and nearby areas. About 1.3 million Haitians continue to live outdoors, mostly in some 1,300 improvised encampments, more than eight months after the quake and almost six months after international donors pledged $9.9 billion in aid [see Update #1028].
Bellerive noted that "impatience is increasing” in Haiti, but Clinton downplayed the complaints. “Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard,” she said. Kouchner agreed. “Some find that it's going slowly, very slowly, the reconstruction of Haiti,” he said. “And some are surprised that with so much money raised there is no really visible progress. It's because they have no idea of the immensity of the disaster. There's a lot of money, many things have been done, but that cannot be immediately visible.”
The main business of the meeting, which took place as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the current session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, was the signing of two memoranda of understanding, one for setting up an industrial zone expected to provide jobs for 10,000 Haitians, and one for financing the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince’s general hospital, the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH).
Bellerive and Hillary Clinton also signed an agreement with Woong-Ki Kim, chair of Seoul-based Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., to build garment assembly plants in Haiti, either near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien or in an undeveloped area north of Port-au-Prince—presumably at the government-organized camp for displaced persons at Corail-Cesselesse [see Update #1040]. "These are not just any jobs,” Clinton said about the employment the agreement is supposed to provide. “These are good jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards." The agreement shows that "Haiti is open for business again," she added.
In addition, Clinton, Kouchner and Bellerive participated in a meeting of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH). The group, set up to monitor recovery efforts, is co-chaired by Bellerive and Clinton’s husband, former US president (1993-2001) and current UN envoy Bill Clinton. (Agence France Presse 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group; Associated Press 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group)
The apparel jobs Hillary Clinton discussed would be in the tax-exempt assembly plants--known as maquiladoras in Latin America--where workers stitch together garments for export. Eddy Labossière, president of the Haitian Association of Economists (AEH), said on Sept. 23 that the assembly plant jobs, which are subject to a special lower minimum wage of about $3 a day, won’t be able to guarantee Haiti’s development. Labossière also expressed regret that plans for the reconstruction of the capital’s downtown area include a $295,000 contract, signed a few days earlier, with a British group, the Prince Charles Foundation, rather than with a Haitian firm. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 9/23/10)
Some 150-200 Haitian Americans and other activists demonstrated in New York on Sept. 25 to protest the slow pace of recovery. Chanting “Where’s the money?” and “Aid the people now” in Creole and English, the protesters marched from the Haitian consulate in the Midtown area to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN headquarters by the East River. The action was organized by the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East (HSNNE) and endorsed by a number of organizations. (Pavement Pieces blog 9/25/10; Weekly News Update eyewitness report)
*2. Haiti: 5 Camp Residents Killed in Storm
Nadia Lochard, coordinator of Haiti’s Civil Protection agency, confirmed on Sept. 25 that five people had died and 57 were injured the day before when a violent storm hit Port-au-Prince and areas to the south, including Petit Goâve and Îles Cayimites. Lochard said most of the injuries and damage took place in the camps where some 1.3 million local residents have been living since they were displaced by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12.
According to news reports, the dead included a baby in the Caradeux camp in the northeastern Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, a 93-year-old woman in Camp Acra the capital’s Delmas section and a food vendor at Poste Marchand in the downtown area. Some 20 of the injuries reportedly resulted from a tree falling on the camp at the Pétionville Club at Delmas 48 street. Lochard said about 2,000 tents were damaged. Local local media specified that 1,000 tents were destroyed at Camp Acra, 1,000 in the huge, impoverished Cité Soleil neighborhood, and 100 at the camp at the Champ de Mars near the Presidential Palace. Camp Charbon, in Carrefour, southwest of the capital, where 500 people were living, was completely destroyed, according to Haiti’s Radio Kiskeya. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/25/10; Radio Kiskeya 9/24/10)
In other news, an angry crowd killed police agent Guilloteau Hubert and burned down the police station at the town of Cayes-Jacmel the night of Sept. 23. Witnesses said the crowd reacted when the agent arrested and then tried to kill a young man, Johnny Joseph. Joseph was reportedly hospitalized with three bullet wounds. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/24/10) [Cayes-Jacmel, near the city of Jacmel in the Southeast department, is in the zone that suffered heavy damage from the earthquake.]
*3. Colombia: Peace Community Faces New Threats
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia, wrote in communiqués dated Sept. 22 and 24 that rightwing paramilitaries were continuing to attack and threaten its members. The community, which for 13 years has rejected the presence of all weapons and armed groups in its territory, charged the authorities with “complacency” regarding the paramilitary activity [see Update #1017].
According to the communiqués, a paramilitary known as “Berardo Tuberquia” accosted a peace community member in Dabeiba municipality and asked about various other community members. He said he had a list with the names of San José de Apartadó leaders and members who were going to be killed. That afternoon, two paramilitaries on a motorcycle fired on peace community members José David Graciano and Alonso Valle Guerra as they were walking home after going to a court hearing to deny charges of belonging to a militia. Both escaped, but Valle Guerra was hit in the leg. The peace community reported the incidents to the government’s human rights protection agency, but the agency supported claims by the local military unit that everything was “peaceful” at San José de Apartadó. (Adital (Brazil) 9/24/10; San José de Apartadó communiqués 9/22/10, 9/24/10)
The new incidents occurred just as a book was coming out about the peace community, Fusil o Toga, Toga y Fusil (“Rifle or Robe, Rifle and Robe,” referring to the use of violence and the court system to repress the community). The author, human rights activist and Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, said he’d written the work to fight against impunity by documenting abuses against the community, which has been attacked by the military, by rightwing paramilitaries and by leftist rebels. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 9/17/10) On Aug. 6 a judge in Medellín acquitted 10 soldiers of participating in a February 2005 in which eight San José de Apartadó residents, including three children, were killed with machetes. A captain had confessed to his role in the killings; several paramilitary members also confessed and said they had worked together with the military. (World War 4 Report 8/11/10)
*4. Cuba: Government Describes Private Sector Expansion
On Sept. 24 Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), published an article describing policy changes intended to expand Cuba’s small private sector. The changes are part of a plan announced on Sept. 13 to lay off some half million public employees, about 10% of the total labor force, over the next six months; the government expects about 465,000 of the laid-off workers to move to the private sector or to form cooperatives, according to unofficial sources.
The plan is basically an expansion of the “self-employment” (TCP) policy instituted during the “special period” in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The government will now issue licenses for 178 job categories in the TCP--which includes small businesses in addition to actual self-employment. Most of these occupations were authorized in the 1990s, but some were closed off again in 2004, and there are currently just 143,000 licenses for TCP businesses, down from a high of 210,000 in 1995. Much of the work authorized under the new policy is currently done in the black market; the changes will bring these jobs into the tax and social security systems.
What is probably more important than the increased number of TCP occupations is the lifting of several restrictions on private activity. Some seem minor, such as raising the number of seats at family restaurants from 12 to 20, but others are substantive. A small business will no longer be limited to hiring workers who live with the owners or are family members, and businesses will be allowed to operate in more than one municipality. People will be able to rent out entire houses and apartments instead of just renting rooms in their own homes.
Granma described the new policy as “an attempt…to distance ourselves from those concepts that almost condemned self-employment to extinction and stigmatized those who decided to legally join that sector in the 1990s.”
Government economists are also looking at further changes to an economy that has been highly centralized on the Soviet model. Some of the new job categories, such as auto repair and some types of retail sales, will only be productive if there are wholesale markets, but the economic planners say it will take several years to institute these. (Granma Internacional (Cuba) 9/24/10, with English translation; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/25/10 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, UN
At the Roots of Mapuche Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2700-at-the-roots-of-mapuche-resistance
Saving Their Seats for the Bicentennial (and Beyond): Ex-Political Prisoners of Chile’s National Stadium
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2707-saving-their-seats-for-the-bicentennial-and-beyond-ex-political-prisoners-of-chiles-national-stadium
Paraguayan Tribe’s SOS to Save Uncontacted Families from Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2705-paraguayan-tribes-sos-to-save-uncontacted-families-from-extinction
Peru: general strike against irrigation project shuts down Cusco
http://ww4report.com/node/9144
Ecuador: Small-Scale Miners Questioning Large-Scale Interests in Southern Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2703-ecuador-small-scale-miners-questioning-large-scale-interests-in-southern-amazon-
FARC Leader “Mono Jojoy” Killed In Colombian Military Strike
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/24/farc-leader-mono-jojoy-killed-in-colombian-military-strike/
FARC commander "Mono Jojoy" killed
http://ww4report.com/node/9143
Indigenous Resistance, from Colombia to Palestine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2706-indigenous-resistance-from-colombia-to-palestine-
Giving Colombia a Free Pass: State Department Ignores Abuses of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2704-giving-colombia-a-free-pass-state-department-ignores-abuses-of-afro-colombian-and-indigenous-rights
FBI raids homes of anti-war activists (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/9142
Venezuela Deports Two Drug Kingpins, Calls US Drug Blacklist “Abusive and Interventionist”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5651
Venezuelan Oil Minister: $100 Fair Price for Oil Barrel
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5648
An FMLN Woman’s Story of Courage and Conviction, 20 Years Later
https://nacla.org/node/6750
Honduras: Resistance Front protests Porfirio Lobo's presence at UN
http://ww4report.com/node/9145
Mexico: another mayor assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/9138
Autonomous Authorities Order Total Evacuation of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2702-autonomous-authorities-order-total-evacuation-of-san-juan-copala-oaxaca
Mexico: Juárez police evict family at contested Lomas de Poleo lands
http://ww4report.com/node/9146
Is the Fuse Lit? Uprising/Lynching in Chihuahua
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2010/09/22/is-the-fuse-lit-uprisinglynching-in-chihuahua/
Mexico: Abuses Against U.S. Bound Migrant Workers
https://nacla.org/node/6753
The Forever Fidel Obsession
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_forever_fidel_obsession_20100919/
Haitian Women Struggle to Keep Hope Alive
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2701-haitian-women-struggle-to-keep-hope-alive
Silent Coup in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2699-silent-coup-in-haiti
United Nations Summit Addresses Poverty; Latin American Leaders Call For Change
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/22/united-nations-summit-addresses-poverty-latin-american-leaders-call-for-change/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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, 28 September 2010
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
WNU #1049: Chilean Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1049, September 19, 2010
1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. The solidarity fasters included the presidents of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and the Federation of University of Santiago Students; the president of the Copper Workers Commission of the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Santiago Autonomous Mapuche (COOAMS) and the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. A number of leftists, unionists and artists expressed their solidarity with the fast, which was being held in the FECH offices in Santiago.
As of Sept. 14 there were 34 prisoners in six prisons--Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, Angol, Lebu and Chol Chol--taking part in the hunger strike. Many were suffering from heart and kidney problems and had lost more than 25% of their original weight, according to the Coordinating Committee of Relatives of Mapuche Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike. The action was started to protest Law No. 19.027, an “anti-terrorism” measure first enacted in 1984 under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; it treats illegal land occupations and attacks on the equipment or personnel of multinational companies as acts of terrorism and subjects those charged with the offenses to both civilian and military courts. Mapuche activists say that their land has been taken illegally and that the law criminalizes legitimate forms of protest [see Update #1008].
Chile’s rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11, has proposed modifications to the law and has brought in Concepción archbishop Ricardo Ezzati to serve as a mediator. On Sept. 14 the government authorized the release of two of the striking prisoners, Pablo Conio and Sergio Tralcal, on a bail of about $2,000. Conio and Tralcal said they would continue to participate in the hunger strike despite the release order. (Coordinación de Familiares de Presos Políticos Mapuche en Huelga de Hambre press release 9/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/15/10 from correspondent; Indian Country Today 9/14/10 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) announced on Sept. 13 that four soldiers would be arrested and charged with homicide for the killing of two civilians the night of Sept. 5 on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Apodaca municipality in the northern state of Nuevo León.
The soldiers, from the 7th Military Zone, opened fire on a car in which members of an extended family were driving home after a party. Vicente de León Ramírez and his 16-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were killed; three other family members were hit by bullets, and two children, 8 and 9, were injured by broken glass. The soldiers said they shot at the car because the driver, Vicente de León’s son-in-law, ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint. The family denied that there was a checkpoint and said they not been ordered to stop.
The killing was similar to an incident in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in Sinaloa state, the night of May 31-June 1, 2007, when soldiers fired on a family van, killing two women and three small children. The government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reports receiving almost 3,500 complaints of military abuses since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa deployed soldiers in a “war on drugs” shortly after taking office in December 2006. Recently the military has been attempting to improve its image by accepting its responsibility in some incidents, including the July 2006 rape of 13 (or 14) women in a dance hall in Castaños, Coahuila state, and the killing of two graduate students in Monterrey, Nuevo León, last March [see Updates #916, 1044]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/7/10; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 9/12/10, 9/14/10)
In other news, David García Ramírez, a resident of San Juan Copala, an autonomous municipality in the southern state of Oaxaca, was shot dead on Sept. 18 as he was attempting to leave the municipality. This was the latest killing in a campaign by two groups of indigenous Triqui, the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) and the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT), to drive members of a third Triqui group, the Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI), from the municipality. García Ramírez was reportedly a MULTI supporter, while the killers were said to be paramilitaries from the UBISORT, which is linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #810]. (LJ 9/19/10)
*3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
After three days of meetings at the Distinction Night Club in a suburb north of Port-au-Prince, on Sept. 16 four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28. The four coalitions--Alternative, Liberation, Rasanble (“Assemble”) and the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE)— said they were forming a “United Political Front” and expressed their lack of confidence in the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Instead of elections, the coalitions called for a “government of public safety” to take power after President René Garcia Préval’s term ends on Feb. 7 and carry out a transition to full democracy.
Maryse Narcisse, coordinator of Lavalas Family (FL), the party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), indicated that she supported the position of the four coalitions. “The conditions have not been met for organizing good elections in Haiti,” she explained. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste--the coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MMP), based in the Center department, and a longtime opponent of FL--also supported the coalitions’ call.
However, there was dissension within the coalitions themselves. Some have candidates on the ballot for the Nov. 28 elections, which are to select a new president, 11 of the 27 seats in the Senate and all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Former legislative deputy Steven Benoit, for example, said he was continuing to run for Senate on the Alternative line and that he was attending the event to persuade opposition leaders not to boycott the elections. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/15/10; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/16/10, 9/17/10; Agence Haïtienne de Presse, Haiti, 9/16/10)
Meanwhile, protests continued over the presence of the 9,000 international soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the failures of the government and international agencies to provide adequate relief after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
On Sept. 10 the Movement of Nationalist Youth (MJN) and other organizations marched to the MINUSTAH barracks in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien to protest the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles there on Aug. 17; MINUSTAH says his death was a suicide [see Update #1047].
Also on Sept. 10, some of the Port-au-Prince residents made homeless by the earthquake and forced to live in improvised camps demonstrated at the prime minister’s office in the downtown area to protest their conditions. Three days later, on Sept. 13, dozens of residents of the Canaan camp and the government-organized camp at Corail-Cesselesse, north of the capital, protested near the ruined National Palace, demanding new homes and asking how they could deal with the beginning of the school year on Oct. 4 [see Update #1046 for other protests by camp residents]. Meanwhile, the Platform of Victim Employees of Public Enterprises (PEVEP) was holding a demonstration at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to demand “back pay for employees unjustly dismissed.” (AHP 9/13/10, English translation from the Haiti Support Group (UK))
*4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
On Sept. 16 Miami federal district judge William Zloch sentenced former Guatemalan soldier Gilberto Jordán to 10 years in prison for concealing his role in a 1982 massacre when he applied for US citizenship. Jordán, a member of the notorious Kaibil counterinsurgency force, is one of 14 soldiers wanted in Guatemala for the brutal murder of some 250 campesinos in the village of Las Dos Erres, Sayaxche (or Libertad), in the northern department of Peten [see Update #786]. He moved to Miami in 1990 and became a US citizen in 1999. Arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on May 5 this year, he pleaded guilty in July to charges of lying on a citizenship application. Ten years is the maximum sentence for the offense.
Guatemala’s government human rights prosecutor Aura Marina Mancilla said that in August she made an initial application with Guatemalan courts for an extradition request so that Jordán could be tried in Guatemala. (Reuters 9/16/10; Argenpress (Argentina) 9/17/10 from Cerigua (Guatemala)) The Dos Erres massacre was part of a massive counterinsurgency campaign in the 1980s that was unofficially backed by the US government.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: student protests commemorate "Night of the Pencils"
http://ww4report.com/node/9116
Argentina: anarchist bomb blast protests Mapuche repression
http://ww4report.com/node/9117
Argentina's Media Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6744
Chile’s Ghosts: The Tyranny of Forgetting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2686-chiles-ghosts-the-tyranny-of-forgetting
From Rebellion to Reform: Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2694-from-rebellion-to-reform-bolivias-reconstituted-neoliberalism
Book Review on Bolivia - Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2693-book-review-dispersing-power-social-movements-as-anti-state-forces
U.S. Praise for Peru's Economy Misses the Mark
https://nacla.org/node/6739
U.N. Expert Concerned by "Climate of Impunity" in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2691-un-expert-concerned-by-qclimate-of-impunityq-in-peru
Quito denies Colombian guerillas launched attack from Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/9105
Colombia: riot squad represses student protests in Medellín
http://ww4report.com/node/9115
Colombian Paramilitaries Extradited To U.S., Where Cases Are Sealed
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/colombian-paramilitaries-extradited-to-u-s-where-cases-are-sealed/
U.S. Government and CNN Openly Protect and Support Venezuelan Terrorist
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5636
Venezuela's Chavez Hands out Property Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5643
Jewish Representatives Meet with Venezuelan President Chávez
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5645
US scientist charged with conspiracy to sell nuclear data to Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/9127
Honduras: Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mobilization-and-repression-on.html
Over 1,260,000 Hondurans Demand Refounding of Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2698-over-1260000-hondurans-demand-refounding-of-nation
Zapatista Supporters Attacked in Retaliation for Building an Autonomous School (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2687-zapatista-supporters-attacked-in-retaliation-for-building-an-autonomous-school
Mexico: Requiem for Triquis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2695-mexico-requiem-for-triquis
Reynosa jailbreak: inside job? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9104
Mexican bicentennial celebrations clouded by narco crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/9108
Matamoros mayhem goes unreported in Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/9109
Mexican News Photographer Shot Dead in Juárez
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/17/mexican-news-photographer-shot-dead-in-juarez/
Mexico: armed commando in deadly ambush of Guerrero police
http://ww4report.com/node/9126
Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state
Cuba to impose austerity on workers
http://ww4report.com/node/9106
Cuba Cuts 500,000 State Jobs; Plans to Reduce Private Business Restrictions
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/cuba-cuts-500000-state-jobs-plans-to-reduce-private-business-restrictions/
Cuban Union Calls for 'Unity' in Face of Job Reduction
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52817
Haiti's Disaster Capitalists Swoop In
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/haiti-refugee-work-camps
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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 #1049, September 19, 2010
1. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Chile: Activists Fast for Mapuche Hunger Strikers
A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. The solidarity fasters included the presidents of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and the Federation of University of Santiago Students; the president of the Copper Workers Commission of the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Santiago Autonomous Mapuche (COOAMS) and the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. A number of leftists, unionists and artists expressed their solidarity with the fast, which was being held in the FECH offices in Santiago.
As of Sept. 14 there were 34 prisoners in six prisons--Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, Angol, Lebu and Chol Chol--taking part in the hunger strike. Many were suffering from heart and kidney problems and had lost more than 25% of their original weight, according to the Coordinating Committee of Relatives of Mapuche Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike. The action was started to protest Law No. 19.027, an “anti-terrorism” measure first enacted in 1984 under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; it treats illegal land occupations and attacks on the equipment or personnel of multinational companies as acts of terrorism and subjects those charged with the offenses to both civilian and military courts. Mapuche activists say that their land has been taken illegally and that the law criminalizes legitimate forms of protest [see Update #1008].
Chile’s rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11, has proposed modifications to the law and has brought in Concepción archbishop Ricardo Ezzati to serve as a mediator. On Sept. 14 the government authorized the release of two of the striking prisoners, Pablo Conio and Sergio Tralcal, on a bail of about $2,000. Conio and Tralcal said they would continue to participate in the hunger strike despite the release order. (Coordinación de Familiares de Presos Políticos Mapuche en Huelga de Hambre press release 9/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/15/10 from correspondent; Indian Country Today 9/14/10 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Soldiers Arrested for Killing Civilians
Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) announced on Sept. 13 that four soldiers would be arrested and charged with homicide for the killing of two civilians the night of Sept. 5 on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Apodaca municipality in the northern state of Nuevo León.
The soldiers, from the 7th Military Zone, opened fire on a car in which members of an extended family were driving home after a party. Vicente de León Ramírez and his 16-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were killed; three other family members were hit by bullets, and two children, 8 and 9, were injured by broken glass. The soldiers said they shot at the car because the driver, Vicente de León’s son-in-law, ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint. The family denied that there was a checkpoint and said they not been ordered to stop.
The killing was similar to an incident in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in Sinaloa state, the night of May 31-June 1, 2007, when soldiers fired on a family van, killing two women and three small children. The government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reports receiving almost 3,500 complaints of military abuses since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa deployed soldiers in a “war on drugs” shortly after taking office in December 2006. Recently the military has been attempting to improve its image by accepting its responsibility in some incidents, including the July 2006 rape of 13 (or 14) women in a dance hall in Castaños, Coahuila state, and the killing of two graduate students in Monterrey, Nuevo León, last March [see Updates #916, 1044]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/7/10; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 9/12/10, 9/14/10)
In other news, David García Ramírez, a resident of San Juan Copala, an autonomous municipality in the southern state of Oaxaca, was shot dead on Sept. 18 as he was attempting to leave the municipality. This was the latest killing in a campaign by two groups of indigenous Triqui, the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) and the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT), to drive members of a third Triqui group, the Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI), from the municipality. García Ramírez was reportedly a MULTI supporter, while the killers were said to be paramilitaries from the UBISORT, which is linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #810]. (LJ 9/19/10)
*3. Haiti: Opposition Parties Call for Election Boycott
After three days of meetings at the Distinction Night Club in a suburb north of Port-au-Prince, on Sept. 16 four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28. The four coalitions--Alternative, Liberation, Rasanble (“Assemble”) and the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE)— said they were forming a “United Political Front” and expressed their lack of confidence in the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Instead of elections, the coalitions called for a “government of public safety” to take power after President René Garcia Préval’s term ends on Feb. 7 and carry out a transition to full democracy.
Maryse Narcisse, coordinator of Lavalas Family (FL), the party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), indicated that she supported the position of the four coalitions. “The conditions have not been met for organizing good elections in Haiti,” she explained. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste--the coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MMP), based in the Center department, and a longtime opponent of FL--also supported the coalitions’ call.
However, there was dissension within the coalitions themselves. Some have candidates on the ballot for the Nov. 28 elections, which are to select a new president, 11 of the 27 seats in the Senate and all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Former legislative deputy Steven Benoit, for example, said he was continuing to run for Senate on the Alternative line and that he was attending the event to persuade opposition leaders not to boycott the elections. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 9/15/10; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/16/10, 9/17/10; Agence Haïtienne de Presse, Haiti, 9/16/10)
Meanwhile, protests continued over the presence of the 9,000 international soldiers and police of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the failures of the government and international agencies to provide adequate relief after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
On Sept. 10 the Movement of Nationalist Youth (MJN) and other organizations marched to the MINUSTAH barracks in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien to protest the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles there on Aug. 17; MINUSTAH says his death was a suicide [see Update #1047].
Also on Sept. 10, some of the Port-au-Prince residents made homeless by the earthquake and forced to live in improvised camps demonstrated at the prime minister’s office in the downtown area to protest their conditions. Three days later, on Sept. 13, dozens of residents of the Canaan camp and the government-organized camp at Corail-Cesselesse, north of the capital, protested near the ruined National Palace, demanding new homes and asking how they could deal with the beginning of the school year on Oct. 4 [see Update #1046 for other protests by camp residents]. Meanwhile, the Platform of Victim Employees of Public Enterprises (PEVEP) was holding a demonstration at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to demand “back pay for employees unjustly dismissed.” (AHP 9/13/10, English translation from the Haiti Support Group (UK))
*4. Guatemala: US Sentences Ex-Soldier for 1982 Massacre
On Sept. 16 Miami federal district judge William Zloch sentenced former Guatemalan soldier Gilberto Jordán to 10 years in prison for concealing his role in a 1982 massacre when he applied for US citizenship. Jordán, a member of the notorious Kaibil counterinsurgency force, is one of 14 soldiers wanted in Guatemala for the brutal murder of some 250 campesinos in the village of Las Dos Erres, Sayaxche (or Libertad), in the northern department of Peten [see Update #786]. He moved to Miami in 1990 and became a US citizen in 1999. Arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on May 5 this year, he pleaded guilty in July to charges of lying on a citizenship application. Ten years is the maximum sentence for the offense.
Guatemala’s government human rights prosecutor Aura Marina Mancilla said that in August she made an initial application with Guatemalan courts for an extradition request so that Jordán could be tried in Guatemala. (Reuters 9/16/10; Argenpress (Argentina) 9/17/10 from Cerigua (Guatemala)) The Dos Erres massacre was part of a massive counterinsurgency campaign in the 1980s that was unofficially backed by the US government.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: student protests commemorate "Night of the Pencils"
http://ww4report.com/node/9116
Argentina: anarchist bomb blast protests Mapuche repression
http://ww4report.com/node/9117
Argentina's Media Crisis
https://nacla.org/node/6744
Chile’s Ghosts: The Tyranny of Forgetting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2686-chiles-ghosts-the-tyranny-of-forgetting
From Rebellion to Reform: Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2694-from-rebellion-to-reform-bolivias-reconstituted-neoliberalism
Book Review on Bolivia - Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2693-book-review-dispersing-power-social-movements-as-anti-state-forces
U.S. Praise for Peru's Economy Misses the Mark
https://nacla.org/node/6739
U.N. Expert Concerned by "Climate of Impunity" in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2691-un-expert-concerned-by-qclimate-of-impunityq-in-peru
Quito denies Colombian guerillas launched attack from Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/9105
Colombia: riot squad represses student protests in Medellín
http://ww4report.com/node/9115
Colombian Paramilitaries Extradited To U.S., Where Cases Are Sealed
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/colombian-paramilitaries-extradited-to-u-s-where-cases-are-sealed/
U.S. Government and CNN Openly Protect and Support Venezuelan Terrorist
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5636
Venezuela's Chavez Hands out Property Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5643
Jewish Representatives Meet with Venezuelan President Chávez
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5645
US scientist charged with conspiracy to sell nuclear data to Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/9127
Honduras: Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mobilization-and-repression-on.html
Over 1,260,000 Hondurans Demand Refounding of Nation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2698-over-1260000-hondurans-demand-refounding-of-nation
Zapatista Supporters Attacked in Retaliation for Building an Autonomous School (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2687-zapatista-supporters-attacked-in-retaliation-for-building-an-autonomous-school
Mexico: Requiem for Triquis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2695-mexico-requiem-for-triquis
Reynosa jailbreak: inside job? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9104
Mexican bicentennial celebrations clouded by narco crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/9108
Matamoros mayhem goes unreported in Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/9109
Mexican News Photographer Shot Dead in Juárez
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/17/mexican-news-photographer-shot-dead-in-juarez/
Mexico: armed commando in deadly ambush of Guerrero police
http://ww4report.com/node/9126
Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state
Cuba to impose austerity on workers
http://ww4report.com/node/9106
Cuba Cuts 500,000 State Jobs; Plans to Reduce Private Business Restrictions
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/14/cuba-cuts-500000-state-jobs-plans-to-reduce-private-business-restrictions/
Cuban Union Calls for 'Unity' in Face of Job Reduction
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52817
Haiti's Disaster Capitalists Swoop In
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/haiti-refugee-work-camps
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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, 14 September 2010
WNU #1048: Fighting Breaks Out at Mexican Copper Mine
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1048, September 12, 2010
1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Sept. 8. One of the injured, apparently a strikebreaker, was shot in the head but survived, despite initial reports that he had died.
Members of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have been on strike at the mine for three years. The owner, the powerful Grupo México corporation, regained control of the mine from the strikers after hundreds of police agents stormed the facility on June 6 [see Update #1037]. (As is traditional in Mexico, the strikers had been sitting in at the site.) The company then contracted workers from outside to get the mine back in operation. However, the union won a temporary court order on Aug. 12 allowing strikers to picket at the facility.
According to the state government’s account of the Sept. 8 events, strikers assaulted the contract workers and one striker, identified by the authorities as Jesús Gallegos Cabrera (“El Güero”), fired a gun at the strikebreakers, causing the worst injuries. Section 65 has become “a subversive, criminal group,” Sonora governor Guillermo Padrés Elías, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), charged on Sept. 11, adding that he would no longer negotiate with the strikers: “I have nothing to talk about with them.” The state had released four of the 26 arrested union members, the governor said, but had detained another, so that 23 were in detention as of Sept. 11.
The union and its supporters gave a different story. According to an alert from the nongovernmental Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PRODESC) and the US-based United Steelworkers (USW) union, a group of about 300 people in civilian clothes used stones and clubs to attack picketers at the mine’s Gate 2 on the afternoon of Sept. 7. The strikers retreated to Section 65’s union hall. The bloody Sept. 8 confrontation started when some 600 people attacked the strikers at the union hall at about 5:30am, according to this account. At a press conference shortly after the confrontation, Section 65 leaders charged that federal and state police dressed as civilians had joined strikebreakers, including workers from Central America, to attack the strikers. The leaders denied that a unionist could have fired the shots, since Section 65 workers, according to a union press release, “never go armed, following a union line, while the police and paramilitaries are armed.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/12/10; United Electrical Workers (UE) urgent action 9/9/10; Section 65 press releases 9/8/10, 9/12/10)
Representatives from a number of independent unions met at the headquarters of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in Mexico City on Sept. 9 to discuss plans to form a broad front “against the aggressions, murders and acts of repression.” The unions also called for a number of demonstrations and caravans on Sept. 14 and 15, as Mexicans mark the bicentennial of the start of the War of Independence from Spain on Sept. 15-16. (LJ 9/10/10) The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) asked for letters to President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx ), Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora (secretario@segob.gob.mx ), Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez (ofproc@pgr.gob.mx ) and others to demand protection for the striking miners and a thorough investigation of the Sept. 7-8 incidents. (UE urgent action 9/9/10)
*2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn’t set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. “The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans,” Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 9/10/10 from EFE)
The anti-crime push followed the killing of 17 workers at the Christopher Shoe Factory, in San Pedro Sula’s San Francisco neighborhood, on Sept. 7 by four or five armed men; several other workers were wounded. Police officials quickly attributed the killing to rivalry between two criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18. Relatives of the victims denied the police conclusion, noting that investigators had found no arms, drugs or gang insignia in the factory. “This is a lie,” said the factory’s owner, Miguel Alas, whose son was one of the victims. Opposition groups also questioned the government’s speed in blaming gang wars before the investigation was finished, and suggested that the government was taking advantage of the massacre to militarize the country. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Radio Progreso and ERIC-SJ (Honduras) 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
The massacre overshadowed a “civic strike” the three main labor federations and the opposition National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) held the same day to demand an increase in the minimum wage and the return of exiled opponents of the June 2009 military coup against former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) [see Update #1047]. Thousands of workers, students and teachers marched from the east of Tegucigalpa to the center of the city; the demonstration ended with a vigil at the Chilean embassy in solidarity with indigenous Mapuche political prisoners in Chile. During the march one group of protesters threw rocks at the buildings of two television companies, Channel 10 and Televicentro, and at the office of government human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio. “People are indignant with these media that aren’t impartial and objective,” Rafael Alegría, an FNRP coordinator, explained. “And the commissioner…well, you know,” Alegría added, referring to Custodio’s support for the coup [see Update #1029]. (AFP 9/7/10 via Univision; Vos el Soberano 9/9/10)
In other news, on Sept. 10 a group of men shot and killed campesino Francisco Miranda as he headed towards the La Aurora encampment, where he lived, near the city of Tocoa in the northern department of Colón. Miranda was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which represents thousands of campesinos in a land dispute in the Aguán River Valley. He is reportedly the 12th campesino to be murdered since December 2009. On Aug. 17 campesinos Víctor Manuel Mata Oliva, Sergio Magdiel Amaya and Rodving Omar Villegas, all MUCA members, were murdered as they were going from Tocoa to the community of Panamá. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
*3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.
Przemeck Gajdeczka, who headed the IMF’s delegation to Tegucigalpa, said the Honduran government had made a commitment to “improve the administration and collection of taxes; monitor expenses, including salaries; focus social spending on the poorest; and improve the financial position of the main public enterprises and the pension funds.”
The last standby loan agreement was made with former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) on Apr. 8, 2008, but the Zelaya government failed to comply with the agreement’s requirement to cut public spending. Along with other international institutions, the IMF suspended loans to Honduras after Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009. The IMF loan is one of current president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa’s main successes in restoring relations with international groups since he took office on Jan. 27. Efforts to have Honduras readmitted to the Organization of American States (OAS) remain blocked by leftist and center-left Latin American governments. (El Universal (Caracas) 9/11/10 from AFP)
*4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a “legendary leader who fought for his ideals,” according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás “an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico,” while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: “Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example.”
Mari Brás founded the Pro Independence Movement (MPI) in 1959 and the leftist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in 1971. His son Santiago Mari Brás was murdered in 1976; many suspected that the killing was politically motivated. Juan Mari Brás continued to be active into his later years: in 1994 he renounced the US citizenship which people born in Puerto Rico receive automatically [see Update #437], and in 2002 he was arrested while protesting the US Navy’s testing grounds on the island of Vieques. (Prensa Latina 9/10/10; New York Times 9/11/10)
*5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
Walker was wounded in eastern Nicaragua in 1988 when US-backed contra rebels attacked a boat in which he was traveling with a fact-finding delegation; two civilians were killed in the attack. [Reuters reported in error that the attack was by government soldiers and that the US backed the Nicaraguan government.] Walker stepped up his solidarity work after the attacks, founding Pastors for Peace and leading 21 “Friendshipment” caravans to take humanitarian aid to Cuba [see Update #1000]. He also organized caravans to Central America and to the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, and in 1999 he led the first US delegation to meet with Lori Berenson, a US citizen imprisoned for leftist activities in Peru [see Update #1045].
On Sept. 8 Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, called Walker an “insuperable example of solidarity and love of one’s neighbor.” Alarcón, who knew Walker from his time serving as a diplomat in New York, said the minister’s “life was an authentic realization of the true Christian spirit.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/8/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 9/8/10; New York Times 9/12/10 from Reuters)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Border Mining Projects in Latin America Before Ethics Tribunal (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2685-border-mining-projects-in-latin-america-before-ethics-tribunal
Chilean miners won't get paid while they're buried alive
http://ww4report.com/node/9092
No Dialogue in Mapuche Conflict in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2683-no-dialogue-in-mapuche-conflict-in-chile
Bolivia: The Lessons of Potosí
https://nacla.org/node/6731
El buen vivir: Peruvian Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios
https://nacla.org/node/6734
US military pact with Colombia dealt setback
http://ww4report.com/node/9084
Indigenous Colombians Face Possibility Of Extinction, U.N. Report Says
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/10/indigenous-colombians-face-extinction-u-n-report-says/
UN Report: Thirty-four Colombian Tribes Face Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2679-un-report-thirty-four-colombian-tribes-face-extinction
Venezuela Elections Too Close to Call
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5521&updaterx=2010-09-07+19%3A45%3A33
Venezuela: Voices on the Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2674-venezuela-voices-on-the-struggle
Venezuela: Crime in the Context of a Democratizing Process
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2678-venezuela-crime-in-the-context-of-a-democratising-process
Venezuelan Private Gas Company Workers Demand Nationalization
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5622
Chavez Allowed to Campaign Says Venezuelan Electoral Council
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5627
Devastating floods hit Central America —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9089
Honduras: drug gang behind factory massacre?
http://ww4report.com/node/9088
Guatemala: judge orders soldiers to stand trial for peasant massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/9087
Clinton: Mexico needs "equivalent" of Plan Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/9090
A Plan Colombia for Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3202
Mexican Military Launches Investigation Into Killing Of Civilians
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/08/mexican-military-launches-investigation-into-killing-of-civilians/
Oil Companies: Under No Obligation to Report Exploratory Pollution (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3191
Pollution Knows no Borders (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3171
Mexico: Unending Violence for the Indigenous People of San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2684-unending-violence-for-the-indigenous-people-of-san-juan-copala
Fidel to Ahmadinejad: "Stop slandering the Jews" (Cuba)
http://ww4report.com/node/9093
Education and the Cataclysm in Haiti: An Interview with Rea Dol
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2682-education-and-the-cataclysm-in-haiti-an-interview-with-rea-dol
Haitian refugee camps model future society
http://www.haitisupportgroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=396:haitian-refugee-camps-model-future-society&catid=99:analysis&Itemid=256
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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 #1048, September 12, 2010
1. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Mexico: Fighting Breaks Out at Cananea Mine
At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Sept. 8. One of the injured, apparently a strikebreaker, was shot in the head but survived, despite initial reports that he had died.
Members of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have been on strike at the mine for three years. The owner, the powerful Grupo México corporation, regained control of the mine from the strikers after hundreds of police agents stormed the facility on June 6 [see Update #1037]. (As is traditional in Mexico, the strikers had been sitting in at the site.) The company then contracted workers from outside to get the mine back in operation. However, the union won a temporary court order on Aug. 12 allowing strikers to picket at the facility.
According to the state government’s account of the Sept. 8 events, strikers assaulted the contract workers and one striker, identified by the authorities as Jesús Gallegos Cabrera (“El Güero”), fired a gun at the strikebreakers, causing the worst injuries. Section 65 has become “a subversive, criminal group,” Sonora governor Guillermo Padrés Elías, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), charged on Sept. 11, adding that he would no longer negotiate with the strikers: “I have nothing to talk about with them.” The state had released four of the 26 arrested union members, the governor said, but had detained another, so that 23 were in detention as of Sept. 11.
The union and its supporters gave a different story. According to an alert from the nongovernmental Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PRODESC) and the US-based United Steelworkers (USW) union, a group of about 300 people in civilian clothes used stones and clubs to attack picketers at the mine’s Gate 2 on the afternoon of Sept. 7. The strikers retreated to Section 65’s union hall. The bloody Sept. 8 confrontation started when some 600 people attacked the strikers at the union hall at about 5:30am, according to this account. At a press conference shortly after the confrontation, Section 65 leaders charged that federal and state police dressed as civilians had joined strikebreakers, including workers from Central America, to attack the strikers. The leaders denied that a unionist could have fired the shots, since Section 65 workers, according to a union press release, “never go armed, following a union line, while the police and paramilitaries are armed.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/12/10; United Electrical Workers (UE) urgent action 9/9/10; Section 65 press releases 9/8/10, 9/12/10)
Representatives from a number of independent unions met at the headquarters of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in Mexico City on Sept. 9 to discuss plans to form a broad front “against the aggressions, murders and acts of repression.” The unions also called for a number of demonstrations and caravans on Sept. 14 and 15, as Mexicans mark the bicentennial of the start of the War of Independence from Spain on Sept. 15-16. (LJ 9/10/10) The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) asked for letters to President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx ), Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora (secretario@segob.gob.mx ), Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez (ofproc@pgr.gob.mx ) and others to demand protection for the striking miners and a thorough investigation of the Sept. 7-8 incidents. (UE urgent action 9/9/10)
*2. Honduras: Army Takes to the Streets After Massacre
On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn’t set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. “The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans,” Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 9/10/10 from EFE)
The anti-crime push followed the killing of 17 workers at the Christopher Shoe Factory, in San Pedro Sula’s San Francisco neighborhood, on Sept. 7 by four or five armed men; several other workers were wounded. Police officials quickly attributed the killing to rivalry between two criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18. Relatives of the victims denied the police conclusion, noting that investigators had found no arms, drugs or gang insignia in the factory. “This is a lie,” said the factory’s owner, Miguel Alas, whose son was one of the victims. Opposition groups also questioned the government’s speed in blaming gang wars before the investigation was finished, and suggested that the government was taking advantage of the massacre to militarize the country. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Radio Progreso and ERIC-SJ (Honduras) 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
The massacre overshadowed a “civic strike” the three main labor federations and the opposition National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) held the same day to demand an increase in the minimum wage and the return of exiled opponents of the June 2009 military coup against former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) [see Update #1047]. Thousands of workers, students and teachers marched from the east of Tegucigalpa to the center of the city; the demonstration ended with a vigil at the Chilean embassy in solidarity with indigenous Mapuche political prisoners in Chile. During the march one group of protesters threw rocks at the buildings of two television companies, Channel 10 and Televicentro, and at the office of government human rights commissioner Ramón Custodio. “People are indignant with these media that aren’t impartial and objective,” Rafael Alegría, an FNRP coordinator, explained. “And the commissioner…well, you know,” Alegría added, referring to Custodio’s support for the coup [see Update #1029]. (AFP 9/7/10 via Univision; Vos el Soberano 9/9/10)
In other news, on Sept. 10 a group of men shot and killed campesino Francisco Miranda as he headed towards the La Aurora encampment, where he lived, near the city of Tocoa in the northern department of Colón. Miranda was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), which represents thousands of campesinos in a land dispute in the Aguán River Valley. He is reportedly the 12th campesino to be murdered since December 2009. On Aug. 17 campesinos Víctor Manuel Mata Oliva, Sergio Magdiel Amaya and Rodving Omar Villegas, all MUCA members, were murdered as they were going from Tocoa to the community of Panamá. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/10/10 via Vos el Soberano)
*3. Honduras: IMF Ends Boycott, Resumes Loans
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.
Przemeck Gajdeczka, who headed the IMF’s delegation to Tegucigalpa, said the Honduran government had made a commitment to “improve the administration and collection of taxes; monitor expenses, including salaries; focus social spending on the poorest; and improve the financial position of the main public enterprises and the pension funds.”
The last standby loan agreement was made with former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) on Apr. 8, 2008, but the Zelaya government failed to comply with the agreement’s requirement to cut public spending. Along with other international institutions, the IMF suspended loans to Honduras after Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009. The IMF loan is one of current president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa’s main successes in restoring relations with international groups since he took office on Jan. 27. Efforts to have Honduras readmitted to the Organization of American States (OAS) remain blocked by leftist and center-left Latin American governments. (El Universal (Caracas) 9/11/10 from AFP)
*4. Puerto Rico: Independence Leader Mari Brás Dies
On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a “legendary leader who fought for his ideals,” according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás “an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico,” while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: “Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example.”
Mari Brás founded the Pro Independence Movement (MPI) in 1959 and the leftist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in 1971. His son Santiago Mari Brás was murdered in 1976; many suspected that the killing was politically motivated. Juan Mari Brás continued to be active into his later years: in 1994 he renounced the US citizenship which people born in Puerto Rico receive automatically [see Update #437], and in 2002 he was arrested while protesting the US Navy’s testing grounds on the island of Vieques. (Prensa Latina 9/10/10; New York Times 9/11/10)
*5. US: Solidarity Activist Lucius Walker Dies
Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
Walker was wounded in eastern Nicaragua in 1988 when US-backed contra rebels attacked a boat in which he was traveling with a fact-finding delegation; two civilians were killed in the attack. [Reuters reported in error that the attack was by government soldiers and that the US backed the Nicaraguan government.] Walker stepped up his solidarity work after the attacks, founding Pastors for Peace and leading 21 “Friendshipment” caravans to take humanitarian aid to Cuba [see Update #1000]. He also organized caravans to Central America and to the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, and in 1999 he led the first US delegation to meet with Lori Berenson, a US citizen imprisoned for leftist activities in Peru [see Update #1045].
On Sept. 8 Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, called Walker an “insuperable example of solidarity and love of one’s neighbor.” Alarcón, who knew Walker from his time serving as a diplomat in New York, said the minister’s “life was an authentic realization of the true Christian spirit.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/8/10 from correspondent; Prensa Latina 9/8/10; New York Times 9/12/10 from Reuters)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Border Mining Projects in Latin America Before Ethics Tribunal (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2685-border-mining-projects-in-latin-america-before-ethics-tribunal
Chilean miners won't get paid while they're buried alive
http://ww4report.com/node/9092
No Dialogue in Mapuche Conflict in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2683-no-dialogue-in-mapuche-conflict-in-chile
Bolivia: The Lessons of Potosí
https://nacla.org/node/6731
El buen vivir: Peruvian Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios
https://nacla.org/node/6734
US military pact with Colombia dealt setback
http://ww4report.com/node/9084
Indigenous Colombians Face Possibility Of Extinction, U.N. Report Says
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/10/indigenous-colombians-face-extinction-u-n-report-says/
UN Report: Thirty-four Colombian Tribes Face Extinction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2679-un-report-thirty-four-colombian-tribes-face-extinction
Venezuela Elections Too Close to Call
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5521&updaterx=2010-09-07+19%3A45%3A33
Venezuela: Voices on the Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2674-venezuela-voices-on-the-struggle
Venezuela: Crime in the Context of a Democratizing Process
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2678-venezuela-crime-in-the-context-of-a-democratising-process
Venezuelan Private Gas Company Workers Demand Nationalization
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5622
Chavez Allowed to Campaign Says Venezuelan Electoral Council
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5627
Devastating floods hit Central America —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9089
Honduras: drug gang behind factory massacre?
http://ww4report.com/node/9088
Guatemala: judge orders soldiers to stand trial for peasant massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/9087
Clinton: Mexico needs "equivalent" of Plan Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/9090
A Plan Colombia for Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3202
Mexican Military Launches Investigation Into Killing Of Civilians
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/08/mexican-military-launches-investigation-into-killing-of-civilians/
Oil Companies: Under No Obligation to Report Exploratory Pollution (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3191
Pollution Knows no Borders (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3171
Mexico: Unending Violence for the Indigenous People of San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2684-unending-violence-for-the-indigenous-people-of-san-juan-copala
Fidel to Ahmadinejad: "Stop slandering the Jews" (Cuba)
http://ww4report.com/node/9093
Education and the Cataclysm in Haiti: An Interview with Rea Dol
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2682-education-and-the-cataclysm-in-haiti-an-interview-with-rea-dol
Haitian refugee camps model future society
http://www.haitisupportgroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=396:haitian-refugee-camps-model-future-society&catid=99:analysis&Itemid=256
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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, 6 September 2010
WNU #1047: Mexican Women Jailed for Miscarriages
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1047, September 5, 2010
1. Mexico: Guanajuato Women Jailed for Miscarriages
2. Honduras: Teachers and Government Settle
3. Honduras: Resistance Petitions, Plans Strike
4. Haiti: Did UN “Peacekeepers” Kill a Teenager?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Indigenous peoples, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Guanajuato Women Jailed for Miscarriages
On Sept. 3 Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, governor of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, announced that soon after Sept. 7 the state government would release seven women who had been jailed under Article 156, which establishes a 25-35 year prison sentence for “homicide in the case of close relatives.” Six of the women, campesinas from Dolores Hidalgo and San Miguel de Allende municipalities, said they lost their babies in involuntary miscarriages; all but one have spent at least three years in prison. Gov. Oliva, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), said he thought there was a seventh prisoner who would be released, but he didn’t know her name.
Guanajuato was one of 16 conservative states that made their anti-abortion laws more stringent after the Federal District (DF, Mexico) passed legislation in April 2007 legalizing abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [see Updates #926, 928, 959, 1032]. Under Guanajuato law, women are now subject to up to three years in prison for having abortions. Some 161 women have reportedly been arrested and have served at least some time in the state for having had abortions.
Guanajuato legislators passed Article 156 as part of the anti-abortion campaign, using the vague expression “homicide in the case of close relatives” to penalize mothers who cause the death of a baby born alive.
Several of the women sentenced under Article 156 charged that the police abused them after their arrests and forced them to say falsely that their stillborn babies were alive at birth. They also claimed that their court-appointed defense attorneys helped railroad them. In June state magistrate Miguel Valadez Reyes found that insufficient evidence had been used to convict Alma Yareli Salazar, a domestic servant who had served three years of a 27-year sentence in an Article 156 case. After being released, Salazar said she would sue the state for damages, with the help of the Free Women’s Center, a nongovernmental organization.
Faced with bad publicity from the Salazar acquittal, Gov. Oliva proposed a modification of Article 156, based on recommendations from the United Nations and the state human rights ombudsperson. The reform is a new paragraph that reduces the sentence to three to eight years in cases where “the mother deprives her child of life within the 24 hours immediately after the child’s birth, and also the act is a consequence of motivations of a psycho-social character.” The state legislature approved the modification on Aug. 31 with only one dissenting vote. Since all but one of the women currently in prison have served at least three years, the change allows Oliva to release them without reopening their cases. (Apparently the other prisoner, who has served two years, can be paroled.) (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/1/10, 9/4/10; Guadalajara Reporter (Mexico) 8/13/10)
The Civil Pact for Life, Liberty and the Rights of Women of Mexico held a protest at the Hemiciclo a Juárez in Mexico City on Sept. 2 to demand the prisoners’ “unconditional and immediate” release, saying the women were innocent and calling Oliva’s reform to Article 156 “inadequate.” (LJ 9/3/10)
The rate for maternal deaths is five times as high in Mexico as in industrialized countries, according to a report released this month by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute. In 2008 Mexico’s rate was 57 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births; in the three poorest states, Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, the rate was 97.3 deaths per 100,000 births. Seven percent of the deaths resulted from clandestine abortions. Report co-author José Luis Palma Cabrera, director general of Mexico’s Investigation in Health and Demography (INSAD), called the statistic on abortions “the most absurd from a social and health logic; these are unacceptable deaths.”
The Mexican government says it is seeking to lower the maternal death rate to 22 deaths per 100,000 births by 2025. (LJ 9/3/10)
*2. Honduras: Teachers and Government Settle
Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa announced on Aug. 30 that he had signed an agreement with the education workers’ unions ending a 26-day strike by some 55,000 teachers. The job action was marked by militant demonstrations by the teachers and by repression by the police [see Update #1046]. The strikers were to return to work on Aug. 31.
The government appeared to have met the principal demands of the six unions in the Federation of Teachers Organizations of Honduras (FOMH), which wanted the government to make overdue payments worth as much as 3.7 billion lempiras (about $194 million) to the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), the teachers’ pensions fund. Lobo, who took office on Jan. 27, said his government was accepting "as its own the debts contracted by previous administrations, 2007, 2008 and 2009, with the teachers’ unions,” referring to the 2006-2009 administration of former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales and to the de facto regime that replaced Zelaya after he was overthrown by a military coup in June 2009.
The teachers failed to win a demand for the removal of Education Minister Alejandro Ventura. (EFE 8/30/10 via Terra.com)
*3. Honduras: Resistance Petitions, Plans Strike
As of Sept. 1, Honduras’ National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) said it had collected 1,019,765 signatures on petitions calling for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution and for the safe return of former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) from his exile in the Dominican Republic. One of the FNRP’s coordinators, union leader Juan Barahona, called reaching the number “a triumph” and said he was “sure we’ll pass the minimum goal we proposed of 1.25 million signatures” by Sept. 15, the final day of the campaign. [The population of Honduras is about 7.5 million, and there were 4.6 million registered voters in the country at the time of the November 2009 elections; see Update #1015].
The FNRP, which formed in response to Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009, started the petition campaign on Apr. 20 [see Update #1038, where we erroneously reported that the campaign had already gathered 1.2 million signatures in June]. (Prensa Latina 9/1/10; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 9/2/10) The coup against Zelaya came on a day when Hondurans were to vote in a non-binding poll on whether to include a referendum on the constituent assembly in the November 2009 general elections.
The FNRP is planning to hold a demonstration on Sept. 15, the last day of the petition drive and the 189th anniversary of Central America’s declaration of independence from Spain. The group is also calling for a “civic strike” on Sept. 7, which Barahona indicated would be a sort of preview of a national general strike the main labor federations are planning if President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa fails to increase the national minimum wage.
The minimum wage, currently 5,500 lempiras a month (about $290), was supposed to be raised in April, but the business sector blocked the pay hike [see Update #1045]. When negotiations between the unions and businesses fail to resolve the issue, the president has the authority to set the minimum wage, but Lobo still hasn’t taken action. One problem may be external pressure. The Honduras Culture and Politics blog notes: “In order to convince the International Monetary Fund [IMF] that Honduras qualifies for a standby line of credit, Lobo Sosa must prove to them that he has contained government costs in the 2011 government budget, especially salaries…. Obviously, adding a large increase to the budget, specifically for salaries, would undercut meeting that target.” (Red Morazánica de Información (Honduras) 8/31/10 via FNRP website; Adital (Brazil) 8/31/10; Honduras Culture and Politics 9/2/10)
*4. Haiti: Did UN “Peacekeepers” Kill a Teenager?
Students at the Faculty of Ethnology at the State University of Haiti (UEH) in downtown Port-au-Prince said on Sept. 4 that they were planning to file complaints with international agencies about a May 24 incident involving soldiers from the 9,000-member United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The soldiers invaded the campus and arrested a student, Frantz Mathieu Junior, for allegedly throwing rocks [see Update #1035]. MINUSTAH released the student the same day, and the force’s acting head, Edmond Mulet, apologized on May 25, but the students asked why more than three months later no soldiers have been disciplined.
Various groups are planning a demonstration against the United Nations (UN) force on Oct. 15, the date on which the UN Security Council is expected to renew MINUSTAH’s mandate for another year.
MINUSTAH was one of the targets of a demonstration by hundreds of people in Haiti’s second largest city, Cap-Haïtien in the north, on the weekend of Aug. 21. In addition to accusing the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) of partiality in the upcoming Nov. 28 general elections, the protesters raised suspicions that MINUSTAH elements were responsible for the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles, whose body was found inside MINUSTAH’s Formed Police Units (FPU) base in Cap-Haïtien on Aug. 17.
MINUSTAH spokespeople said the youth, who did odd jobs for the Nepalese soldiers at the base in exchange for food and money, had hanged himself. But people who live near the base reportedly saw a soldier assaulting Gilles, and officials at the nearby Roi Henri Christophe hotel they had heard someone shouting: “They’re strangling me.” Senate president Kélly Bastien has demanded a thorough investigation of the case.
MINUSTAH units have been charged with serious crimes in the past [see Update #949], including a case involving statutory rape of a teenage girl by members of a Nepalese unit. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/23/10; Adital (Brazil) 9/2/10; Caraib Creole News (Guadeloupe) 9/4/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Indigenous peoples, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
After Recognition: Indigenous Peoples Confront Capitalism
https://nacla.org/node/6728
Ollanta Humala, “Neither Left, Nor Right” — An Interview (Peru)
http://latindispatch.com/2010/08/30/ollanta-humala-neither-left-nor-right-an-interview/
Peru: Quechua Congresswoman Fights Discrimination in Education
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2671-peru-quechua-congresswoman-fights-discrimination-in-education
Protest Georgetown U's honoring of Colombia's Uribe
http://ww4report.com/node/9068
Afro-Colombian Community Faces Eviction To Make Way For Gold Exploration
http://latindispatch.com/2010/08/23/afro-colombian-community-faces-eviction-to-make-way-for-gold-exploration/
Colombia: campesino leader assassinated in Meta
http://ww4report.com/node/8885#comment-321585
Recession Forcing Colombia-Venezuela Peace
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5602
Venezuela’s Opposition: Manufacturing Fear in Exchange for Votes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2670-venezuelas-opposition-manufacturing-fear-in-exchange-for-votes-
Venezuelan Government Responds to “Hypocritical” Hunger Strike
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5611
Honduras since the coup: Drug Traffickers’ Paradise
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3029
Honduras: campesino leader assassinated in Comayagua
http://ww4report.com/node/8935#comment-321586
Take Action! End the Brutal Repression of the Honduran Social Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2667-take-action-end-the-brutal-repression-of-the-honduran-social-movement
Guatemala’s New Civil Conflict: The Case of Ramiro Choc
https://nacla.org/node/6706
US to withhold "Plan Mexico" funds over rights abuses?
http://ww4report.com/node/9071
Mexico: Tamaulipas terror still escalating
http://ww4report.com/node/9069
Behind Mexico's Bloodshed
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5572
Mexico Massacre Galvanizes Migrant Rights Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2672-mexico-massacre-galvanises-migrant-rights-activists
2010: Year of the Nini (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3050
Bread on our Table (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3044
Project of Mass Destruction: Goldcorp's Peñasquito Mine in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2666-project-of-mass-destruction-goldcorps-penasquito-mine-in-mexico-
The Sustainable City Project Ruse in Chiapas
https://nacla.org/node/6710
Alert: Renewed Aggression Against Bankworkers Union, SUNTBANOBRAS (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1157
Victory for Workers! Agreement Reached at Johnson Controls (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1158
Workers at General Tire Overwhelmingly Beat Back Charro Take-over (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1158
Mexican Community Theater: A Different View of Immigration
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson030910.html
Fidel Castro Apologizes For Treatment Of Gays During The Revolution
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/01/fidel-castro-apologizes-for-treatment-of-gays-during-the-revolution/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
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 #1047, September 5, 2010
1. Mexico: Guanajuato Women Jailed for Miscarriages
2. Honduras: Teachers and Government Settle
3. Honduras: Resistance Petitions, Plans Strike
4. Haiti: Did UN “Peacekeepers” Kill a Teenager?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Indigenous peoples, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Guanajuato Women Jailed for Miscarriages
On Sept. 3 Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, governor of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, announced that soon after Sept. 7 the state government would release seven women who had been jailed under Article 156, which establishes a 25-35 year prison sentence for “homicide in the case of close relatives.” Six of the women, campesinas from Dolores Hidalgo and San Miguel de Allende municipalities, said they lost their babies in involuntary miscarriages; all but one have spent at least three years in prison. Gov. Oliva, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), said he thought there was a seventh prisoner who would be released, but he didn’t know her name.
Guanajuato was one of 16 conservative states that made their anti-abortion laws more stringent after the Federal District (DF, Mexico) passed legislation in April 2007 legalizing abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [see Updates #926, 928, 959, 1032]. Under Guanajuato law, women are now subject to up to three years in prison for having abortions. Some 161 women have reportedly been arrested and have served at least some time in the state for having had abortions.
Guanajuato legislators passed Article 156 as part of the anti-abortion campaign, using the vague expression “homicide in the case of close relatives” to penalize mothers who cause the death of a baby born alive.
Several of the women sentenced under Article 156 charged that the police abused them after their arrests and forced them to say falsely that their stillborn babies were alive at birth. They also claimed that their court-appointed defense attorneys helped railroad them. In June state magistrate Miguel Valadez Reyes found that insufficient evidence had been used to convict Alma Yareli Salazar, a domestic servant who had served three years of a 27-year sentence in an Article 156 case. After being released, Salazar said she would sue the state for damages, with the help of the Free Women’s Center, a nongovernmental organization.
Faced with bad publicity from the Salazar acquittal, Gov. Oliva proposed a modification of Article 156, based on recommendations from the United Nations and the state human rights ombudsperson. The reform is a new paragraph that reduces the sentence to three to eight years in cases where “the mother deprives her child of life within the 24 hours immediately after the child’s birth, and also the act is a consequence of motivations of a psycho-social character.” The state legislature approved the modification on Aug. 31 with only one dissenting vote. Since all but one of the women currently in prison have served at least three years, the change allows Oliva to release them without reopening their cases. (Apparently the other prisoner, who has served two years, can be paroled.) (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/1/10, 9/4/10; Guadalajara Reporter (Mexico) 8/13/10)
The Civil Pact for Life, Liberty and the Rights of Women of Mexico held a protest at the Hemiciclo a Juárez in Mexico City on Sept. 2 to demand the prisoners’ “unconditional and immediate” release, saying the women were innocent and calling Oliva’s reform to Article 156 “inadequate.” (LJ 9/3/10)
The rate for maternal deaths is five times as high in Mexico as in industrialized countries, according to a report released this month by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute. In 2008 Mexico’s rate was 57 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births; in the three poorest states, Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, the rate was 97.3 deaths per 100,000 births. Seven percent of the deaths resulted from clandestine abortions. Report co-author José Luis Palma Cabrera, director general of Mexico’s Investigation in Health and Demography (INSAD), called the statistic on abortions “the most absurd from a social and health logic; these are unacceptable deaths.”
The Mexican government says it is seeking to lower the maternal death rate to 22 deaths per 100,000 births by 2025. (LJ 9/3/10)
*2. Honduras: Teachers and Government Settle
Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa announced on Aug. 30 that he had signed an agreement with the education workers’ unions ending a 26-day strike by some 55,000 teachers. The job action was marked by militant demonstrations by the teachers and by repression by the police [see Update #1046]. The strikers were to return to work on Aug. 31.
The government appeared to have met the principal demands of the six unions in the Federation of Teachers Organizations of Honduras (FOMH), which wanted the government to make overdue payments worth as much as 3.7 billion lempiras (about $194 million) to the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), the teachers’ pensions fund. Lobo, who took office on Jan. 27, said his government was accepting "as its own the debts contracted by previous administrations, 2007, 2008 and 2009, with the teachers’ unions,” referring to the 2006-2009 administration of former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales and to the de facto regime that replaced Zelaya after he was overthrown by a military coup in June 2009.
The teachers failed to win a demand for the removal of Education Minister Alejandro Ventura. (EFE 8/30/10 via Terra.com)
*3. Honduras: Resistance Petitions, Plans Strike
As of Sept. 1, Honduras’ National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) said it had collected 1,019,765 signatures on petitions calling for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution and for the safe return of former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) from his exile in the Dominican Republic. One of the FNRP’s coordinators, union leader Juan Barahona, called reaching the number “a triumph” and said he was “sure we’ll pass the minimum goal we proposed of 1.25 million signatures” by Sept. 15, the final day of the campaign. [The population of Honduras is about 7.5 million, and there were 4.6 million registered voters in the country at the time of the November 2009 elections; see Update #1015].
The FNRP, which formed in response to Zelaya’s overthrow in June 2009, started the petition campaign on Apr. 20 [see Update #1038, where we erroneously reported that the campaign had already gathered 1.2 million signatures in June]. (Prensa Latina 9/1/10; El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 9/2/10) The coup against Zelaya came on a day when Hondurans were to vote in a non-binding poll on whether to include a referendum on the constituent assembly in the November 2009 general elections.
The FNRP is planning to hold a demonstration on Sept. 15, the last day of the petition drive and the 189th anniversary of Central America’s declaration of independence from Spain. The group is also calling for a “civic strike” on Sept. 7, which Barahona indicated would be a sort of preview of a national general strike the main labor federations are planning if President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa fails to increase the national minimum wage.
The minimum wage, currently 5,500 lempiras a month (about $290), was supposed to be raised in April, but the business sector blocked the pay hike [see Update #1045]. When negotiations between the unions and businesses fail to resolve the issue, the president has the authority to set the minimum wage, but Lobo still hasn’t taken action. One problem may be external pressure. The Honduras Culture and Politics blog notes: “In order to convince the International Monetary Fund [IMF] that Honduras qualifies for a standby line of credit, Lobo Sosa must prove to them that he has contained government costs in the 2011 government budget, especially salaries…. Obviously, adding a large increase to the budget, specifically for salaries, would undercut meeting that target.” (Red Morazánica de Información (Honduras) 8/31/10 via FNRP website; Adital (Brazil) 8/31/10; Honduras Culture and Politics 9/2/10)
*4. Haiti: Did UN “Peacekeepers” Kill a Teenager?
Students at the Faculty of Ethnology at the State University of Haiti (UEH) in downtown Port-au-Prince said on Sept. 4 that they were planning to file complaints with international agencies about a May 24 incident involving soldiers from the 9,000-member United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The soldiers invaded the campus and arrested a student, Frantz Mathieu Junior, for allegedly throwing rocks [see Update #1035]. MINUSTAH released the student the same day, and the force’s acting head, Edmond Mulet, apologized on May 25, but the students asked why more than three months later no soldiers have been disciplined.
Various groups are planning a demonstration against the United Nations (UN) force on Oct. 15, the date on which the UN Security Council is expected to renew MINUSTAH’s mandate for another year.
MINUSTAH was one of the targets of a demonstration by hundreds of people in Haiti’s second largest city, Cap-Haïtien in the north, on the weekend of Aug. 21. In addition to accusing the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) of partiality in the upcoming Nov. 28 general elections, the protesters raised suspicions that MINUSTAH elements were responsible for the death of 16-year-old Gérald Jean Gilles, whose body was found inside MINUSTAH’s Formed Police Units (FPU) base in Cap-Haïtien on Aug. 17.
MINUSTAH spokespeople said the youth, who did odd jobs for the Nepalese soldiers at the base in exchange for food and money, had hanged himself. But people who live near the base reportedly saw a soldier assaulting Gilles, and officials at the nearby Roi Henri Christophe hotel they had heard someone shouting: “They’re strangling me.” Senate president Kélly Bastien has demanded a thorough investigation of the case.
MINUSTAH units have been charged with serious crimes in the past [see Update #949], including a case involving statutory rape of a teenage girl by members of a Nepalese unit. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/23/10; Adital (Brazil) 9/2/10; Caraib Creole News (Guadeloupe) 9/4/10)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Indigenous peoples, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
After Recognition: Indigenous Peoples Confront Capitalism
https://nacla.org/node/6728
Ollanta Humala, “Neither Left, Nor Right” — An Interview (Peru)
http://latindispatch.com/2010/08/30/ollanta-humala-neither-left-nor-right-an-interview/
Peru: Quechua Congresswoman Fights Discrimination in Education
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2671-peru-quechua-congresswoman-fights-discrimination-in-education
Protest Georgetown U's honoring of Colombia's Uribe
http://ww4report.com/node/9068
Afro-Colombian Community Faces Eviction To Make Way For Gold Exploration
http://latindispatch.com/2010/08/23/afro-colombian-community-faces-eviction-to-make-way-for-gold-exploration/
Colombia: campesino leader assassinated in Meta
http://ww4report.com/node/8885#comment-321585
Recession Forcing Colombia-Venezuela Peace
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5602
Venezuela’s Opposition: Manufacturing Fear in Exchange for Votes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2670-venezuelas-opposition-manufacturing-fear-in-exchange-for-votes-
Venezuelan Government Responds to “Hypocritical” Hunger Strike
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5611
Honduras since the coup: Drug Traffickers’ Paradise
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3029
Honduras: campesino leader assassinated in Comayagua
http://ww4report.com/node/8935#comment-321586
Take Action! End the Brutal Repression of the Honduran Social Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2667-take-action-end-the-brutal-repression-of-the-honduran-social-movement
Guatemala’s New Civil Conflict: The Case of Ramiro Choc
https://nacla.org/node/6706
US to withhold "Plan Mexico" funds over rights abuses?
http://ww4report.com/node/9071
Mexico: Tamaulipas terror still escalating
http://ww4report.com/node/9069
Behind Mexico's Bloodshed
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5572
Mexico Massacre Galvanizes Migrant Rights Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2672-mexico-massacre-galvanises-migrant-rights-activists
2010: Year of the Nini (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3050
Bread on our Table (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3044
Project of Mass Destruction: Goldcorp's Peñasquito Mine in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2666-project-of-mass-destruction-goldcorps-penasquito-mine-in-mexico-
The Sustainable City Project Ruse in Chiapas
https://nacla.org/node/6710
Alert: Renewed Aggression Against Bankworkers Union, SUNTBANOBRAS (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1157
Victory for Workers! Agreement Reached at Johnson Controls (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1158
Workers at General Tire Overwhelmingly Beat Back Charro Take-over (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna_articles.php?id=174#1158
Mexican Community Theater: A Different View of Immigration
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson030910.html
Fidel Castro Apologizes For Treatment Of Gays During The Revolution
http://latindispatch.com/2010/09/01/fidel-castro-apologizes-for-treatment-of-gays-during-the-revolution/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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