Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1094, August 28, 2011
1. Honduras: Killings Continue as Aguán Becomes “New Colombia”
2. Chile: General Strike Adds to Pressure on the Government
3. Nicaragua: Dole Settles Pesticide Case With 4,000 Ex-Employees
4. Haiti: Genome Study Confirms UN Troops Brought Cholera
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Honduras: Killings Continue as Aguán Becomes “New Colombia”
Honduran campesino leader Pedro Salgado and his wife, Reina Mejía, were murdered on the evening of Aug. 21 at their home in the La Concepción cooperative, in Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Salgado was the president of the cooperative and a vice president of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a leading organization in a decade-old struggle for land in Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley.
The murders came just one day after the shooting death of Secundino Ruiz, who is president of the nearby San Isidro cooperative and of another campesino organization, the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA) [see Update #1093]. Both MUCA and MARCA won land for their members under an agreement they signed with Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa in April 2010 [see Update #1029]. The killing of Salgado and Mejía brought the number of people killed in the Lower Aguán in two weeks to 14 or more, including Ruiz, six private guards (previously reported as five), four people working for a Pepsi distributor and a food vendor riding with them. (Comité de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras 8/21/11 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) 8/22/11 via Adital (Brazil))
Campesino groups trace the Aguán struggle back to the 1992 Agricultural Modernization Law, which changed restrictions on the size of land holdings to allow businesses to own more than 300 hectares. Campesinos feel that land which should have been theirs through agrarian reform has gone to big businesses like Grupo Dinant, a food product and cooking oil company founded by Miguel Facussé Barjum. There are 40,000 campesinos living “in extreme poverty” in the valley “who need a piece of land to farm,” MUCA general secretary Johnny Rivas told the Spanish wire service EFE. Groups like MUCA started forming about 11 years ago and have relied on a strategy of peaceful occupations of large estates—although Rivas didn’t discount the possibility that some sectors of the campesino movement might have arms.
African oil palms have replaced bananas as the main commercial crop in the valley, and tensions increased as landowners like Facussé saw the potential for the palms in the biofuel business, which could attract carbon credits and international financing [see Update #1077]. To maintain their estates, the landowners have hired private guards and supplied them with arms. Campesino groups consider the guards paramilitaries and blame them for most of the 51 killings of campesinos that they say have taken place in the past two years. Meanwhile, narco traffickers and other criminals have reportedly moved into the area.
President Lobo’s government has negotiated some land transfers under the agrarian reform policy, but the government’s main response to the violence in the Aguán has been to send in soldiers and police agents. There are now about 1,000 police and military personnel stationed in the valley in an operation codenamed Xatruch II, but the violence continues. Juan Almendárez, a former rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras who has mediated in talks between campesino groups and the government, told EFE that the military and police presence isn’t meant to maintain order but “to weaken the campesino leadership.” He adds that the authorities can’t control the narco traffickers “because of inability” and because the security forces themselves are corrupt. The only way to resolve the valley’s problems is “by giving land to the campesinos, along with credits and technical assistance so that they can cultivate the land.”
With soldiers, paramilitaries and drug traffickers now operating in the valley, Honduran activists fear the Aguán is becoming a “new Colombia.” The right wing charges that there are also guerrilla groups, allegedly trained by Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; an Aug. 25 article in La Prensa, the Honduran daily with the largest circulation, claimed a man known as “The Commander” was leading a band of at least 300 rebels. Campesino and activist groups, which deny the stories about guerrillas, charge that some of the private guards have been trained by the US and that the landowners have been recruiting paramilitaries from Colombia.
“We’re experiencing an extremely difficult situation in the region,” Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, the local coordinator of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), told Argentine journalist Claudia Korol. He asked her to tell “international human rights organizations [and] friendly international journalists” that “we urgently need the presence of an international commission, even if just for weeks or days… Maybe this way the terrible murders of campesino leaders in the region could be stopped.” (EFE 8/23/11 via Que.es (Spain); La Prensa (Honduras) 8/25/11; Vos el Soberano 8/27/11)
The Boston-based organization Grassroots International has set up a web page at http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5123/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7981 with a letter on the situation that activists can send to Honduran and US officials.
Secondary students continue to occupy schools around the country to protest what they say is an effort to privatize the public education system. Nahúm Alexander Guerra, a student at the Pompilio Ortega Agricultural School in Macuelizo in the northwestern department of Santa Bárbara, was killed the night of Aug. 22 as he stood by the door of the school, which the students had occupied. An unidentified man yelled “strikers,” and shot the teenager in the chest and in the arm. (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 8/23/11)
*2. Chile: General Strike Adds to Pressure on the Government
Tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and teachers participated in a 48-hour strike on Aug. 24 and 25 initiated by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s main labor federation, to call “for a different Chile.” The demands included changes to the Labor Code, a reduction in taxes on fuel, and reform of the Constitution, created in 1980 during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The strike also backed the student protest movement that has paralyzed schools for three months to push for a reversal of the Pinochet-era privatization of education [see Update #1092].
Aug. 24, the first day of the strike, was marked by confrontations between the carabinero militarized police and strike supporters, including students attempting to block roads in Santiago and other cities. Police and protesters also clashed in the poorer neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital. The government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera reported that at least 348 people were arrested during the day and 36 were injured, including 19 police agents. According to the government, the strike call was only respected by 14% of employees in the public sector, where the unions are strongest, while union sources put the number at 80%. In the evening thousands of people took to the streets to bang on pots and pans in a cacerolazo protest to support the strike.
The second day, Aug. 25, brought massive marches throughout the country. Organizers estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people marched in Santiago, and an equal number took part in the mobilizations in the rest of the country. Jaime Gajardo, president of the Teachers Association of Chile, called the Santiago march “the largest of this year’s mobilizations”—which are generally considered the largest since the restoration of democracy in 1990. But according to Deputy Interior Minister Rodrigo Urbilla, only 50,000 people participated in the Santiago march and a total of 175,000 protested nationwide; the Labor Ministry reported that most public employees were at work, with just 9.1% observing the strike. Despite the disturbances by masked youths that have routinely accompanied recent demonstrations, President Piñera’s spokesperson, Andrés Chadwick, conceded that in general “the [Santiago] march was peaceful and orderly” and “there were no major problems.” The government reported that 153 police agents and 53 civilians were injured nationally and almost 1,400 people were arrested.
There was one fatality: 16-year-old Manuel Gutiérrez Reinoso, who was shot in the Villa Jaime Eyzaguirre neighborhood in Macul, a commune in Greater Santiago. He was walking with his brother and a friend to observe what was happening, according to his brother, when carabineros passed by in a truck and three shots were heard. Other witnesses confirmed this. Manuel Gutiérrez died in a hospital in the early morning of Aug. 26. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/25/11, 8/26/11, 8/27/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services; La Tercera (Santiago) 8/27/11)
Students and their supporters were engaged in a number of protests in addition to the general strike. On Aug. 23, the day before the labor action, a group of artists and performers sat in at the Santiago office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in support of some 35 students who were on hunger strike to push their demands for education reform. Three of them—students at High School A-131 in the city of Buin, in Maipo province, part of Greater Santiago-- had been fasting for 36 days. These three students ended their strike on Aug. 24, along with three others from the same school. “We’re suspending our strike but not our struggle,” one of the strikers, 19-year-old Gloria Negrete, said at a press conference. She was hospitalized after losing some 26 pounds and contracting a respiratory infection. (LJ 8/24/11, 8/25/11)
The president of Brazil’s National Student Union (UNE), Daniel Iliescu, visited Chile to participate in the general strike and also to announce a Continental Day of Struggle by Latin American Youth, a day of protests to be held in March 2012 around public education issues. Camila Vallejo, president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH), was planning to reciprocate by visiting Brazil on Aug. 31 to join a student march in Brasilia (DF) calling for the government there to allocate 10% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to education, along with 50% of the Pre-Salt Social Fund, a special government fund financed by profits from Brazil’s sub-salt oilfields. (Adital (Brazil) 8/25/11)
*3. Nicaragua: Dole Settles Pesticide Case With 4,000 Ex-Employees
Dole Food Company, a California-based agricultural multinational, announced in Managua on Aug. 11 that it had arrived at a settlement with some 5,000 former banana workers who said their health had been damaged by prolonged and unprotected exposure to the pesticides Nemagon and Fumazone, brand names for dibromochloropropane (DBCP). The settlement, arranged with Dole by the Texas-based law firm Provost Umphrey, covers 3,153 Nicaraguans, 780 Costa Ricans and 1,000 Hondurans; the former employees or their survivors—about 300 of the workers have died--should start receiving payment in two or three months. The amount wasn’t disclosed.
The pesticides, now banned, have been linked to cancer, sterility and birth defects. Dole used them on its Central American banana plantations from 1973 to 1980. About 17,000 former banana workers brought suits in Nicaragua against Dole and the pesticides’ manufacturers about 10 years ago. A Nicaraguan court awarded the workers $489.4 million in compensation in 2002, and the workers staged a series of protests to get the Nicaraguan government to enforce the court’s decision. US courts eventually ruled against them [see Updates #672, 732, 734, 826]. The issue was the subject of a 2009 documentary film, “Bananas!”
The Aug. 11 settlement doesn’t cover the 13,874 Nicaraguan workers who are represented by other law firms, and the suits against the manufacturers--Dow Chemical Company, Shell Oil Company, Shell Chemical Company, Shell Chemical Company LLP and Occidental Chemical Corporation—remain open. In making the settlement, Dole admitted no wrongdoing, according to Dole spokesperson Humberto Hurtado. “This is the style of the transnationals, with a dual intention: not to appear as murderers to the public and to protect themselves from future suits,” a representative of the workers, Jacinto Obregón, explained. “But the memo the manufacturer, Dow Chemical Company, put out is clear. They recognized that although the product was toxic, it could be sold in Latin America as long as the profits were greater than the losses from lawsuits.” (El Nuevo Diario (Managua) 8/12/11; AFP 8/12/11 via La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa); La Nación (San José, Costa Rica) 8/12/11, some from AFP)
*4. Haiti: Genome Study Confirms UN Troops Brought Cholera
A comparison that Danish and US researchers have made of the whole genomes of cholera bacteria found in patients in Haiti and in Nepal provides nearly conclusive evidence that Nepalese soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were the inadvertent cause of a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 6,000 Haitians. The genomes are “practically identical,” Harvard University microbiologist John Mekalanos told the magazine Science. “This is as close as you can come to molecular proof.”
The first cases of cholera were reported in October 2010 around the city of Mirebalais in Haiti’s Central Plateau. Local people blamed MINUSTAH troops at a base where they said had fecal matter had leaked into a nearby river. The soldiers at the base had recently arrived from Nepal, right after an outbreak of cholera there. On-the-ground research by a French epidemiologist, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, supported the Haitians’ suspicions, as have subsequent studies, but MINUSTAH spokespeople have repeatedly denied that there’s proof of the claim [see Update #1086]. With the new study, which was published on Aug. 23, the United Nations should take full responsibility by paying compensation or by backing a massive effort to stop the epidemic, Piarroux told Science. “More than 6,000 people are dead,” he said. “It's our fault, as the people of the world.” (Science 8/23/11)
The genome report appeared as MINUSTAH troops were being blamed for further unsanitary practices in the Central Plateau. There were reports that human wastes were dumped in the Guayamouc River near Hinche, capital of Center department, on Aug. 6 and in the Ahibon River, near Fort Marmont, 15 km from Hinche, on Aug. 21. MINUSTAH has denied the charges. Dozens of people protested on Aug. 21, shooting guns, throwing stones and blocking National Route 3, which passes through Hinche, for more than an hour. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/23/11)
On Aug. 11 an organization in the southern coastal town of Port-Salut, the Research Committee for the Development and Organization of Port-Salut (CREDOP), charged that MINUSTAH troops from Uruguayan were prostituting impoverished underage Haitians at their base. The Uruguayan navy denied the accusations on Aug. 16, saying it had conducted an interrogation of all 108 troops on the base. The Uruguayan contingent is studying the possibility of suing CREDOP for unfounded allegations. (Haiti Press Network 8/11/11; TeleSUR 8/17/11) [MINUSTAH troops from Sri Lanka were repatriated in 2007 because of similar charges; see Update #923.]
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
UNASUR: South American Alliance Confronts Economic Crisis
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6448
Beyond the Drug War: The Pentagon’s Other Operations in Latin America
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/26/beyond-drug-war-pentagon%E2%80%99s-other-operations-latin-america
WikiLeaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, Released July 24 - August 21 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3182-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-released-july-24-august-21-2011-
Demanding Economic and Educational Reform in Chile
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163006/demanding-economic-and-educational-reform-chile
Seeking Social Justice Through Education in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3190-seeking-social-justice-through-education-in-chile
Bolivia: Morales Accuses U.S. Of Inciting Indigenous Protests
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/22/bolivia-morales-accuses-u-s-of-inciting-indigenous-protests/
Bolivia: TIPNIS Marchers Face Accusations and Negotiations
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/26/bolivia-tipnis-marchers-face-accusations-and-negotiations
Bolivia: Morales Clashes with Native Protesters over Road through Tropical Park
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3192-bolivia-morales-clashes-with-native-protesters-over-road-through-tropical-park-
Peru passes "historic" indigenous rights law
http://ww4report.com/node/10260
Native Peruvians More Marginalized Despite Growth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3183-native-peruvians-more-marginalized-despite-growth-
Ecuador: New Oil Policy Threatens Amazonian Peoples
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3185-ecuador-new-oil-policy-threatens-amazonian-peoples
Unions Call for House Committee Investigation of Possible Misuse of U.S. Aid in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3191-unions-call-for-house-committee-investigation-of-possible-misuse-of-us-aid-in-colombia
Colombia: Interview with Eberto Diaz Montes, President of FENSUAGRO (United National Federation of Peasant Farmers and Farm Workers)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3184-colombia-interview-with-eberto-diaz-montes-president-of-fensuagro-united-national-federation-of-peasant-farmers-and-farm-workers
Colombia beefs up security in Amazon oil zone following FARC attacks
http://ww4report.com/node/10268
Chávez Says Venezuela Only Recognizes Gaddafi Gov In Libya
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/24/chavez-says-venezuela-only-recognizes-gaddafi-gov-in-libya/
The Islamo-Bolivarian Threat (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3188-the-islamo-bolivarian-threat
El Salvador: high court refuses to extradite officers accused in Jesuit Massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10258
The Honduran Resistance at the Crossroads: An Interview With Carlos Amaya
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/24/honduran-resistance-crossroads-interview-carlos-amaya
Human Rights Caravan Protests Migrant Kidnappings
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5267
Sandak Workers Defend Their Jobs, Win the Protection of a Legal Strike
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=191#1336
Maquiladora Factories in Mexico Manufacture Toxic Pollutants
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3186-maquiladora-factories-in-mexico-manufacture-toxic-pollutants
Mexico: "terrorists" massacre 50 in blaze at Monterrey's Casino Royale
http://ww4report.com/node/10259
Nowhere to Turn: Sex Trafficking in Nuevo León, Mexico
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/25/nowhere-turn-sex-trafficking-nuevo-le%C3%B3n-mexico
Mexico’s Drug War Refugees Rarely Secure Asylum In United States
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/25/mexicos-drug-war-refugees-rarely-secure-asylum-in-united-states/
Abandoned like a stray dog (Haiti)
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/8/22/january-12-victims-abandoned-like-a-stray-dog.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
WNU #1093: Latin America Reacts to New Economic Crisis
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1093, August 21, 2011
1. Latin America: Markets, Leaders React to New Economic Crisis
2. Honduras: Students Occupy Schools in “Chilean” Protests
3. Honduras: What’s Behind the Latest Aguán Valley Violence?
4. Guatemala: Private Guards Attack Evicted Polochic Campesinos
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: Markets, Leaders React to New Economic Crisis
Fears of a renewed global recession, coupled with concerns about public debt in Europe, forced down Latin American markets on Aug. 18. The most important market in the region, Brazil’s BM&FBOVESPA (Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias & Futuros de São Paulo), fell 3.52 % for the day, while in Argentina the MERVAL index plunged 4.11%. In Mexico City the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) was down 2.36%; the IGBC index in Colombia fell by 3.15% and Chile’s IPSA by 1.89%.
There were reports of “pessimism” among regional leaders. Latin American economies have generally performed better than the European and US economies after the financial crisis of 2008, but there is concern about the region’s transnational companies, the “traslatinas.” “These companies are the ones that depend the most on the global economy, because of the importance of exports,” economist Alexandre Póvoa wrote in the Brazilian economic review Exame.
While in Chile on Aug. 18 as part of a visit that also included Argentina, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos proposed to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (CEPAL) that the group should organize a summit meeting of regional finance ministers and central bank presidents. “How can we Latin Americans, sitting here with more than $700 billion in reserves, act so as not be passive spectators, as if indifferent [to the crisis]?” he asked. On Aug. 20, after his return to Colombia, Santos emphasized the importance of regional integration. “All this requires us as a region to strengthen our relations, so that whatever happens we can be better protected.” (DPA 8/19/11 via Vanguardia (Coahuila, Mexico); EFE 8/20/11 via Que.es (Spain))
Colombia is the US’s closest ally in South America, and Santos’ rightwing government has been pushing hard for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US [see Update #1084]. Until now the leftist or left-leaning governments in South America have been the ones promoting regional integration, while Colombia and Mexico, the other major US ally, have been more focused on trade with the US.
“Mexico would be one of the countries most directly affected” by a renewed recession in the US, due its high level of economic integration with the larger country, the US-based rating agency Moody's Investors Service reported on Aug. 18. The group had predicted a 4% growth rate for Mexico this year and 3.9% for 2012. Although it didn’t expect major changes for the rest of 2011, Moody’s revised its prediction for Mexico next year down to 2.5%. Business leaders confirmed that they were “interested in” although not yet “worried about” the growth rate. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/19/11, 8/20/11) The Mexican economy experienced a 6.1% contraction in 2009 during the earlier world economic crisis [see Update #1088].
*2. Honduras: Students Occupy Schools in “Chilean” Protests
About a thousand Honduran secondary students, along with parents and teachers, protested in and around Tegucigalpa on Aug. 15 against a proposed law that they said would lead to the privatization of much of the school system. In the village of Germania, south of the capital, the protesters blocked cars trying to use a major highway leading to El Salvador and Nicaragua. There was a confrontation with the police at another site, the Avenida de las Fuerzas Armada in the east of the city; agents hurled tear gas grenades and arrested some 20 students, although the students were apparently released later. Police blocked a protest near the presidential palace, where President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa was meeting with teachers’ representatives about the proposed law.
National Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández announced during the day that the bill, the General Law of Education, would be withdrawn and replaced with a new proposal, which he said would be arrived at by consensus. Meanwhile, the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), the main alliance of Honduran social movements, called on its members to join the student demonstrations and denounced the “savage repression” of the movement by the police.
Students have occupied some 150 public schools throughout the country over the past three weeks, and people are starting to compare the protests to the student movement in Chile, which has paralyzed the educational system there for nearly three months [see Update #1092]. According to the students, the new Honduran legislation, intended to replace a 1966 law, would end government support for education after the ninth year or when the student turns 15, forcing students to pay to finish their secondary education. Teachers unions have also opposed the government’s education reform proposals; they went on strike for much of March and April [see Update #1076], although they are apparently now negotiating with President Lobo.
The protests continued on Aug. 19 with a demonstration outside the National Congress. (Adital (Brazil) 8/16/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/16/11 from AFP, DPA; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 8/19/11)
*3. Honduras: What’s Behind the Latest Aguán Valley Violence?
Campesino leader Secundino Ruiz was shot dead as he was leaving a bank in Tocoa in the northern Honduran department of Colón on Aug. 20. Ruiz was president of the San Isidro Cooperative, part of the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), and he had just withdrawn 195,000 lempiras (about $10,260) to pay MARCA workers; because of the money, police attributed the killing to common criminals. Eliseo Pavón, the treasurer of the cooperative, was wounded, according to Julio Espinal, the commander of a police contingent sent to the area earlier in the week. (FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) 8/20/11 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Prensa Latina 8/21/11)
MARCA is one of several campesino groups claiming land in the Lower Aguán Valley, the scene of numerous and sometimes violent conflicts over land ownership. Three members of the organization were killed on June 5 [see Update #1083].
Ruiz’s murder followed an exceptionally bloody week in which 11 other people were killed in the valley. Six died on Aug. 14 at the Paso del Aguán estate (also described as the Panama estate) of Grupo Dinant, a major Honduran food product and cooking oil corporation headed by one of the country’s largest landowners, Miguel Facussé Barjum. Four of the victims were Dinant security personnel, and the other two have been described as campesinos, according to most accounts; one report said five guards were killed and one campesino.
Five more people were killed on Aug. 15, shot with automatic weapons as they rode in a Pepsi distribution company’s pickup truck on the highway between Sinaloa and the city of Sabá. The victims were four of the distributor’s contract employees--Bonifacio Dubón, Elvin Ortiz and Eleuterio Lara, and their supervisor, Karla Vanesa Cacho—and Migdalia Sarmiento, who had gotten a ride with them. Sarmiento ran a refreshment stand near the regional office of the government’s National Agrarian Institute (INA), where she worked as a cleaning person years before. The authorities found no evidence that the victims had been robbed.
Later on Aug. 15 Security Minister Oscar Alvarez announced that the government would respond to the violence by sending 600 soldiers and police agents to the area in an operation codenamed Xatruch II. The new deployment, which Alvarez said would search for the culprits and for illegal weapons, joins some 400 soldiers already in stationed in the region.
There are widely different accounts of what happened in the Aug. 14-15 incidents. Some sources say the Aug. 14 violence started with a peaceful land occupation by campesinos from the Rigores community, which was destroyed by police agents and private guards on June 24. Dinant guards, who are accused in a number of campesino deaths, tried to repel the invaders at Paso de Aguán, according to this account, and soldiers backing up the security group mistakenly shot at the guards. But Agrarian Reform Minister César Ham, leader of the center-left Democratic Unification (UD) party, denied that the Aug. 14 incident involved a land dispute. Other officials suggested guerrillas were involved, without giving any evidence, or pointed to narco-traffickers, who have been active in parts of Central America [see Update #1067]. There was also talk of gangs that have reportedly been robbing produce in the Aguán. Similar confusion surrounds the Aug. 15 attack on the Pepsi distributor’s truck; there have been suggestions that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Aguán campesino groups and other social movements have also given different interpretations of the events, although all seem agreed that the campesinos are not using violence. “Our movement is peaceful, but it’s about the struggle for the recovery of the earth in order to produce, and this is exactly what the Honduran campesinos are doing,” the Honduran branch of Vía Campesina, an international campesino organization, wrote on Aug. 15. (Comunicaciones la Vía Campesina Honduras 8/15/11 via Honduras Laboral; Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP)-Colón 8/15/11 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); La Prensa (San Pedro Sula) 8/16/11; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 8/16/11; Adital (Brazil) 8/17/11; Honduras Weekly 8/17/11; Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) 8/17/11 via Vos el Soberano; Upside Down World 8/19/11)
*4. Guatemala: Private Guards Attack Evicted Polochic Campesinos
A group of men armed with guns wounded seven indigenous campesinos during an hour-long attack Aug. 10 on an encampment in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz. Three campesinos were seriously hurt: Martín Pec Taycon, who was shot in the abdomen; Carlos Ical, with a leg wound; and nine-year-old Elena Tec, with a bullet in her foot. The men also set fire to the campesinos’ homes and possessions. The campesinos identified the attackers as members of the security group of the Ingenio Chabil Utzaj S.A., an agribusiness owned by the Widmann family.
Some 22 campesino families, members of the Q’eqchi’ Maya group, had been living on the edge of Chabil Utzaj’s Paraná estate after they were forcibly expelled in March, along with nearly 600 other families, from land claimed by Chabil Utzaj in Panzós municipality. Some 2,000 police, soldiers and security guards had burned their homes and crops in a violent operation over several days during which one community member, Antonio Beb Ac, was killed. On June 20 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), gave the government of Alvaro Colom' 15 days to guarantee the life and physical integrity of the displaced campesinos, to ensure that they had food and shelter, and to report on investigations into the violence that accompanied the March evictions. As of July 5 the government had done nothing to comply with the order [see Update #1087].
The only response by President Colom’s office to the Aug. 10 attack was a statement condemning the violence and demanding that prosecutors carry out “an in-depth investigation to determine who is responsible…and to prevent armed groups from acting outside the law.” Journalist Marielos Monzón asked in a column for the Guatemalan newpaper Prensa Libre what part of the IACHR order wasn’t clear to the government. Noting that 75% of the country’s best land remain concentrated in the hands of just 1% of the population, Monzón quoted 20th-century Guatemalan historian Severo Martínez Peláez: “The primordial problem of Guatemalan society is the bad distribution of its primary wealth, the earth, which is concentrated in just a few hands.” (EFE 8/10/11 via Terra (Peru); EFE 8/12/11 via Latin American Herald Tribune; Prensa Libre 8/16/11)
Note: the Update will skip next week; the next issue will be dated Sept. 4.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: Fernández de Kirchner Wins First-Ever Open Primary
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/15/argentina-fernandez-de-kirchner-wins-first-ever-open-primary/
Bolivia: A Week At the Barricades
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/19/bolivia-week-barricades
Amazon Pipeline Gets Go-Ahead Amid Reports of ‘Cover-up’ (Peru)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3171-amazon-pipeline-gets-go-ahead-amid-reports-of-cover-up
Peru suspends coca eradication —for now
http://ww4report.com/node/10241
Colombia: Piedad Córdoba Leaves Country Due To Threats
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/19/colombia-piedad-cordoba-leaves-country-due-to-threats/
Colombia Holds National 'Peace Congress' To Find Solution To Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3170-colombia-holds-national-peace-congress-to-find-solution-to-conflict-
Venezuela Holds FARC Extradition After Asylum Request
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/16/venezuela-holds-farc-extradition-after-asylum-request/
Venezuela “Bringing Home” Gold Reserves, Plans to Nationalize All Gold Mining
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6433
Salvadoran ex-high commanders arrested in 1989 Jesuit massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10231
Honduras: Campesinos Murdered as Honduran-Canadian Trade Agreement Moves Forward
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3173-honduras-campesinos-murdered-as-honduran-canadian-trade-agreement-signed
March Against Drug War Rejects “National Security Law”, Calls for “Citizen Security” (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5253
Asymmetric Warfare in Mexico?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/16/asymmetric-warfare-mexico-0
Electrical Workers Occupy Zócalo as Leaders Are Charged (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=190#1325
Solidarity Alliance Between the United Steelworkers and the Mexican Mine and Metalworkers Unions (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=190#1327
Brazilian Defense Minister Amorim Supports Withdrawal of Troops from Haiti – But When?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/defense-minister-amorim-supports-withdrawal-of-troops-from-haiti-but-when
Not Doing Enough: Unnecessary Sickness and Death from Cholera in Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/not-doing-enough-unnecessary-sickness-and-death-from-cholera-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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 #1093, August 21, 2011
1. Latin America: Markets, Leaders React to New Economic Crisis
2. Honduras: Students Occupy Schools in “Chilean” Protests
3. Honduras: What’s Behind the Latest Aguán Valley Violence?
4. Guatemala: Private Guards Attack Evicted Polochic Campesinos
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: Markets, Leaders React to New Economic Crisis
Fears of a renewed global recession, coupled with concerns about public debt in Europe, forced down Latin American markets on Aug. 18. The most important market in the region, Brazil’s BM&FBOVESPA (Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias & Futuros de São Paulo), fell 3.52 % for the day, while in Argentina the MERVAL index plunged 4.11%. In Mexico City the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) was down 2.36%; the IGBC index in Colombia fell by 3.15% and Chile’s IPSA by 1.89%.
There were reports of “pessimism” among regional leaders. Latin American economies have generally performed better than the European and US economies after the financial crisis of 2008, but there is concern about the region’s transnational companies, the “traslatinas.” “These companies are the ones that depend the most on the global economy, because of the importance of exports,” economist Alexandre Póvoa wrote in the Brazilian economic review Exame.
While in Chile on Aug. 18 as part of a visit that also included Argentina, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos proposed to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (CEPAL) that the group should organize a summit meeting of regional finance ministers and central bank presidents. “How can we Latin Americans, sitting here with more than $700 billion in reserves, act so as not be passive spectators, as if indifferent [to the crisis]?” he asked. On Aug. 20, after his return to Colombia, Santos emphasized the importance of regional integration. “All this requires us as a region to strengthen our relations, so that whatever happens we can be better protected.” (DPA 8/19/11 via Vanguardia (Coahuila, Mexico); EFE 8/20/11 via Que.es (Spain))
Colombia is the US’s closest ally in South America, and Santos’ rightwing government has been pushing hard for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US [see Update #1084]. Until now the leftist or left-leaning governments in South America have been the ones promoting regional integration, while Colombia and Mexico, the other major US ally, have been more focused on trade with the US.
“Mexico would be one of the countries most directly affected” by a renewed recession in the US, due its high level of economic integration with the larger country, the US-based rating agency Moody's Investors Service reported on Aug. 18. The group had predicted a 4% growth rate for Mexico this year and 3.9% for 2012. Although it didn’t expect major changes for the rest of 2011, Moody’s revised its prediction for Mexico next year down to 2.5%. Business leaders confirmed that they were “interested in” although not yet “worried about” the growth rate. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/19/11, 8/20/11) The Mexican economy experienced a 6.1% contraction in 2009 during the earlier world economic crisis [see Update #1088].
*2. Honduras: Students Occupy Schools in “Chilean” Protests
About a thousand Honduran secondary students, along with parents and teachers, protested in and around Tegucigalpa on Aug. 15 against a proposed law that they said would lead to the privatization of much of the school system. In the village of Germania, south of the capital, the protesters blocked cars trying to use a major highway leading to El Salvador and Nicaragua. There was a confrontation with the police at another site, the Avenida de las Fuerzas Armada in the east of the city; agents hurled tear gas grenades and arrested some 20 students, although the students were apparently released later. Police blocked a protest near the presidential palace, where President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa was meeting with teachers’ representatives about the proposed law.
National Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández announced during the day that the bill, the General Law of Education, would be withdrawn and replaced with a new proposal, which he said would be arrived at by consensus. Meanwhile, the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), the main alliance of Honduran social movements, called on its members to join the student demonstrations and denounced the “savage repression” of the movement by the police.
Students have occupied some 150 public schools throughout the country over the past three weeks, and people are starting to compare the protests to the student movement in Chile, which has paralyzed the educational system there for nearly three months [see Update #1092]. According to the students, the new Honduran legislation, intended to replace a 1966 law, would end government support for education after the ninth year or when the student turns 15, forcing students to pay to finish their secondary education. Teachers unions have also opposed the government’s education reform proposals; they went on strike for much of March and April [see Update #1076], although they are apparently now negotiating with President Lobo.
The protests continued on Aug. 19 with a demonstration outside the National Congress. (Adital (Brazil) 8/16/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/16/11 from AFP, DPA; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 8/19/11)
*3. Honduras: What’s Behind the Latest Aguán Valley Violence?
Campesino leader Secundino Ruiz was shot dead as he was leaving a bank in Tocoa in the northern Honduran department of Colón on Aug. 20. Ruiz was president of the San Isidro Cooperative, part of the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), and he had just withdrawn 195,000 lempiras (about $10,260) to pay MARCA workers; because of the money, police attributed the killing to common criminals. Eliseo Pavón, the treasurer of the cooperative, was wounded, according to Julio Espinal, the commander of a police contingent sent to the area earlier in the week. (FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) 8/20/11 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); Prensa Latina 8/21/11)
MARCA is one of several campesino groups claiming land in the Lower Aguán Valley, the scene of numerous and sometimes violent conflicts over land ownership. Three members of the organization were killed on June 5 [see Update #1083].
Ruiz’s murder followed an exceptionally bloody week in which 11 other people were killed in the valley. Six died on Aug. 14 at the Paso del Aguán estate (also described as the Panama estate) of Grupo Dinant, a major Honduran food product and cooking oil corporation headed by one of the country’s largest landowners, Miguel Facussé Barjum. Four of the victims were Dinant security personnel, and the other two have been described as campesinos, according to most accounts; one report said five guards were killed and one campesino.
Five more people were killed on Aug. 15, shot with automatic weapons as they rode in a Pepsi distribution company’s pickup truck on the highway between Sinaloa and the city of Sabá. The victims were four of the distributor’s contract employees--Bonifacio Dubón, Elvin Ortiz and Eleuterio Lara, and their supervisor, Karla Vanesa Cacho—and Migdalia Sarmiento, who had gotten a ride with them. Sarmiento ran a refreshment stand near the regional office of the government’s National Agrarian Institute (INA), where she worked as a cleaning person years before. The authorities found no evidence that the victims had been robbed.
Later on Aug. 15 Security Minister Oscar Alvarez announced that the government would respond to the violence by sending 600 soldiers and police agents to the area in an operation codenamed Xatruch II. The new deployment, which Alvarez said would search for the culprits and for illegal weapons, joins some 400 soldiers already in stationed in the region.
There are widely different accounts of what happened in the Aug. 14-15 incidents. Some sources say the Aug. 14 violence started with a peaceful land occupation by campesinos from the Rigores community, which was destroyed by police agents and private guards on June 24. Dinant guards, who are accused in a number of campesino deaths, tried to repel the invaders at Paso de Aguán, according to this account, and soldiers backing up the security group mistakenly shot at the guards. But Agrarian Reform Minister César Ham, leader of the center-left Democratic Unification (UD) party, denied that the Aug. 14 incident involved a land dispute. Other officials suggested guerrillas were involved, without giving any evidence, or pointed to narco-traffickers, who have been active in parts of Central America [see Update #1067]. There was also talk of gangs that have reportedly been robbing produce in the Aguán. Similar confusion surrounds the Aug. 15 attack on the Pepsi distributor’s truck; there have been suggestions that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Aguán campesino groups and other social movements have also given different interpretations of the events, although all seem agreed that the campesinos are not using violence. “Our movement is peaceful, but it’s about the struggle for the recovery of the earth in order to produce, and this is exactly what the Honduran campesinos are doing,” the Honduran branch of Vía Campesina, an international campesino organization, wrote on Aug. 15. (Comunicaciones la Vía Campesina Honduras 8/15/11 via Honduras Laboral; Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP)-Colón 8/15/11 via Vos el Soberano (Honduras); La Prensa (San Pedro Sula) 8/16/11; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 8/16/11; Adital (Brazil) 8/17/11; Honduras Weekly 8/17/11; Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) 8/17/11 via Vos el Soberano; Upside Down World 8/19/11)
*4. Guatemala: Private Guards Attack Evicted Polochic Campesinos
A group of men armed with guns wounded seven indigenous campesinos during an hour-long attack Aug. 10 on an encampment in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz. Three campesinos were seriously hurt: Martín Pec Taycon, who was shot in the abdomen; Carlos Ical, with a leg wound; and nine-year-old Elena Tec, with a bullet in her foot. The men also set fire to the campesinos’ homes and possessions. The campesinos identified the attackers as members of the security group of the Ingenio Chabil Utzaj S.A., an agribusiness owned by the Widmann family.
Some 22 campesino families, members of the Q’eqchi’ Maya group, had been living on the edge of Chabil Utzaj’s Paraná estate after they were forcibly expelled in March, along with nearly 600 other families, from land claimed by Chabil Utzaj in Panzós municipality. Some 2,000 police, soldiers and security guards had burned their homes and crops in a violent operation over several days during which one community member, Antonio Beb Ac, was killed. On June 20 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), gave the government of Alvaro Colom' 15 days to guarantee the life and physical integrity of the displaced campesinos, to ensure that they had food and shelter, and to report on investigations into the violence that accompanied the March evictions. As of July 5 the government had done nothing to comply with the order [see Update #1087].
The only response by President Colom’s office to the Aug. 10 attack was a statement condemning the violence and demanding that prosecutors carry out “an in-depth investigation to determine who is responsible…and to prevent armed groups from acting outside the law.” Journalist Marielos Monzón asked in a column for the Guatemalan newpaper Prensa Libre what part of the IACHR order wasn’t clear to the government. Noting that 75% of the country’s best land remain concentrated in the hands of just 1% of the population, Monzón quoted 20th-century Guatemalan historian Severo Martínez Peláez: “The primordial problem of Guatemalan society is the bad distribution of its primary wealth, the earth, which is concentrated in just a few hands.” (EFE 8/10/11 via Terra (Peru); EFE 8/12/11 via Latin American Herald Tribune; Prensa Libre 8/16/11)
Note: the Update will skip next week; the next issue will be dated Sept. 4.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: Fernández de Kirchner Wins First-Ever Open Primary
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/15/argentina-fernandez-de-kirchner-wins-first-ever-open-primary/
Bolivia: A Week At the Barricades
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/19/bolivia-week-barricades
Amazon Pipeline Gets Go-Ahead Amid Reports of ‘Cover-up’ (Peru)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3171-amazon-pipeline-gets-go-ahead-amid-reports-of-cover-up
Peru suspends coca eradication —for now
http://ww4report.com/node/10241
Colombia: Piedad Córdoba Leaves Country Due To Threats
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/19/colombia-piedad-cordoba-leaves-country-due-to-threats/
Colombia Holds National 'Peace Congress' To Find Solution To Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3170-colombia-holds-national-peace-congress-to-find-solution-to-conflict-
Venezuela Holds FARC Extradition After Asylum Request
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/16/venezuela-holds-farc-extradition-after-asylum-request/
Venezuela “Bringing Home” Gold Reserves, Plans to Nationalize All Gold Mining
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6433
Salvadoran ex-high commanders arrested in 1989 Jesuit massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10231
Honduras: Campesinos Murdered as Honduran-Canadian Trade Agreement Moves Forward
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3173-honduras-campesinos-murdered-as-honduran-canadian-trade-agreement-signed
March Against Drug War Rejects “National Security Law”, Calls for “Citizen Security” (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5253
Asymmetric Warfare in Mexico?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/16/asymmetric-warfare-mexico-0
Electrical Workers Occupy Zócalo as Leaders Are Charged (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=190#1325
Solidarity Alliance Between the United Steelworkers and the Mexican Mine and Metalworkers Unions (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=190#1327
Brazilian Defense Minister Amorim Supports Withdrawal of Troops from Haiti – But When?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/defense-minister-amorim-supports-withdrawal-of-troops-from-haiti-but-when
Not Doing Enough: Unnecessary Sickness and Death from Cholera in Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/not-doing-enough-unnecessary-sickness-and-death-from-cholera-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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, 16 August 2011
WNU #1092: Chilean Students Plan More Protests
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1092, August 14, 2011
1. Chile: Students Lay Out Plans for More Protests
2. Mexico: Anger Mounts as US Steps Up “Drug War” Role
3. Haiti: Are Authorities About to Evict More Quake Victims?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Chile: Students Lay Out Plans for More Protests
After a six-hour meeting on Aug. 13 at the University of Concepción in Chile’s central Biobío region, leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) announced their rejection of a government proposal for talks to resolve more than two months of militant protests for reform of the educational system [see Update #1091]. Instead, CONFECH leaders said they would push ahead with a series of actions they had announced the day before: a nationwide one-day school strike on Aug. 18; participation in a 48-hour general strike on Aug. 24 and 25 called by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the main Chilean labor federation; and continued pressure on the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera at least until Sept. 11, the anniversary of the bloody coup that started the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Camila Vallejo, president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH), denied rumors that there were splits in the movement. “It’s been ratified by many organizations, not just in universities but also in secondary schools, that the mobilizations will go on,” she said.
The students refused to participate in a proposed three-way dialogue—to include the government and members of the National Congress—because they felt the administration hadn’t given specific answers to their proposals. The protest movement has been calling for a reversal of policies passed at the end of the Pinochet era that drastically decentralized and privatized the public educational system. The students have proposed a national plebiscite on the issue.
On Aug. 11 President Piñera signed the Education Quality Assurance Law, a package of reforms that had been developed over several administrations. The new law establishes an agency to oversee the quality of the educational system, allows more scholarships for poor students and refinancing for the overdue debts of some 110,000 students, and lowers interest rates on student loans from 5.3% to 4%. But Piñera rejected any major overhaul, especially the students’ demand for a return to free public higher education. “Nothing is free in this life,” he said, “since in the end everything is implemented through taxes, paid by society as a whole… [S]omeone has to pay.” (Radio Universidad de Chile 8/13/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/12/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services, 8/13/11 from correspondent )
The push for education reform has produced the most powerful mass movement in Chile since the restoration of democracy in 1990. The students showed their strength again on Aug. 9 in a nationwide strike, with demonstrations in Santiago and many other localities, including Valparaíso, Concepción, Puerto Montt, Arica, Iquique, Calama, Antofagasta, Copiapó, La Serena, Talca, Coyhaique and Easter Island. This was the movement’s fifth major action since the beginning of June. Police estimated that 70,000 protesters turned out in Santiago, while the organizers claimed 150,000 participants, with some 40,000 more in other cities. By the organizers’ count, this protest was only surpassed by a march of as many as 200,000 people on June 30, easily Chile’s largest demonstration in the last two decades [see Update #1084].
In contrast to a much smaller march on Aug. 4, the Aug. 9 march in Santiago was authorized by the government and it remained peaceful until near the end, when dozens of masked youths attacked cars and buildings. Similar disturbances broke out in Valparaíso. Students charged that the rioters were police agents in civilian clothes, and they produced some evidence: protesters had discovered a plainclothes agent in the march in Valparaíso. The commander of the carabineros (militarized police) who guard the National Congress, Hernán Silva, admitted that the man was a police agent.
Just as they had done after the Aug. 4 march, in the evening of Aug. 9 people in Santiago neighborhoods beat on pots and pans—a type of protest called a cacerolazo in Spanish—to express support for the students. (La Tercera (Santiago) 8/9/11; EFE 8/9/11 via Terra.es (Spain); LJ 8/10/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)
Some 5,000 Argentine students marched on Aug. 9 to support the actions in Chile; there were also reports of support demonstrations in Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. (Adital (Brazil) 8/11/11)
*2. Mexico: Anger Mounts as US Steps Up “Drug War” Role
US agents have been posted in recent weeks at a Mexican military base to carry out intelligence and planning work with Mexican officials against drug cartels, according to an Aug. 7 article by New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson. The team includes “fewer than two dozen” agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials and “retired military personnel members from the Pentagon's Northern Command,” Thompson wrote. They are working at a “compound modeled after ‘fusion intelligence centers’ that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups.” The US is also “considering plans to deploy private security contractors” in a counter-narcotics unit of the Mexican police, according to the article.
“[T]he new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil,” Thompson noted. The posting of the US personnel at the military base follows three years of increased US assistance to Mexico’s fight against drug traffickers under the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative [see Update #952]. Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began militarizing the “drug war” soon after taking office in December 2006; since then more than 40,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence. (NYT 8/7/11)
Various Mexican sources consulted by the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada confirmed much of the Times story. Federal legislators told the paper that the posting of the US agents was agreed to in a letter of understanding Calderón signed with US president Barack Obama in March 2010. Sources in the Senate said the Mexican agency in charge of the “fusion intelligence center” is the Center for Investigations and National Security (CISEN), Mexico’s main intelligence organization. Other sources indicated that even without the latest insertion of US agents, the US government already had a major presence in Mexico, with about 400 agents in the country and a “great number of informants and functionaries that they have also coopted in places like Ciudad Juárez, Acapulco, Culiacán and Mazatlán, Tijuana, Manzanillo and Monterrey.”
Resentment has been growing both about Calderón’s “war on drugs” and US involvement in it. So far this year there have been revelations that the US is flying drones over Mexican airspace for the surveillance of suspected drug traffickers; that a bungled US program called Operation Fast and Furious allowed some 2,000 firearms to enter Mexico illegally from the US; and that some of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels were originally supplied by the US to rightwing Central American militaries in the 1980s and 1990s [see Updates #1072, 1078]. Mexican senators said they planned to question Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano and Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora about Calderón’s agreement with Obama during scheduled hearings the week of Aug. 15.
“It’s an agreement of subordination,” said Ricardo Monreal, a senator from Zacatecas state for the small leftist Workers Party (PT), “which tries to mock the Constitution by passing off as simple police agents these former US soldiers, who aren’t coming here to collaborate but to put themselves in charge of the war against narco-trafficking--given Calderón’s inability to stand up to organized crime.” (LJ 8/11/11, ___ , 8/12/11)
*3. Haiti: Are Authorities About to Evict More Quake Victims?
Students from the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti (UEH) set up barricades at the nearby Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince’s main park, early in August to protest what they said was an increase in crime in the area. The protests started after an ethnology student, Philibert Sergo, was killed in a robbery in July. According to police inspector Dupont Joseph, 23 armed robberies were reported in the zone in June and July, although he said the number was declining.
The Champ de Mars, which faces the ruins of the National Palace, became a vast tent city within hours of a massive January 2010 earthquake as Port-au-Prince residents fled their damaged homes. Thousands of people continue to live there in improvised shelters 19 months after the disaster, providing an easy target for robbers and rapists. Residents say the National Police of Haiti (PNH) has proven incapable of taking on the criminals, while some accuse the police agents of actually being in league with them. The justice system simply releases most suspects after they are arrested, according to the victims, who say they are scared to report crimes to the police, since they fear reprisals once the suspects are free.
The students, who have reportedly burned tires and thrown rocks at patrol cars, called for the government to restore peace to the area by moving the camp residents to decent housing in suitable locations. They stressed that they opposed the sort of forced relocations that have occurred at other encampments [see Update #1081]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/12/11; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/12/11)
On Aug. 10 Port-au-Prince mayor Muscadin Jean Yves Jason announced his intention to relocate some 20,000 people from the park, if the national government approves the plan. Apparently this would be part of what President Michel Martelly has called a “special program” for “six priority camps” to “allow 30,000 people to return to their original neighborhoods and to live in decent housing and urbanized neighborhoods.” But Patrick Rouzier, a housing and reconstruction consultant with the national government, told the online Haitian newspaper Haïti Libre that Mayor Jason wants to move the families to “Morne Cabrit,” a mountain north of the capital. He said the national government has reservations about the plan. (HL 8/13/11 (French, English))
Apparently Rouzier was referring to Morne à Cabrits (“Goat Mountain”), a small mountain in the dry, sparsely inhabited range north of Port-au-Prince; it is about 25 miles from the city. In June Mayor Jason proposed a $76 million construction project for the area. (Le Matin (Haiti) 6/19/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
Latin American Stocks Plummet Amid Fears of U.S. & European Woes
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/09/latin-american-stocks-plummet-amid-fears-of-u-s-european-woes/
Protests Demand Deeper Reforms of Unequal Education System in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3158-protests-demand-deeper-reforms-of-unequal-education-system-in-chile
Persecution of Paraguay Indians Exposed to UN
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3161-persecution-of-paraguay-indians-exposed-to-un-
Brazil: narco-massacre of "uncontacted" Amazon tribe?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10216
Bolivia: arrest of "big fish" in Santa Cruz cocaine mafia leaves trail of intrigue
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10220
Bolivia signs lithium exploration deal with China
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10221
Bolivia: Indigenous Groups to March Against TIPNIS Highway
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/12/bolivia-indigenous-groups-march-against-tipnis-highway
Bolivia: Amazon Road Plan Has Native People on the March Again
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3165-bolivia-amazon-road-plan-has-native-people-on-the-march-again-
Bolivia: indigenous mobilize against trans-oceanic highway
http://ww4report.com/node/10222
Five Years Demanding Justice for the Murder of My Father (Colombia)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10220
The Showdown Between the Judiciary and the Santos Government
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/8/showdown-between-judiciary-and-santos-government
The Andean Connection: Tracking the Drug War’s Coca Leaves and Failed Policies (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3157-the-andean-connection-tracking-the-drug-wars-coca-leaves-and-failed-policies-
Expert Witnesses Receive Death Threats after Guatemala Massacre Trial
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3168-expert-witnesses-receive-death-threats-after-guatemala-massacre-trial
Guatemala: Food Crisis in the Polochic Exacerbates as Government Repression Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3162-food-crisis-in-the-polochic-exacerbates-as-government-repression-continues
Guatemala Labor Case: US Steps Up Pressure
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11826/guatemala_labor_case/
Prospecting the Terrain of Struggle in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3163-prospecting-the-terrain-of-struggle-in-guatemala
Mexico: drug lord arrested in 900 murders trained with Guatemala's Kaibiles
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10218
Mexico rights body alleges regular police misconduct
http://ww4report.com/node/10218#comment-326664
Sinaloa Cartel kingpin charges DEA gave him "carte blanche"
http://ww4report.com/node/10223
Violence Increases Against Migrants and Their Advocates in Mexico
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/10/violence-increases-against-migrants-and-their-advocates-mexico
Photo Essay: Migrants Search for Justice in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3167-photo-essay-migrant-search-for-justice-in-mexico
A Successful Failure (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/10/successful-failure
Stemming the Arms Flow: Will Obama Face Down the NRA? (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/9/stemming-arms-flow-will-obama-face-down-nra-0
Hip-Hop: Straight Outta Havana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3166-hip-hip-straight-outta-havana
MINUSTAH: Mission (Almost) Accomplished? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/minustah-mission-almost-accomplished
The Delusion of Power (US “Drug War”)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5245
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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 #1092, August 14, 2011
1. Chile: Students Lay Out Plans for More Protests
2. Mexico: Anger Mounts as US Steps Up “Drug War” Role
3. Haiti: Are Authorities About to Evict More Quake Victims?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Chile: Students Lay Out Plans for More Protests
After a six-hour meeting on Aug. 13 at the University of Concepción in Chile’s central Biobío region, leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) announced their rejection of a government proposal for talks to resolve more than two months of militant protests for reform of the educational system [see Update #1091]. Instead, CONFECH leaders said they would push ahead with a series of actions they had announced the day before: a nationwide one-day school strike on Aug. 18; participation in a 48-hour general strike on Aug. 24 and 25 called by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the main Chilean labor federation; and continued pressure on the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera at least until Sept. 11, the anniversary of the bloody coup that started the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Camila Vallejo, president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH), denied rumors that there were splits in the movement. “It’s been ratified by many organizations, not just in universities but also in secondary schools, that the mobilizations will go on,” she said.
The students refused to participate in a proposed three-way dialogue—to include the government and members of the National Congress—because they felt the administration hadn’t given specific answers to their proposals. The protest movement has been calling for a reversal of policies passed at the end of the Pinochet era that drastically decentralized and privatized the public educational system. The students have proposed a national plebiscite on the issue.
On Aug. 11 President Piñera signed the Education Quality Assurance Law, a package of reforms that had been developed over several administrations. The new law establishes an agency to oversee the quality of the educational system, allows more scholarships for poor students and refinancing for the overdue debts of some 110,000 students, and lowers interest rates on student loans from 5.3% to 4%. But Piñera rejected any major overhaul, especially the students’ demand for a return to free public higher education. “Nothing is free in this life,” he said, “since in the end everything is implemented through taxes, paid by society as a whole… [S]omeone has to pay.” (Radio Universidad de Chile 8/13/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/12/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services, 8/13/11 from correspondent )
The push for education reform has produced the most powerful mass movement in Chile since the restoration of democracy in 1990. The students showed their strength again on Aug. 9 in a nationwide strike, with demonstrations in Santiago and many other localities, including Valparaíso, Concepción, Puerto Montt, Arica, Iquique, Calama, Antofagasta, Copiapó, La Serena, Talca, Coyhaique and Easter Island. This was the movement’s fifth major action since the beginning of June. Police estimated that 70,000 protesters turned out in Santiago, while the organizers claimed 150,000 participants, with some 40,000 more in other cities. By the organizers’ count, this protest was only surpassed by a march of as many as 200,000 people on June 30, easily Chile’s largest demonstration in the last two decades [see Update #1084].
In contrast to a much smaller march on Aug. 4, the Aug. 9 march in Santiago was authorized by the government and it remained peaceful until near the end, when dozens of masked youths attacked cars and buildings. Similar disturbances broke out in Valparaíso. Students charged that the rioters were police agents in civilian clothes, and they produced some evidence: protesters had discovered a plainclothes agent in the march in Valparaíso. The commander of the carabineros (militarized police) who guard the National Congress, Hernán Silva, admitted that the man was a police agent.
Just as they had done after the Aug. 4 march, in the evening of Aug. 9 people in Santiago neighborhoods beat on pots and pans—a type of protest called a cacerolazo in Spanish—to express support for the students. (La Tercera (Santiago) 8/9/11; EFE 8/9/11 via Terra.es (Spain); LJ 8/10/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)
Some 5,000 Argentine students marched on Aug. 9 to support the actions in Chile; there were also reports of support demonstrations in Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. (Adital (Brazil) 8/11/11)
*2. Mexico: Anger Mounts as US Steps Up “Drug War” Role
US agents have been posted in recent weeks at a Mexican military base to carry out intelligence and planning work with Mexican officials against drug cartels, according to an Aug. 7 article by New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson. The team includes “fewer than two dozen” agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials and “retired military personnel members from the Pentagon's Northern Command,” Thompson wrote. They are working at a “compound modeled after ‘fusion intelligence centers’ that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups.” The US is also “considering plans to deploy private security contractors” in a counter-narcotics unit of the Mexican police, according to the article.
“[T]he new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil,” Thompson noted. The posting of the US personnel at the military base follows three years of increased US assistance to Mexico’s fight against drug traffickers under the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative [see Update #952]. Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began militarizing the “drug war” soon after taking office in December 2006; since then more than 40,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence. (NYT 8/7/11)
Various Mexican sources consulted by the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada confirmed much of the Times story. Federal legislators told the paper that the posting of the US agents was agreed to in a letter of understanding Calderón signed with US president Barack Obama in March 2010. Sources in the Senate said the Mexican agency in charge of the “fusion intelligence center” is the Center for Investigations and National Security (CISEN), Mexico’s main intelligence organization. Other sources indicated that even without the latest insertion of US agents, the US government already had a major presence in Mexico, with about 400 agents in the country and a “great number of informants and functionaries that they have also coopted in places like Ciudad Juárez, Acapulco, Culiacán and Mazatlán, Tijuana, Manzanillo and Monterrey.”
Resentment has been growing both about Calderón’s “war on drugs” and US involvement in it. So far this year there have been revelations that the US is flying drones over Mexican airspace for the surveillance of suspected drug traffickers; that a bungled US program called Operation Fast and Furious allowed some 2,000 firearms to enter Mexico illegally from the US; and that some of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels were originally supplied by the US to rightwing Central American militaries in the 1980s and 1990s [see Updates #1072, 1078]. Mexican senators said they planned to question Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano and Governance Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora about Calderón’s agreement with Obama during scheduled hearings the week of Aug. 15.
“It’s an agreement of subordination,” said Ricardo Monreal, a senator from Zacatecas state for the small leftist Workers Party (PT), “which tries to mock the Constitution by passing off as simple police agents these former US soldiers, who aren’t coming here to collaborate but to put themselves in charge of the war against narco-trafficking--given Calderón’s inability to stand up to organized crime.” (LJ 8/11/11, ___ , 8/12/11)
*3. Haiti: Are Authorities About to Evict More Quake Victims?
Students from the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti (UEH) set up barricades at the nearby Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince’s main park, early in August to protest what they said was an increase in crime in the area. The protests started after an ethnology student, Philibert Sergo, was killed in a robbery in July. According to police inspector Dupont Joseph, 23 armed robberies were reported in the zone in June and July, although he said the number was declining.
The Champ de Mars, which faces the ruins of the National Palace, became a vast tent city within hours of a massive January 2010 earthquake as Port-au-Prince residents fled their damaged homes. Thousands of people continue to live there in improvised shelters 19 months after the disaster, providing an easy target for robbers and rapists. Residents say the National Police of Haiti (PNH) has proven incapable of taking on the criminals, while some accuse the police agents of actually being in league with them. The justice system simply releases most suspects after they are arrested, according to the victims, who say they are scared to report crimes to the police, since they fear reprisals once the suspects are free.
The students, who have reportedly burned tires and thrown rocks at patrol cars, called for the government to restore peace to the area by moving the camp residents to decent housing in suitable locations. They stressed that they opposed the sort of forced relocations that have occurred at other encampments [see Update #1081]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/12/11; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 8/12/11)
On Aug. 10 Port-au-Prince mayor Muscadin Jean Yves Jason announced his intention to relocate some 20,000 people from the park, if the national government approves the plan. Apparently this would be part of what President Michel Martelly has called a “special program” for “six priority camps” to “allow 30,000 people to return to their original neighborhoods and to live in decent housing and urbanized neighborhoods.” But Patrick Rouzier, a housing and reconstruction consultant with the national government, told the online Haitian newspaper Haïti Libre that Mayor Jason wants to move the families to “Morne Cabrit,” a mountain north of the capital. He said the national government has reservations about the plan. (HL 8/13/11 (French, English))
Apparently Rouzier was referring to Morne à Cabrits (“Goat Mountain”), a small mountain in the dry, sparsely inhabited range north of Port-au-Prince; it is about 25 miles from the city. In June Mayor Jason proposed a $76 million construction project for the area. (Le Matin (Haiti) 6/19/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
Latin American Stocks Plummet Amid Fears of U.S. & European Woes
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/09/latin-american-stocks-plummet-amid-fears-of-u-s-european-woes/
Protests Demand Deeper Reforms of Unequal Education System in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3158-protests-demand-deeper-reforms-of-unequal-education-system-in-chile
Persecution of Paraguay Indians Exposed to UN
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3161-persecution-of-paraguay-indians-exposed-to-un-
Brazil: narco-massacre of "uncontacted" Amazon tribe?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10216
Bolivia: arrest of "big fish" in Santa Cruz cocaine mafia leaves trail of intrigue
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10220
Bolivia signs lithium exploration deal with China
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10221
Bolivia: Indigenous Groups to March Against TIPNIS Highway
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/12/bolivia-indigenous-groups-march-against-tipnis-highway
Bolivia: Amazon Road Plan Has Native People on the March Again
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3165-bolivia-amazon-road-plan-has-native-people-on-the-march-again-
Bolivia: indigenous mobilize against trans-oceanic highway
http://ww4report.com/node/10222
Five Years Demanding Justice for the Murder of My Father (Colombia)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10220
The Showdown Between the Judiciary and the Santos Government
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/8/showdown-between-judiciary-and-santos-government
The Andean Connection: Tracking the Drug War’s Coca Leaves and Failed Policies (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3157-the-andean-connection-tracking-the-drug-wars-coca-leaves-and-failed-policies-
Expert Witnesses Receive Death Threats after Guatemala Massacre Trial
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3168-expert-witnesses-receive-death-threats-after-guatemala-massacre-trial
Guatemala: Food Crisis in the Polochic Exacerbates as Government Repression Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3162-food-crisis-in-the-polochic-exacerbates-as-government-repression-continues
Guatemala Labor Case: US Steps Up Pressure
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11826/guatemala_labor_case/
Prospecting the Terrain of Struggle in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3163-prospecting-the-terrain-of-struggle-in-guatemala
Mexico: drug lord arrested in 900 murders trained with Guatemala's Kaibiles
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10218
Mexico rights body alleges regular police misconduct
http://ww4report.com/node/10218#comment-326664
Sinaloa Cartel kingpin charges DEA gave him "carte blanche"
http://ww4report.com/node/10223
Violence Increases Against Migrants and Their Advocates in Mexico
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/10/violence-increases-against-migrants-and-their-advocates-mexico
Photo Essay: Migrants Search for Justice in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3167-photo-essay-migrant-search-for-justice-in-mexico
A Successful Failure (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/10/successful-failure
Stemming the Arms Flow: Will Obama Face Down the NRA? (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/9/stemming-arms-flow-will-obama-face-down-nra-0
Hip-Hop: Straight Outta Havana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3166-hip-hip-straight-outta-havana
MINUSTAH: Mission (Almost) Accomplished? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/minustah-mission-almost-accomplished
The Delusion of Power (US “Drug War”)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5245
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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, 9 August 2011
WNU #1091: More Housing Occupations and Evictions in Argentina
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1091, August 7, 2011
1. Argentina: Housing Occupations and Evictions Continue
2. Chile: 874 Arrested in Latest Student Protest
3. Chile: Will Workers “Think Twice” After Copper Mine Strike?
4. Honduras: Israel Pressures Lobo on Palestine UN Vote
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic
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. Argentina: Housing Occupations and Evictions Continue
Provincial police forcibly removed some 200 families on Aug. 5 from land they had occupied a month earlier in Villa 9 de Julio in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán. Acting on a court order from Judge Nora Wrexler, the agents destroyed homes that the 500 squatters had improvised out of canvas, cardboard and sheet metal when they moved in from different neighborhoods in the north of the nearby provincial capital, San Miguel de Tucumán.
In a confrontation that lasted about an hour, police, some of them on horseback, used nightsticks, tear gas and rubber bullets on the residents, who hurled rocks, bottles and clubs at the agents. No serious injuries were reported, but the police said five agents were hurt, and photographs showed protesters with bloodied heads. There were five arrests. According to a witness, the police chased after squatters who resisted; agents even invaded and damaged the homes of neighbors in the area who had given the protesters refuge.
The eviction in Tucumán came just eight days after a similar action in another northwestern province, Jujuy, left three protesters and one police agent dead on July 28 [see Update #1090]. An unidentified official told the Buenos Aires daily Clarín the Tucumán government was relieved that there were no serious injuries, but he rejected any comparison with the situation in Jujuy, where there is a severe housing shortage. “Here the government has built 20,000 houses and created 35,000 housing solutions,” the Tucumán official said. But Gustavo Usandivaras, a housing official in Tucumán, admitted to the local daily El Siglo that the government is dealing with three land occupations in Tucumán and that the squatters “resort to this precisely in the face of the absence of solutions.” (AFP 8/5/11 via Terra.com (Colombia); Clarín 8/6/11)
The violent eviction in Jujuy brought strong protests, including a march from the Congress to the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on Aug. 2. The provincial legislature reacted on Aug. 4 by approving the expropriation of 40 hectares of land from the Ledesma S.A. corporation, which produces sugar and paper, for the construction of homes for some 3,000 people who need housing in the city of Libertador General San Martín, where the eviction took place. The company owns the land the squatters had seized, and critics say its holdings include 157,556 hectares of land, of which it only uses 38,000 hectares.
Also on Aug. 4, Gov. Walter Barrionuevo announced that the hundreds of families now squatting in private property in the area—including the families of police agents—had to leave within 24 hours. But most were refusing to move as of the afternoon of Aug. 5. (Adital (Brazil) 8/2/11; AFP 8/5/11 via Terra.com (Colombia); Clarín 8/6/11)
*2. Chile: 874 Arrested in Latest Student Protest
Aug. 4 brought the most violent day yet in more than two months of protests by Chilean students determined to end a system of heavily privatized and decentralized education instituted during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet [see Update #1088]. According to official figures, there were 874 arrests nationwide by the end of the day, and 90 militarized police agents had been injured.
The government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera virtually assured the violence when it refused to issue permits for planned student marches in Santiago on Aug. 4, using a decree from the Pinochet era. This wasn’t enough to stop the demonstrations, although they were much smaller than the peaceful marches of 100,000 or more the movement mounted in June: the government reported some 2,000 participants in a march by secondary students in the morning and 3,000 in a separate evening march by university students and professors. Right from the start militarized carabinero police used tear gas and water cannons to block the marchers, while protesters built barricades and fought back against the agents. Masked youths vandalized stores and banks. In the evening a fire was started in the La Polar department store, which was also looted. A little earlier, at least 80 protesters occupied the Chilevisión television station, insisting that the station run a live broadcast of their demands. After 40 minutes of negotiations, the two sides agreed that a taped version would run with the regular news program.
As night fell the students’ supporters took to the streets in different Santiago neighborhoods for a cacerolazo—an action reminiscent of the Pinochet era in which people protest by beating loudly on pots and pans.
The next day, on Aug. 5, Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) president Camila Vallejo Dowling, representatives of the Chilean Professors Association, attorney Hugo Gutiérrez and members of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Chile filed a complaint against Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter and Santiago intendant (city supervisor) Cecilia Pérez for illegal detentions and for violation of the constitutional right to assemble. The Chilean section of the UK-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) issued a call for the government to investigate what Executive Director Ana Piquer said were a “number of reports of the excessive use of force, the undue use of tear gas, arbitrary detentions and possible mistreatment during the detentions.”
The student protests have cut sharply into President Piñera’s popularity. His approval rating fell from 45% last November and December down to 26% in the June-July period, according to an opinion poll by the Centro de Estudios Públicos. This was the lowest approval rating for a president since the restoration of democracy in 1990.
Piñera has tried to win back public support by introducing his own education reform proposals, and on July 18 he reshuffled his cabinet, moving Education Minister Joaquín Lavín to Planning and Development and replacing him with Felipe Bulnes, who had been justice minister. But the government and the students remain far apart. Giorgio Jackson, president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC), has suggested that the only way to settle the dispute is to let the population vote on education reforms in a national plebiscite. Meanwhile, students are calling for another day of strikes on Aug. 9. (La Tercera (Santiago) 8/5/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/5/11, 8/6/11 from correspondent; The Guardian (UK) 8/5/11 from correspondent; Adital (Brazil) 8/6/11; Xinhua 7/19/11 from People’s Daily (China))
Some 20,000 people joined a march from Santiago’s Plaza Italia to the Almagro park on Aug. 7 in a protest called by parents’ associations and secondary students to support the student movement’s demands. There were no incidents in the demonstration, which also marked Chile’s Day of the Child. The Santiago government had authorized the protest, although wouldn’t allow the marchers to walk along the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue). (EFE 8/7/11 via Que.es (Spain))
*3. Chile: Will Workers “Think Twice” After Copper Mine Strike?
Workers at Chile’s Escondida copper mine voted on Aug. 5 to end a 15-day-old strike despite failing to win their demand for a bonus of 5 million pesos ($10,562). By a 65.5% majority they agreed to settle for a 2.6 million peso bonus ($5,492)--less than management’s earlier offer of 2.8 million pesos ($5,916)—but the company,the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton corporation, is to pay the workers for the days they were on strike. Union officials admitted the members were worn out after two weeks without pay.
The union called the strike on July 21, demanding that BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, share the rising profits on copper sales. But the company refused to back down; management said the job action, which started on July 21 outside the normal collective bargaining process, was illegal. BHP Billiton took a loss of some $450 million in sales during the strike, while meeting the workers’ demand would only have cost the company about $30 million. But apparently management felt it was more important to keep the Escondida workers from setting a precedent for other mines. “The workers at the mining companies will think twice before starting an illegal strike for more income,” Gustavo Lagos, a professor at the Catholic University, said after the settlement was announced.
The mine, in Antofagasta province in northern Chile, sits on the world’s largest copper deposit, and the strike helped raise international copper prices to a four-month high the week of Aug. 1—until fears of a new global recession drove prices back down. Analysts were concerned that with the Chilean government already shaken by a militant student movement, the strike—the first at the mine since August 2006 [see Update #866]—might inspire other walkouts. Miners at the state-owned Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile (Codelco) had held a one-day protest strike on July 11 [see Update #1088]. (Reuters 8/5/11; La Tercera (Santiago) 8/6/11)
*4. Honduras: Israel Pressures Lobo on Palestine UN Vote
On Aug. 2 Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa announced that Honduras plans to support an effort by the Palestinian Authority to win recognition for Palestine as a state during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September.
Israeli officials reacted immediately. On Aug. 3 the ambassador to Honduras, Eliahu López, called the statement “a dagger wound in the heart of Israel.” In Jerusalem the Foreign Ministry called in Honduran ambassador José Isaías Barahona to express “surprise” and “disappointment.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Deputy Director General for Latin America Dorit Shavit “reminded the ambassador that Israel stood by Honduras two years ago when it went through a constitutional crisis that led to widespread worldwide condemnation”—apparently a reference to the June 2009 military coup that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009).
Honduran officials stressed that the government wants to continue good relations with Israel and that Lobo’s remarks were in preparation for discussion of the issue at the Aug. 19 meeting of the System for Central American Integration (SICA), which includes the Dominican Republic along with the seven countries in Central America. Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua already recognize Palestine, as do many Latin American countries [see Update #1063]. (Prensa Latina 8/4/11; EFE 8/4/11 via Panama America; Jerusalem Post 8/5/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic
Drug War Delirium (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/4/drug-war-delirium
Chilean Student Protests: Police Arrest 552
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/05/chilean-student-protests-police-arrest-552/
Failed Education Reform in Chile Prompts Hunger Strikes
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/4/failed_education_reform_in_chile_prompts
Bolivia enters lithium deal with South Korea
http://ww4report.com/node/10187
Bolivia: WikiLeaks expose US conspiracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3146-bolivia-wikileaks-expose-us-conspiracy
Peru's ex-military chief sees Iranian threat in region; Bolivia claims Sendero subversion
http://ww4report.com/node/10186
Peru: Humala Promises Boom Will Reach Poor
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3150-mexican-newspaper-uncovers-systemic-monitoring-plans-of-public-online-sources
Big Bucks from China Drive Domestic Development in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3154-big-bucks-from-china-drive-domestic-development-in-ecuador
Ecuador: The Construction of a New Model of Domination
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3152-ecuador-the-construction-of-a-new-model-of-domination
New Colombia-Mexico FTA goes into effect
http://ww4report.com/node/10185
Colombia's Indigenous Communities Demand Demilitarization as Fighting Escalates
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3153-colombias-indigenous-communities-demand-demilitarization-as-fighting-escalates-
Will FARC fracas unfasten Colombia's reforged ties with Venezuela?
http://ww4report.com/node/10207
All of the President’s Men: The Bolivarian Succession? (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3145-all-of-the-presidents-men-the-bolivarian-succession
Eduardo Galeano Speaks on the Venezuelan Media
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6400
Noriega Headed Back To Panama After France Signs Extradition Papers
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/03/noriega-headed-back-to-panama-after-france-signs-extradition-papers/
A Vote For Democracy in El Salvador
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/5/vote-democracy-el-salvador
US Coast Guard intercepts another narco-submarine (Honduras)
http://ww4report.com/node/10184
Guatemala: court sentences ex-soldiers to over 6,000 years in prison
http://ww4report.com/node/10193
Mexico: police arrest Acapulco cartel boss wanted in massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10201
The New Disappeared: Homage and Resistance (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/2/new-disappeared-homage-and-resistance
Mexico’s LGBT Community Faces Violence Despite Major Gains In Civil Rights
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/04/mexicos-lgbt-community-faces-violence-despite-major-gains-in-civil-rights/
Mexican Newspaper Uncovers Systemic Monitoring Plans of Public Online Sources
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3150-mexican-newspaper-uncovers-systemic-monitoring-plans-of-public-online-sources
Persevering on the Air in Oaxaca: Independent Radio's Contribution to Indigenous Community
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3149-persevering-on-the-air-in-oaxaca-independent-radios-contribution-to-indigenous-community
Cuba high court upholds US contractor's 15-year sentence
http://ww4report.com/node/10200
Forced Evictions Continue, Despite Public Opposition from Martelly (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/forced-evictions-continue-despite-public-opposition-from-martelly
Dominican Republic Urged To Protect Journalists After Recent Killing
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/04/dominican-republic-urged-to-protect-journalists-after-recent-killing/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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 #1091, August 7, 2011
1. Argentina: Housing Occupations and Evictions Continue
2. Chile: 874 Arrested in Latest Student Protest
3. Chile: Will Workers “Think Twice” After Copper Mine Strike?
4. Honduras: Israel Pressures Lobo on Palestine UN Vote
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic
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. Argentina: Housing Occupations and Evictions Continue
Provincial police forcibly removed some 200 families on Aug. 5 from land they had occupied a month earlier in Villa 9 de Julio in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán. Acting on a court order from Judge Nora Wrexler, the agents destroyed homes that the 500 squatters had improvised out of canvas, cardboard and sheet metal when they moved in from different neighborhoods in the north of the nearby provincial capital, San Miguel de Tucumán.
In a confrontation that lasted about an hour, police, some of them on horseback, used nightsticks, tear gas and rubber bullets on the residents, who hurled rocks, bottles and clubs at the agents. No serious injuries were reported, but the police said five agents were hurt, and photographs showed protesters with bloodied heads. There were five arrests. According to a witness, the police chased after squatters who resisted; agents even invaded and damaged the homes of neighbors in the area who had given the protesters refuge.
The eviction in Tucumán came just eight days after a similar action in another northwestern province, Jujuy, left three protesters and one police agent dead on July 28 [see Update #1090]. An unidentified official told the Buenos Aires daily Clarín the Tucumán government was relieved that there were no serious injuries, but he rejected any comparison with the situation in Jujuy, where there is a severe housing shortage. “Here the government has built 20,000 houses and created 35,000 housing solutions,” the Tucumán official said. But Gustavo Usandivaras, a housing official in Tucumán, admitted to the local daily El Siglo that the government is dealing with three land occupations in Tucumán and that the squatters “resort to this precisely in the face of the absence of solutions.” (AFP 8/5/11 via Terra.com (Colombia); Clarín 8/6/11)
The violent eviction in Jujuy brought strong protests, including a march from the Congress to the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on Aug. 2. The provincial legislature reacted on Aug. 4 by approving the expropriation of 40 hectares of land from the Ledesma S.A. corporation, which produces sugar and paper, for the construction of homes for some 3,000 people who need housing in the city of Libertador General San Martín, where the eviction took place. The company owns the land the squatters had seized, and critics say its holdings include 157,556 hectares of land, of which it only uses 38,000 hectares.
Also on Aug. 4, Gov. Walter Barrionuevo announced that the hundreds of families now squatting in private property in the area—including the families of police agents—had to leave within 24 hours. But most were refusing to move as of the afternoon of Aug. 5. (Adital (Brazil) 8/2/11; AFP 8/5/11 via Terra.com (Colombia); Clarín 8/6/11)
*2. Chile: 874 Arrested in Latest Student Protest
Aug. 4 brought the most violent day yet in more than two months of protests by Chilean students determined to end a system of heavily privatized and decentralized education instituted during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet [see Update #1088]. According to official figures, there were 874 arrests nationwide by the end of the day, and 90 militarized police agents had been injured.
The government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera virtually assured the violence when it refused to issue permits for planned student marches in Santiago on Aug. 4, using a decree from the Pinochet era. This wasn’t enough to stop the demonstrations, although they were much smaller than the peaceful marches of 100,000 or more the movement mounted in June: the government reported some 2,000 participants in a march by secondary students in the morning and 3,000 in a separate evening march by university students and professors. Right from the start militarized carabinero police used tear gas and water cannons to block the marchers, while protesters built barricades and fought back against the agents. Masked youths vandalized stores and banks. In the evening a fire was started in the La Polar department store, which was also looted. A little earlier, at least 80 protesters occupied the Chilevisión television station, insisting that the station run a live broadcast of their demands. After 40 minutes of negotiations, the two sides agreed that a taped version would run with the regular news program.
As night fell the students’ supporters took to the streets in different Santiago neighborhoods for a cacerolazo—an action reminiscent of the Pinochet era in which people protest by beating loudly on pots and pans.
The next day, on Aug. 5, Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) president Camila Vallejo Dowling, representatives of the Chilean Professors Association, attorney Hugo Gutiérrez and members of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Chile filed a complaint against Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter and Santiago intendant (city supervisor) Cecilia Pérez for illegal detentions and for violation of the constitutional right to assemble. The Chilean section of the UK-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) issued a call for the government to investigate what Executive Director Ana Piquer said were a “number of reports of the excessive use of force, the undue use of tear gas, arbitrary detentions and possible mistreatment during the detentions.”
The student protests have cut sharply into President Piñera’s popularity. His approval rating fell from 45% last November and December down to 26% in the June-July period, according to an opinion poll by the Centro de Estudios Públicos. This was the lowest approval rating for a president since the restoration of democracy in 1990.
Piñera has tried to win back public support by introducing his own education reform proposals, and on July 18 he reshuffled his cabinet, moving Education Minister Joaquín Lavín to Planning and Development and replacing him with Felipe Bulnes, who had been justice minister. But the government and the students remain far apart. Giorgio Jackson, president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC), has suggested that the only way to settle the dispute is to let the population vote on education reforms in a national plebiscite. Meanwhile, students are calling for another day of strikes on Aug. 9. (La Tercera (Santiago) 8/5/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 8/5/11, 8/6/11 from correspondent; The Guardian (UK) 8/5/11 from correspondent; Adital (Brazil) 8/6/11; Xinhua 7/19/11 from People’s Daily (China))
Some 20,000 people joined a march from Santiago’s Plaza Italia to the Almagro park on Aug. 7 in a protest called by parents’ associations and secondary students to support the student movement’s demands. There were no incidents in the demonstration, which also marked Chile’s Day of the Child. The Santiago government had authorized the protest, although wouldn’t allow the marchers to walk along the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue). (EFE 8/7/11 via Que.es (Spain))
*3. Chile: Will Workers “Think Twice” After Copper Mine Strike?
Workers at Chile’s Escondida copper mine voted on Aug. 5 to end a 15-day-old strike despite failing to win their demand for a bonus of 5 million pesos ($10,562). By a 65.5% majority they agreed to settle for a 2.6 million peso bonus ($5,492)--less than management’s earlier offer of 2.8 million pesos ($5,916)—but the company,the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton corporation, is to pay the workers for the days they were on strike. Union officials admitted the members were worn out after two weeks without pay.
The union called the strike on July 21, demanding that BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, share the rising profits on copper sales. But the company refused to back down; management said the job action, which started on July 21 outside the normal collective bargaining process, was illegal. BHP Billiton took a loss of some $450 million in sales during the strike, while meeting the workers’ demand would only have cost the company about $30 million. But apparently management felt it was more important to keep the Escondida workers from setting a precedent for other mines. “The workers at the mining companies will think twice before starting an illegal strike for more income,” Gustavo Lagos, a professor at the Catholic University, said after the settlement was announced.
The mine, in Antofagasta province in northern Chile, sits on the world’s largest copper deposit, and the strike helped raise international copper prices to a four-month high the week of Aug. 1—until fears of a new global recession drove prices back down. Analysts were concerned that with the Chilean government already shaken by a militant student movement, the strike—the first at the mine since August 2006 [see Update #866]—might inspire other walkouts. Miners at the state-owned Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile (Codelco) had held a one-day protest strike on July 11 [see Update #1088]. (Reuters 8/5/11; La Tercera (Santiago) 8/6/11)
*4. Honduras: Israel Pressures Lobo on Palestine UN Vote
On Aug. 2 Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa announced that Honduras plans to support an effort by the Palestinian Authority to win recognition for Palestine as a state during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September.
Israeli officials reacted immediately. On Aug. 3 the ambassador to Honduras, Eliahu López, called the statement “a dagger wound in the heart of Israel.” In Jerusalem the Foreign Ministry called in Honduran ambassador José Isaías Barahona to express “surprise” and “disappointment.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Deputy Director General for Latin America Dorit Shavit “reminded the ambassador that Israel stood by Honduras two years ago when it went through a constitutional crisis that led to widespread worldwide condemnation”—apparently a reference to the June 2009 military coup that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009).
Honduran officials stressed that the government wants to continue good relations with Israel and that Lobo’s remarks were in preparation for discussion of the issue at the Aug. 19 meeting of the System for Central American Integration (SICA), which includes the Dominican Republic along with the seven countries in Central America. Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua already recognize Palestine, as do many Latin American countries [see Update #1063]. (Prensa Latina 8/4/11; EFE 8/4/11 via Panama America; Jerusalem Post 8/5/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic
Drug War Delirium (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/4/drug-war-delirium
Chilean Student Protests: Police Arrest 552
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/05/chilean-student-protests-police-arrest-552/
Failed Education Reform in Chile Prompts Hunger Strikes
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/4/failed_education_reform_in_chile_prompts
Bolivia enters lithium deal with South Korea
http://ww4report.com/node/10187
Bolivia: WikiLeaks expose US conspiracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3146-bolivia-wikileaks-expose-us-conspiracy
Peru's ex-military chief sees Iranian threat in region; Bolivia claims Sendero subversion
http://ww4report.com/node/10186
Peru: Humala Promises Boom Will Reach Poor
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3150-mexican-newspaper-uncovers-systemic-monitoring-plans-of-public-online-sources
Big Bucks from China Drive Domestic Development in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3154-big-bucks-from-china-drive-domestic-development-in-ecuador
Ecuador: The Construction of a New Model of Domination
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3152-ecuador-the-construction-of-a-new-model-of-domination
New Colombia-Mexico FTA goes into effect
http://ww4report.com/node/10185
Colombia's Indigenous Communities Demand Demilitarization as Fighting Escalates
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3153-colombias-indigenous-communities-demand-demilitarization-as-fighting-escalates-
Will FARC fracas unfasten Colombia's reforged ties with Venezuela?
http://ww4report.com/node/10207
All of the President’s Men: The Bolivarian Succession? (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3145-all-of-the-presidents-men-the-bolivarian-succession
Eduardo Galeano Speaks on the Venezuelan Media
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6400
Noriega Headed Back To Panama After France Signs Extradition Papers
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/03/noriega-headed-back-to-panama-after-france-signs-extradition-papers/
A Vote For Democracy in El Salvador
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/5/vote-democracy-el-salvador
US Coast Guard intercepts another narco-submarine (Honduras)
http://ww4report.com/node/10184
Guatemala: court sentences ex-soldiers to over 6,000 years in prison
http://ww4report.com/node/10193
Mexico: police arrest Acapulco cartel boss wanted in massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10201
The New Disappeared: Homage and Resistance (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/2/new-disappeared-homage-and-resistance
Mexico’s LGBT Community Faces Violence Despite Major Gains In Civil Rights
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/04/mexicos-lgbt-community-faces-violence-despite-major-gains-in-civil-rights/
Mexican Newspaper Uncovers Systemic Monitoring Plans of Public Online Sources
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3150-mexican-newspaper-uncovers-systemic-monitoring-plans-of-public-online-sources
Persevering on the Air in Oaxaca: Independent Radio's Contribution to Indigenous Community
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3149-persevering-on-the-air-in-oaxaca-independent-radios-contribution-to-indigenous-community
Cuba high court upholds US contractor's 15-year sentence
http://ww4report.com/node/10200
Forced Evictions Continue, Despite Public Opposition from Martelly (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/forced-evictions-continue-despite-public-opposition-from-martelly
Dominican Republic Urged To Protect Journalists After Recent Killing
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/04/dominican-republic-urged-to-protect-journalists-after-recent-killing/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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, 1 August 2011
WNU #1090: Four Killed in Eviction of Argentine Squatters
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1090, July 31, 2011
1. Argentina: Four Killed in Eviction of Jujuy Squatters
2. Honduras: Workers Claim Mistreatment at US-Owned Maquilas
3. Mexico: Relatives Demand Action on Disappearances
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Argentina: Four Killed in Eviction of Jujuy Squatters
Four people were killed the morning of July 28 when provincial police forcibly evicted some 700 families from land they had been occupying in the city of Libertador General San Martín in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy. The police and the squatters confronted each other with clubs and rocks during the eviction, and the police agents reportedly used tear gas and both rubber and lead bullets. Some witnesses said a few protesters were armed, but Enrique Mosquera--the director of the Jujuy branch of the leftist Classist and Combative Current (CCC) organization, which backed the land occupation--denied this. “Nobody was armed,” he said. “We defended ourselves with rocks and stones, throwing them and then leaving.”
The victims included squatters Ariel Farfán and Félix Reyes and police agent Alejandro Farfán (the two Farfáns were not related, according to news reports). Another protester died from a bullet wound shortly after being admitted to the local hospital. As many as 49 people were injured, and 27 were arrested.
The squatters had been occupying the land--15 hectares belonging to the Ledesma S.A. corporation, which produces sugar and paper--since July 20. According to the Tupaj Katari Social and Cultural Movement, homeless families had been negotiating for the land for five years and decided on the occupation when the local government and the company failed to fulfill an agreement to give them land.
The police violence quickly inspired new protests. Some 3,000 people had reoccupied the land by the evening of July 28. Members of the CCC and leftist parties besieged Jujuy province’s offices in Buenos Aires, breaking windows and painting slogans on the walls. Jujuy governor Walter Barrionuevo, a Justicialist Party (PJ) politician who backs Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, moved quickly to control the political damage: the officer in charge of the police operation was removed, and Pablo La Villa, the province’s government minister, resigned the night of July 28.
On the morning of July 29 CCC members were joined by the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA), the National Confederation of University Teachers (Conadu Histórica), the University of Buenos Aires Teachers Association (AGD-UBA) and the Association in Defense of the Liberty and Rights of the People (Liberpueblo) in a demonstration at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires to demand an investigation of the Jujuy eviction and the punishment of those who were responsible for the violence. (Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/28/11, ___ ; Adital (Brazil) 7/29/11; Buenos Aires Herald 7/29/11)
The Ledesma corporation, with a total of 157,556 hectares in its possession, is the main landowner in the Libertador General San Martín area, which is experiencing a severe housing shortage. The “La Brecha” Current of Base Organizations (COB), a network of community groups, says there are estimates that just 40 hectares of land would be enough to resolve the housing problem. According to the COB, Ledesma, which is owned by the Blaquier family, has a history of repression dating back to the end of the 19th century and including the killing of protesting sugarcane workers in the company’s early years and crimes committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. (Adital 7/29/11)
On the evening of July 30 some 100 families of police agents occupied unfinished homes in a housing project started by the provincial government in 2009. “We’re not leaving,” said Analía Wierna, wife of police agent Juan Pablo. “We’re 100 families of police agents from the town itself who suffer from the housing crisis as much as the people who seized the Ledesma estate.” “Who are they going to send to evict us?” asked Hemelinda Magno, mother of agent Fernando Cisneros. “Our husbands and sons?”
Within a few minutes of this action, a group of women nurses from the municipal hospital also tried to occupy some of the project’s unfinished homes, many of which lack plumbing, gas and electricity. “You don’t have more rights than we do just because you’re married to police agents,” a nurse said as she tried to enter the project. “I’m here with my little children, and I’m asking you to let me occupy a house, even if it doesn’t have a roof.” (Clarín 7/31/11)
*2. Honduras: Workers Claim Mistreatment at US-Owned Maquilas
The labor and human rights of women workers are being violated at two factories in northern Honduras owned by the US clothing firm Delta Apparel, Inc., according to a July 25 statement by the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH). Workers at Delta Apparel Honduras and Delta Apparel Cortés, maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) in Cortés department, say management uses harassment, reprisals and threats of firing to get employees to meet excessively high production quotas. Some workers reportedly suffer muscle or bone injuries because of long hours in uncomfortable positions; they say that when they are reassigned due to the injuries, they are called “the sick ones” and “the Barbies.”
Delta workers have reported these conditions to various government agencies, including the Regional Labor Inspection Office and the Labor and Social Security Secretariat (STSS), but with no results. Noting that there are similar conditions in other Honduran maquiladoras, including the ones producing for the Canadian firm Gildan Activewear Inc. and the US firm HanesBrands Inc., the CODEMUH statement calls on the authorities to carry out ergonomic studies in the assembly plants to determine proper standards for quotas, work assignments and job schedules. CODEMUH also called on “European and North American buyers of PUMA, Adidas and Nike brands to demand that these internationals fulfill their social responsibilities as businesses [and] stop the violation of labor law in Honduras.” (Adital (Brazil) 7/26/11, 7/29/11) [CODEMUH didn’t indicate whether there was any connection between Delta and these brands.]
On July 28, Delta Apparel Inc. reported sales of about $475 million in the fiscal year ending on July 2, an increase of 12% over the previous fiscal year. Despite problems in the US economy, the company, based in Greenville, South Carolina, expects net sales “in the range of $500 to $520 million” for the next fiscal year, a 5% to 9% increase. Delta’s subsidiaries include M. J. Soffe, LLC; Junkfood Clothing Company; To The Game, LLC; Art Gun, LLC; and TCX, LLC. (Delta press release 7/28/11 via MarketWatch)
*3. Mexico: Relatives Demand Action on Disappearances
Mexican governance secretary Francisco Blake Mora held a meeting in Mexico City on July 29 with more than 160 relatives of people who have been “disappeared”—kidnapped by criminals, by the police or by the military. The family members, many carrying photographs of the victims, were demanding action from the federal Governance Secretariat (SG), which is in charge of the country’s internal security. The relatives came from a number of states, including Guanajuato, Morelos, Nuevo León, Oaxaca and Zacatecas, but the greatest number were from the northern state of Coahuila, where the “drug wars” between the authorities and drug traffickers and between different drug gangs have been especially intense.
“Enough of speeches and proposals,” the mother of a disappeared person told Blake and other federal officials. “What we want is answers.” “We aren’t sitting here because we want to say hello and get acquainted,” a man said, “but because we’re burdened with a history of sorrow. We don’t trust you.” Blake admitted that there were problems with “corruption” and “omissions,” but the federal officials insisted that the “great majority” of the disappearances were by carried out by organized crime groups, not the police or military. The relatives said there were thousands of disappearances and the situation called for a special prosecutor’s office. Blake answered that the federal government was only working on 184 disappearance cases and that a special office wasn’t necessary—although the SG’s assistant secretary for judicial affairs and human rights, Felipe Zamora, said officials were seeking a “mechanism” for investigating disappearances.
Raúl Vera López, the left-leaning Catholic bishop of Saltillo in Coahuila, came to the meeting along with the relatives. He made it clear that he thought the situation had been made worse by the militarization of the “drug war” that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa started shortly after taking office in December 2006. This “mistaken strategy of confronting crime” through a war “now has sufficiently serious consequences,” he told Blake. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/30/11)
The meeting of high-level officials with victims’ relatives came as public anger continued to grow over disappearances and drug-related killings—more than 35,000 Mexicans have died in the violence since President Calderón became president. On July 14 the relatives of 10 disappeared men began a hunger strike in Oaxaca [see World War 4 Report 7/20/11].
The Association of Relatives of the Detained, Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations in Mexico (Afadem), a nongovernmental organization (NGO), has records of about 4,000 disappearances during the Calderón administration, according to the group’s executive director, Julio Mata Montiel. “There are people who talk of 10,000 or 20,000, but it’s very hard to determine the exact number,” he told the Mexican daily La Jornada. Since there is no central database of disappearances, relatives have to travel to different states and municipalities to file reports. There is also no central database for DNA, so the relatives have to give samples at each locality. Generally the victims are working people, and their family members can’t afford the travel or the loss of workdays.
Adding to the relatives’ difficulties, the authorities tend to treat disappearances as an indication that the victims themselves had links to the drug gangs. (LJ 7/31/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
WikiLeaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, Released July 11-23, 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3131-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-released-july-11-23-2011
Bolivia: Evo fears US plot to frame him for drugs
http://ww4report.com/node/10167
Peru: peasant ecologists issue declaration against mineral export model
http://ww4report.com/node/10168
Humala Sworn In As Peru’s New President; Promises Growth Will Include Poor
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/28/humala-sworn-in-as-perus-new-president-promises-growth-will-include-poor/
Peru’s Mining Conflicts: Ollanta Humala’s Ticking Time Bomb
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/7/29/peru%E2%80%99s-mining-conflicts-ollanta-humala%E2%80%99s-ticking-time-bomb
Trickle-Down Economics Confronts a New President in Peru
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/7/28/trickle-down-economics-confronts-new-president-peru
Peru: extractive industries, popular movements both cautious as Ollanta Humala sworn in
http://ww4report.com/node/10176
Conference for Water and Pachamama (Ecuador)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5187
Colombian Court Tells Congress To Rule On Gay Marriage
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/28/colombian-court-tells-congress-to-rule-on-gay-marriage/
Behind the Oil Workers’ Strike in Colombia
https://nacla.org/blog/behind-oil-workers%E2%80%99-strike-colombia
Colombia: Native Groups Mobilise Against Escalation of War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3129-native-groups-mobilise-against-escalation-of-war
Venezuelans March for Workers' Control
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6379
Venezuela to release 40% of prisoners to reduce overcrowding
http://ww4report.com/node/10179
Three Neoliberal Tales in Honduras: The Inter-oceanic Train, Metro-buses and Charter Cities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3138-three-neoliberal-tales-in-honduras-the-inter-oceanic-train-metro-buses-and-charter-cities
Indigenous and Afro-Honduran Women: Autonomy and an End to Violence Against Us
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3132-indigenous-and-afro-honduran-women-autonomy-and-an-end-to-violence-against-us
Honduran Police Burn Community to the Ground
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7111
War crimes trial over Guatemala massacre begins
http://ww4report.com/node/10166
Ciudad Juárez Prison Riot Leaves At Least 17 Dead
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/26/ciudad-juarez-prison-riot-leaves-at-least-17-dead/
Book Review - To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3136-book-review-to-die-in-mexico-dispatches-from-inside-the-drug-war
Military Impunity: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
https://nacla.org/blog/military-impunity-one-step-forward-two-steps-back
Teachers’ Leader Gordillo Creates National Scandal for Calderón
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=189#1311
Electrical Workers Leadership Calls for New Labor Federation
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=189#1313
Mexico: climate change threatens Chihuahua biodiversity
http://ww4report.com/node/10175
Raquel Gutiérrez: Why is the US so afraid of me? (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3133-raquel-gutierrez-why-is-the-us-so-afraid-of-me
Inside the Haiti Reconstruction Fund Annual Report
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/inside-the-haiti-reconstruction-fund-annual-report
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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 #1090, July 31, 2011
1. Argentina: Four Killed in Eviction of Jujuy Squatters
2. Honduras: Workers Claim Mistreatment at US-Owned Maquilas
3. Mexico: Relatives Demand Action on Disappearances
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Argentina: Four Killed in Eviction of Jujuy Squatters
Four people were killed the morning of July 28 when provincial police forcibly evicted some 700 families from land they had been occupying in the city of Libertador General San Martín in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy. The police and the squatters confronted each other with clubs and rocks during the eviction, and the police agents reportedly used tear gas and both rubber and lead bullets. Some witnesses said a few protesters were armed, but Enrique Mosquera--the director of the Jujuy branch of the leftist Classist and Combative Current (CCC) organization, which backed the land occupation--denied this. “Nobody was armed,” he said. “We defended ourselves with rocks and stones, throwing them and then leaving.”
The victims included squatters Ariel Farfán and Félix Reyes and police agent Alejandro Farfán (the two Farfáns were not related, according to news reports). Another protester died from a bullet wound shortly after being admitted to the local hospital. As many as 49 people were injured, and 27 were arrested.
The squatters had been occupying the land--15 hectares belonging to the Ledesma S.A. corporation, which produces sugar and paper--since July 20. According to the Tupaj Katari Social and Cultural Movement, homeless families had been negotiating for the land for five years and decided on the occupation when the local government and the company failed to fulfill an agreement to give them land.
The police violence quickly inspired new protests. Some 3,000 people had reoccupied the land by the evening of July 28. Members of the CCC and leftist parties besieged Jujuy province’s offices in Buenos Aires, breaking windows and painting slogans on the walls. Jujuy governor Walter Barrionuevo, a Justicialist Party (PJ) politician who backs Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, moved quickly to control the political damage: the officer in charge of the police operation was removed, and Pablo La Villa, the province’s government minister, resigned the night of July 28.
On the morning of July 29 CCC members were joined by the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA), the National Confederation of University Teachers (Conadu Histórica), the University of Buenos Aires Teachers Association (AGD-UBA) and the Association in Defense of the Liberty and Rights of the People (Liberpueblo) in a demonstration at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires to demand an investigation of the Jujuy eviction and the punishment of those who were responsible for the violence. (Clarín (Buenos Aires) 7/28/11, ___ ; Adital (Brazil) 7/29/11; Buenos Aires Herald 7/29/11)
The Ledesma corporation, with a total of 157,556 hectares in its possession, is the main landowner in the Libertador General San Martín area, which is experiencing a severe housing shortage. The “La Brecha” Current of Base Organizations (COB), a network of community groups, says there are estimates that just 40 hectares of land would be enough to resolve the housing problem. According to the COB, Ledesma, which is owned by the Blaquier family, has a history of repression dating back to the end of the 19th century and including the killing of protesting sugarcane workers in the company’s early years and crimes committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. (Adital 7/29/11)
On the evening of July 30 some 100 families of police agents occupied unfinished homes in a housing project started by the provincial government in 2009. “We’re not leaving,” said Analía Wierna, wife of police agent Juan Pablo. “We’re 100 families of police agents from the town itself who suffer from the housing crisis as much as the people who seized the Ledesma estate.” “Who are they going to send to evict us?” asked Hemelinda Magno, mother of agent Fernando Cisneros. “Our husbands and sons?”
Within a few minutes of this action, a group of women nurses from the municipal hospital also tried to occupy some of the project’s unfinished homes, many of which lack plumbing, gas and electricity. “You don’t have more rights than we do just because you’re married to police agents,” a nurse said as she tried to enter the project. “I’m here with my little children, and I’m asking you to let me occupy a house, even if it doesn’t have a roof.” (Clarín 7/31/11)
*2. Honduras: Workers Claim Mistreatment at US-Owned Maquilas
The labor and human rights of women workers are being violated at two factories in northern Honduras owned by the US clothing firm Delta Apparel, Inc., according to a July 25 statement by the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH). Workers at Delta Apparel Honduras and Delta Apparel Cortés, maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) in Cortés department, say management uses harassment, reprisals and threats of firing to get employees to meet excessively high production quotas. Some workers reportedly suffer muscle or bone injuries because of long hours in uncomfortable positions; they say that when they are reassigned due to the injuries, they are called “the sick ones” and “the Barbies.”
Delta workers have reported these conditions to various government agencies, including the Regional Labor Inspection Office and the Labor and Social Security Secretariat (STSS), but with no results. Noting that there are similar conditions in other Honduran maquiladoras, including the ones producing for the Canadian firm Gildan Activewear Inc. and the US firm HanesBrands Inc., the CODEMUH statement calls on the authorities to carry out ergonomic studies in the assembly plants to determine proper standards for quotas, work assignments and job schedules. CODEMUH also called on “European and North American buyers of PUMA, Adidas and Nike brands to demand that these internationals fulfill their social responsibilities as businesses [and] stop the violation of labor law in Honduras.” (Adital (Brazil) 7/26/11, 7/29/11) [CODEMUH didn’t indicate whether there was any connection between Delta and these brands.]
On July 28, Delta Apparel Inc. reported sales of about $475 million in the fiscal year ending on July 2, an increase of 12% over the previous fiscal year. Despite problems in the US economy, the company, based in Greenville, South Carolina, expects net sales “in the range of $500 to $520 million” for the next fiscal year, a 5% to 9% increase. Delta’s subsidiaries include M. J. Soffe, LLC; Junkfood Clothing Company; To The Game, LLC; Art Gun, LLC; and TCX, LLC. (Delta press release 7/28/11 via MarketWatch)
*3. Mexico: Relatives Demand Action on Disappearances
Mexican governance secretary Francisco Blake Mora held a meeting in Mexico City on July 29 with more than 160 relatives of people who have been “disappeared”—kidnapped by criminals, by the police or by the military. The family members, many carrying photographs of the victims, were demanding action from the federal Governance Secretariat (SG), which is in charge of the country’s internal security. The relatives came from a number of states, including Guanajuato, Morelos, Nuevo León, Oaxaca and Zacatecas, but the greatest number were from the northern state of Coahuila, where the “drug wars” between the authorities and drug traffickers and between different drug gangs have been especially intense.
“Enough of speeches and proposals,” the mother of a disappeared person told Blake and other federal officials. “What we want is answers.” “We aren’t sitting here because we want to say hello and get acquainted,” a man said, “but because we’re burdened with a history of sorrow. We don’t trust you.” Blake admitted that there were problems with “corruption” and “omissions,” but the federal officials insisted that the “great majority” of the disappearances were by carried out by organized crime groups, not the police or military. The relatives said there were thousands of disappearances and the situation called for a special prosecutor’s office. Blake answered that the federal government was only working on 184 disappearance cases and that a special office wasn’t necessary—although the SG’s assistant secretary for judicial affairs and human rights, Felipe Zamora, said officials were seeking a “mechanism” for investigating disappearances.
Raúl Vera López, the left-leaning Catholic bishop of Saltillo in Coahuila, came to the meeting along with the relatives. He made it clear that he thought the situation had been made worse by the militarization of the “drug war” that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa started shortly after taking office in December 2006. This “mistaken strategy of confronting crime” through a war “now has sufficiently serious consequences,” he told Blake. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/30/11)
The meeting of high-level officials with victims’ relatives came as public anger continued to grow over disappearances and drug-related killings—more than 35,000 Mexicans have died in the violence since President Calderón became president. On July 14 the relatives of 10 disappeared men began a hunger strike in Oaxaca [see World War 4 Report 7/20/11].
The Association of Relatives of the Detained, Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations in Mexico (Afadem), a nongovernmental organization (NGO), has records of about 4,000 disappearances during the Calderón administration, according to the group’s executive director, Julio Mata Montiel. “There are people who talk of 10,000 or 20,000, but it’s very hard to determine the exact number,” he told the Mexican daily La Jornada. Since there is no central database of disappearances, relatives have to travel to different states and municipalities to file reports. There is also no central database for DNA, so the relatives have to give samples at each locality. Generally the victims are working people, and their family members can’t afford the travel or the loss of workdays.
Adding to the relatives’ difficulties, the authorities tend to treat disappearances as an indication that the victims themselves had links to the drug gangs. (LJ 7/31/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
WikiLeaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, Released July 11-23, 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3131-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-released-july-11-23-2011
Bolivia: Evo fears US plot to frame him for drugs
http://ww4report.com/node/10167
Peru: peasant ecologists issue declaration against mineral export model
http://ww4report.com/node/10168
Humala Sworn In As Peru’s New President; Promises Growth Will Include Poor
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/28/humala-sworn-in-as-perus-new-president-promises-growth-will-include-poor/
Peru’s Mining Conflicts: Ollanta Humala’s Ticking Time Bomb
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/7/29/peru%E2%80%99s-mining-conflicts-ollanta-humala%E2%80%99s-ticking-time-bomb
Trickle-Down Economics Confronts a New President in Peru
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/7/28/trickle-down-economics-confronts-new-president-peru
Peru: extractive industries, popular movements both cautious as Ollanta Humala sworn in
http://ww4report.com/node/10176
Conference for Water and Pachamama (Ecuador)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5187
Colombian Court Tells Congress To Rule On Gay Marriage
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/28/colombian-court-tells-congress-to-rule-on-gay-marriage/
Behind the Oil Workers’ Strike in Colombia
https://nacla.org/blog/behind-oil-workers%E2%80%99-strike-colombia
Colombia: Native Groups Mobilise Against Escalation of War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3129-native-groups-mobilise-against-escalation-of-war
Venezuelans March for Workers' Control
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6379
Venezuela to release 40% of prisoners to reduce overcrowding
http://ww4report.com/node/10179
Three Neoliberal Tales in Honduras: The Inter-oceanic Train, Metro-buses and Charter Cities
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3138-three-neoliberal-tales-in-honduras-the-inter-oceanic-train-metro-buses-and-charter-cities
Indigenous and Afro-Honduran Women: Autonomy and an End to Violence Against Us
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3132-indigenous-and-afro-honduran-women-autonomy-and-an-end-to-violence-against-us
Honduran Police Burn Community to the Ground
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7111
War crimes trial over Guatemala massacre begins
http://ww4report.com/node/10166
Ciudad Juárez Prison Riot Leaves At Least 17 Dead
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/26/ciudad-juarez-prison-riot-leaves-at-least-17-dead/
Book Review - To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3136-book-review-to-die-in-mexico-dispatches-from-inside-the-drug-war
Military Impunity: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
https://nacla.org/blog/military-impunity-one-step-forward-two-steps-back
Teachers’ Leader Gordillo Creates National Scandal for Calderón
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=189#1311
Electrical Workers Leadership Calls for New Labor Federation
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=189#1313
Mexico: climate change threatens Chihuahua biodiversity
http://ww4report.com/node/10175
Raquel Gutiérrez: Why is the US so afraid of me? (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3133-raquel-gutierrez-why-is-the-us-so-afraid-of-me
Inside the Haiti Reconstruction Fund Annual Report
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/inside-the-haiti-reconstruction-fund-annual-report
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
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/
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