Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1107, November 27, 2011
1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
A little-known office of the US Defense Department is now taking bids from private security firms on a $3 billion contract for US-funded anti-narcotics operations in Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. According to a report in Wired News, the Pentagon’s Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office (CNTPO) announced a “mega-contract” on Nov. 9 for as much as $950 million for “operations, logistics and minor construction,” up to $975 million for training foreign forces, $875 million for “Information” tasks, and $240 million for “program and program support.” The cash will start flowing next August, and the contractors may be able to extend the jobs for three more years.
The Mexican daily La Jornada reports that the work involving Mexican operations includes training for armed forces drivers; training for pilots, mechanics and crews on UH-60, Schweizer 333 or OH-58 helicopters in the Public Security Secretariat; training for up to 48 people to command and pilot Bell 206 helicopters; and the development of night vision materials and training programs for helicopter pilots and crews.
The CNTPO started in 1995, but its importance has grown as the Defense Department increasingly turns sensitive jobs over to private contractors. Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations for the US nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told Wired that the office is now “essentially planning on outsourcing a global counternarcotics and counterterrorism program over the next several years, and it’s willing to spend billions to do so.” “This stuff isn’t delivering paper clips or even fuel or bullets,” Schellenbach said. “This is something you really want to keep a tight lid on.”
The CNTPO gained some notoriety in 2009 when it unsuccessfully tried to award a contract worth about $1 billion to the Blackwater military services corporation. Blackwater employees have been accused of theft and human rights violations, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan; the company has since changed its name to Xe Services LLC. (Wired News 11/22/11; LJ 11/23/11 from correspondent)
Much of the Mexican population is disillusioned with the country’s “war on drugs,” five years after President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began involving the military in anti-narcotics operations at the start of his term [see Update #1103]. On Nov. 25 Mexican human rights attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague charging Calderón, members of his cabinet and members of a drug cartel based in the northern state of Sinaloa with 470 documented cases of murder, torture, forced displacement and military recruitment of minors. These took place in a “generalized context of systematic violence which has brought Mexico to a humanitarian crisis, with more than 50,000 people killed, 230,000 displaced and 10,000 disappeared,” Sandoval told Netherlands Radio Worldwide.
Among the crimes attributed to the government in the complaint are sexual violations by Mexican soldiers, the “enslavement” of undocumented immigrants by officials in collaboration with criminal groups, the killing of civilians at military checkpoints, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and the use of torture to obtain confessions. The complaint says the Sinaloa Cartel and its head, Joaquín Guzmán (“El Chapo”), have created armies that are guilty of executions, amputations and decapitations, attacks on civilian targets and the military recruitment of minors.
The complaint, which was signed by 23,000 Mexicans, is unlikely to develop into an actual criminal case. But John Ackerman, a legal expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told La Jornada that the complaint could lead ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to put Mexico under formal observation, as has happened with Colombia. “If we accomplish this first step, it would be a gain,” he said. (LJ 11/26/11)
*2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
Tens of thousands of students marched in more than a dozen Latin American cities on Nov. 24 in the Latin American March for Education, a coordinated regional demonstration to support free and high-quality public education. The mobilization was planned by Chilean and Colombian students earlier in the month [see Update #1105], but by Nov. 24 it had spread to include actions in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Participants stressed that students had similar demands throughout the region and were also united in their support for the movement in Chile.
The Nov. 24 march was the 42nd day of mass mobilization for Chilean students, who began protesting last spring against the privatization of the educational system under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Confrontations between students and the carabineros militarized police broke out in parts of Santiago early on Nov. 24 as youths tried to march without permits in the capital’s downtown area. The local government authorized a march in the evening that drew as many as 40,000 participants, according to some estimates, but the police attacked the marchers with tear gas and water cannons when the permit expired at 8 pm. A total of 58 youths were arrested in the day’s demonstrations; another 30 youths were arrested when the police ended a student occupation at the Darío Salas high school.
Tens of thousands joined the Nov. 24 protests in Colombia’s main cities. Despite a light rain, students marched from at least seven meeting points in Bogotá, monitored by some 2,500 police agents. There were isolated incidents, resulting in 11 arrests. Colombian students had suspended their own month-old strike on Nov. 17 after the government withdrew a proposal for changes to the educational system [see Update #1106], but they marched on Nov. 24 “in solidarity with the student movement in Chile and in all of Latin America,” according to university student Laura Jaramillo. She added that the protest would also remind President Juan Manuel Santos that Colombia’s students remain mobilized. (Inter Press Service 11/25/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/25/11 from correspondent, 11/25/11 from PL, AFP, DPA, Notimex)
Some 5,000 Honduran students marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa in a protest led by former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) and backed by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a grassroots coalition that formed after a June 2009 military coup removed Zelaya from office. The Honduran march focused on violence against students, in particular the Oct. 22 murder of two university students, Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos and Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez, apparently by a group of police agents with criminal connections [see Update #1104]. Vargas Castellanos’ mother is Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), and she led the UNAH contingent at the march. In the spring of 2010 Julieta Castellanos was the target of a hunger strike by FNRP supporters because of layoffs of teachers at the university [see Update #1033], but now she has become a prominent figure in the movement to purge the police of corrupt agents. (AFP 11/24/11 via La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa))
*3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
Women’s organizations throughout Latin America used the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Nov. 25, to highlight continued abuse of women in the region and the failure of governments to take steps to reduce it.
In Chile the women’s rights center Corporación Humanas marked Nov. 25 by publicizing the results of a nationwide poll of women about their perception of their situation. Some 67% of those questioned said they thought the Chilean government had failed to take measures to prevent violence against women. About 54% believed that the violence had increased, 34% said it had stayed the same, and just 8% felt it had decreased. Some 73% said violence against women in couples was a problem that affects all women, because it is an extreme expression of machismo. So far this year there have been 38 femicides (misogynistic murders) in Chile. (Adital (Brazil) 11/25/11)
Hundreds of Salvadoran women marched in San Salvador to denounce the 582 femicides that that have occurred in the country in 2011 and to demand respect for women’s human rights and greater resources for groups working to defend women.
In Honduras more than 200 women marched through the center of Tegucigalpa and in front of the National Congress to demand justice and an end to impunity for those who rape or murder women or commit other violent acts against them. According to Grissel Amaya, the Public Ministry’s special prosecutor for crimes against women, more than 1,500 women were murdered in Honduras from 2008 to 2011. The Public Ministry received more than 20,000 reports of domestic violence during the period and more than 11,000 reports of sexual violence, Amaya told reporters on Nov. 25.
Thousands attended a demonstration in Guatemala City to demand an end to machista violence, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 650 women this year. Participants included university students, indigenous women, professionals and activists. (EFE 11/26/11 via La Opinión (Los Angeles))
In Mexico the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress marked Nov. 25 with the publication of a book, Feminicidio en México; aproximación, tendencias y cambios 1985-2009, dealing with femicides over a 24-year period. The authors found that there had been 34,176 murders of women during the period and that the rate of these murders had increased by 68%. A total of 17.2% of the victims were under the age of 18.
One of the authors, María de la Paz López, noted in an interview that there had been a jump in murders of women from 2007 to 2009, after Mexico began militarizing the fight against narco-trafficking. She said the available data couldn’t establish a relation between the murders and the “drug war,” but she indicated that the recent climate of violence in Mexico provided an environment that could encourage violence against women. Like other Mexican specialists in the subject, the book’s authors stressed the importance of creating legislation that treats femicide as a separate criminal category [see Update #1084]. (Milenio (Mexico) 11/26/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/26/11)
In Haiti the feminist organization Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA) was planning to send a caravan to Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border, on Nov. 25 to “increase awareness on the part of the local authorities” about violence against women. SOFA spokesperson Olga Benoit said this was part of a long-term campaign to end the practice of accepting attacks on women as normal and downplaying their importance; eventually the group hopes to set up a center for victims of violence in the town. A total of 24,369 cases of violence against women were reported in Haiti from 2002 and 2011, according to figures released on Nov. 25 by the National Dialogue Against Violent Acts Committed Against Women. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/25/11, 11/26/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico
South America: Coming Together to Preserve the La Plata Basin
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3317-south-america-coming-together-to-preserve-the-la-plata-basin
Argentina Inundated with E-Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3320--argentina-inundated-with-e-waste-
Brazil: Guarani Leader Slain by Masked Gunmen
http://ww4report.com/node/10581
Chevron Takes “Full Responsibility” for Brazil Oil Spill
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/21/chevron-takes-full-responsibility-for-brazil-oil-spill/
Peru: supposedly non-existent "uncontacted" tribesmen kill intruder
http://ww4report.com/node/10590
Peru: indefinite occupation declared to halt mine in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10595
Ecuador: indigenous leader sentenced to prison for "defamation"
http://ww4report.com/node/10593
FARC executes prisoners in rescue attempt: Bogotá
http://ww4report.com/node/10587
Chávez repatriates Venezuelan gold from European banks
http://ww4report.com/node/10589
Interview with Gioconda Mota: The Fight for Abortion in Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6650
Free Markets and the Food Crisis in Central America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5726
France Approves Manuel Noriega’s Extradition to Panama
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/24/france-approves-manuel-noriegas-extradition-to-panama/
Thanksgiving Rally of the 99% Encachimbado and Indignado in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3324-thanksgiving-rally-of-the-99-encachimbado-and-indignado-in-el-sa
Ex-general Replaces Leftist Leader in El Salvador’s Security Cabinet as Washington Reasserts Influence in Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3325-ex-general-replaces-leftist-leader-in-el-salvadors-security-cabinet-as-washington-reasserts-influence-in-central-america
Honduran Coup General Seeks Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3318-honduran-coup-general-seeks-presidency
Belize Government Defies Supreme Court Ruling; Grants Oil Company Permit to Maya Lands
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3321-belize-government-defies-supreme-court-ruling-grants-oil-company-permit-to-maya-lands
Belize: government grants oil company permit to Maya lands
http://ww4report.com/node/10588
Mexico: Calderón to The Hague?
http://ww4report.com/node/10594
AMLO’s Moment (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/22/amlo%E2%80%99s-moment
Mexican Indigenous Community Boycotts Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3314-mexican-indigenous-community-boycotts-elections-
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, 29 November 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
WNU #1106: Colombian Students Suspend Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1106, November 20, 2011
1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
Students began returning to classes in Colombia’s public universities on Nov. 17, a day after the government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos formally withdrew a proposed law that the students considered an effort to privatize higher education. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the coordinating group for the student movement, quickly responded by announcing the suspension of a month-old strike that had shut down the country’s public universities and many of the private schools, although the group said students at some universities may stay on strike over local issues.
National student mobilizations will continue, according to MANE leaders, including a continental day of action on Nov. 24 that Colombian and Chilean students had planned earlier [see Update #1105]. Chilean schools have been on strike for six months in a similar struggle for public education. Students from Guatemala have also decided to join the Nov. 24 demonstrations, which may draw support in other countries as well.
In addition to withdrawing the proposed Law 112—an amendment to Law 30, which currently regulates higher education--President Santos’ government met another of the students’ conditions by agreeing to hold broad discussions on the higher education system with students, professors and administrators. The government also agreed not to cancel the current semester, but individual universities will be allowed to cancel if they feel they can’t make up the lost time.
“We know that what’s been accomplished so far is without any doubt a victory against the desire to privatize and in favor of a system of higher education with university autonomy and democracy, one that is national and has serious scientific and academic content,” MANE said in its announcement. But MANE spokesperson Álvaro Forero warned that the government might go back on its promises. “That’s why it’s [only] a suspension of the strike,” he said. The students are right to maintain their demonstrations and not to trust the government, historian Mauricio Archila told the Colombian weekly magazine Semana. “About 20% of the protests in Colombia between 1975 and 2010 happened because of [government] noncompliance with agreements or laws. There’s an historical reason for being distrustful.” (Semana 11/17/11; Adital (Brazil) 11/17/11; Colombia Reports 11/17/11)
President Santos' concessions to the students have brought criticism from his allies on the right. On Nov. 10 Santos’ cousin, Francisco Santos, posted a video blog on YouTube charging that the president “doesn't like to confront problems.” The students should be met “forcefully, with the legal arm of state repression,” including the use of electric shocks to control nonviolent protesters, according to Francisco Santos, who was vice president during the 2002-2010 administration of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and is now a host on RCN radio. The video quickly went viral, outraging many viewers, and the former vice president, who handled human rights issues for the Uribe administration, posted an apology on Nov. 11. (Colombia Reports 11/11/11, ___ )
*2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
Haitian activists have started an international campaign to force Port-au-Prince apparel assembly plants to rehire six union members who were dismissed in the last week of September, allegedly for their union activities [see Update #1099]. As part of the campaign, Yannick Etienne, an organizer with the Haitian leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), was in Montreal on Nov. 14 meeting with local labor rights activists and with media to put pressure on Gildan Activewear Inc., a Montreal-based apparel firm that has garments stitched at one of the Haitian plants.
The fired workers are members of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), which was officially launched in September to organize in Haiti’s mostly non-union garment assembly sector; the plants produce for export, largely to North America, and benefit from tax exemptions. Four of the SOTA members worked at Genesis S.A., a plant in the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) facility near the Port-au-Prince airport; the factory, which is owned by the wealthy Apaid family, produces almost exclusively for Gildan. A fifth unionist worked at another Sonapi plant, One World Apparel, which is owned by former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker and stitches garments for Hanesbrands Inc., based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Etienne told the Montreal Gazette that Batay Ouvriye and SOTA are pushing Gildan “to demand explanations from its Haitian factories.” Gildan senior vice-president of public and affairs Peter Iliopoulos says the company is investigating the Genesis firings and SOTA’s accusation “is something that we take very seriously.” Hanesbrands spokesperson Matt Hill said the One World Apparel firing is “under investigation” as well, and the US company will take “appropriate action.” Better Work Haiti, a labor standards program partnered with the International Labor Organization (ILO), is also said to be investigating the firings. Despite the promises, “we are still waiting,” Etienne said. (Montreal Gazette 11/14/11)
Georges Sassine, who heads the Haitian factory owners’ association, denies SOTA’s charges. “These incidents, they have nothing to do with people trying to form a union,” he told Inter Press Service (IPS) in October. “Now suddenly, the whole international community is on my back telling me I’m against people organizing.” According to Sassine, the problem is Batay Ouvriye, which he believes is trying to shut down factories completely, not organize a union. One World Apparel’s Baker also claims not to oppose labor organizing but says it has to be done “in the right way.”
Despite the owners’ assertion that they allow organizing, only one of the 23 assembly plants in Haiti has a union, according to Richard Lavallée, Better Work Haiti's director. The one union plant, in Ouanaminthe in Northeast department at the Dominican border, was organized by Batay Ouvriye [see Update #829].
Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the UN special envoy to Haiti, regularly promotes the creation of assembly plants as a way to develop Haiti’s economy. Last year IPS asked Clinton asked how this would be different from the growth of the assembly plant sector in the 1980s, which seemed to do nothing to improve Haiti’s economic situation. The 1980s manufacturing boom “couldn’t be sustained because nothing ever happened inside Haiti,” Clinton answered. “So this time what we're trying to do is build the capacity of Haitians to govern themselves…. It's a very different thing now. This is a piece of a much broader strategy.” (IPS 10/27/11)
*3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
On Nov. 16 the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, general secretary of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM). AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and United Steelworkers (USW) president Leo Gerard made the presentation at ceremony in the federation’s Washington, DC headquarters; Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Machaud (D-ME) also attended. The two US labor leaders both have links to the Mexican miners’ union: Trumka is the former head of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and Gerard and the USW have been working closely with the SNTMMSRM, which represents steelworkers as well as miners.
Oralia Casso de Gómez, Gómez Urrutia’s wife, accepted the award. The union leader himself couldn’t attend because of a US refusal to grant him a visa for the ceremony. The US State Department would only say that the reasons were “confidential.” Gómez Urrutia has been living in exile in Vancouver, Canada, since 2006, after the government of former Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) brought corruption charges against him.
The AFL-CIO award is the latest sign that the US labor movement is trying to build stronger links to independent unions in Mexico. Last year the SNTMMSRM and the USW were exploring the possibility of a merger [see Update #1040], and currently the AFL-CIO is supporting the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in a complaint it filed on Oct. 27 against the Mexican government under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a side agreement negotiated along with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Current Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly laid off 44,000 SME members in October 2009, setting off a conflict between the government and the union which has still not been completely resolved [see Update #1097]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/17/11 from correspondent; Huffington Post 11/18/11; SDPnoticias.com (Mexico) 11/14/11; Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) press release 10/27/11 via Market Watch)
*4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
Thousands of activists attended the 21st annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), in front of the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, on Nov. 20. The SOA Watch movement, which sponsors the protests, opposes the army’s training of Latin American soldiers, noting that SOA graduates have been among the region's most notorious human rights violators.
Organizers estimated the crowd at about 5,000, while Columbus police said 3,007 people participated. Only one person, Theresa Cusimano of Denver, was arrested for trespassing on the fort’s property; she faces a maximum sentence of six months for her act of civil disobedience. The largest SOA protest to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants [see Update #876], and the number of people arrested reached 85 in 2002. Attorney Bill Quigley, a professor of law at Loyola University in New Orleans who particpated, said he thought the lower activity this year resulted from the Occupy protests: “It’s a good thing that there’s so much going on around the country, and I think it reduced the turnout this year.” (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer 11/20/11; SOA Watch blog 11/20/11)
Chicago activist Chris Spicer, who was recently released from federal prison after serving a six-month sentence for civil disobedience at the 2010 SOA protest, was arrested again in nearby Lumpkin, Georgia, on Nov. 18, this time for trespassing at the Stewart Detention Center during a march of 270 people for immigrant rights. The Stewart facility is the country’s largest privately owned immigrant detention center. “The SOA and inhumane immigration policies are part of the same racist system of violence and domination,” Spicer said, referring to the fact that many immigrants to the US are refugees from violence by US-trained militaries. Stewart County judge Wayne Ammons set Spicer’s bail at $5,000. (SOA Watch blog 11/18/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Argentina: Beyond the ‘High Dollar’
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/17/argentina-beyond-%E2%80%98high-dollar%E2%80%99
Chile: When Triumphant Neoliberalism Begins to Crack
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3303-chile-when-triumphant-neoliberalism-begins-to-crack
Brazil deploys military forces, pledges
http://ww4report.com/node/10542
Masked Gunmen Attack Brazilian Indian Leader in Shock Execution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3313-masked-gunmen-attack-brazilian-indian-leader-in-shock-execution-
Brazil: Forced Evictions Must Not Mar Rio Olympics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3306-brazil-forced-evictions-must-not-mar-rio-olympics
Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3308-bolivia-agrees-to-restore-us-diplomatic-ties
A Political Victory for Bolivia
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/19/political-victory-bolivia
Colombia: new FARC chief "Timochenko" blasts Santos government
http://ww4report.com/node/10554
Colombian Student Protesters Demand Quality - and Equality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3302-colombian-student-protesters-demand-quality-and-equality
Venezuela’s Economic Growth Doubles 2011 Forecast, Grows 4.2% in Third Quarter
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6642
Venezuela Sends National Guard To The Streets To Fight Crime
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/18/venezuela-sends-national-guard-to-the-streets-to-fight-crime/
U.S. Plays Shadowy Role in Salvadoran Security Minister’s Resignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3310-us-plays-shadowy-role-in-salvadoran-security-ministers-resignation
Honduras: Wife Of Ousted President Zelaya To Run In 2013
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/17/honduras-wife-of-ousted-president-zelaya-to-run-in-2013/
Mexico: Zetas kill bloggers
http://ww4report.com/node/10540
Another Tijuana narco-tunnel uncovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541
Ciudad Juárez Is Not Only Violence (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/18/ciudad-ju%C3%A1rez-not-only-violence
Mexico: Police Beatings, Jail Time and Threats Won’t Deter Indignadxs de Juarez Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3311-mexico-police-beatings-jail-time-and-threats-wont-deter-juarez-activists
Mexico: PRI Wins Michoacan Governor Election, Preliminary Results Say
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/15/mexico-pri-wins-michoacan-governor-election-preliminary-results-say/
The Mexican Lefts Pick a Candidate
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/15/mexican-lefts-pick-candidate
Lopez Obrador to run for Mexican presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3307-lopez-obrador-to-run-for-mexican-presidency-
The Assault on Autonomous Education in Southeast Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3305-the-assault-on-autonomous-education-in-southeast-mexico
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 #1106, November 20, 2011
1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
Students began returning to classes in Colombia’s public universities on Nov. 17, a day after the government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos formally withdrew a proposed law that the students considered an effort to privatize higher education. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the coordinating group for the student movement, quickly responded by announcing the suspension of a month-old strike that had shut down the country’s public universities and many of the private schools, although the group said students at some universities may stay on strike over local issues.
National student mobilizations will continue, according to MANE leaders, including a continental day of action on Nov. 24 that Colombian and Chilean students had planned earlier [see Update #1105]. Chilean schools have been on strike for six months in a similar struggle for public education. Students from Guatemala have also decided to join the Nov. 24 demonstrations, which may draw support in other countries as well.
In addition to withdrawing the proposed Law 112—an amendment to Law 30, which currently regulates higher education--President Santos’ government met another of the students’ conditions by agreeing to hold broad discussions on the higher education system with students, professors and administrators. The government also agreed not to cancel the current semester, but individual universities will be allowed to cancel if they feel they can’t make up the lost time.
“We know that what’s been accomplished so far is without any doubt a victory against the desire to privatize and in favor of a system of higher education with university autonomy and democracy, one that is national and has serious scientific and academic content,” MANE said in its announcement. But MANE spokesperson Álvaro Forero warned that the government might go back on its promises. “That’s why it’s [only] a suspension of the strike,” he said. The students are right to maintain their demonstrations and not to trust the government, historian Mauricio Archila told the Colombian weekly magazine Semana. “About 20% of the protests in Colombia between 1975 and 2010 happened because of [government] noncompliance with agreements or laws. There’s an historical reason for being distrustful.” (Semana 11/17/11; Adital (Brazil) 11/17/11; Colombia Reports 11/17/11)
President Santos' concessions to the students have brought criticism from his allies on the right. On Nov. 10 Santos’ cousin, Francisco Santos, posted a video blog on YouTube charging that the president “doesn't like to confront problems.” The students should be met “forcefully, with the legal arm of state repression,” including the use of electric shocks to control nonviolent protesters, according to Francisco Santos, who was vice president during the 2002-2010 administration of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and is now a host on RCN radio. The video quickly went viral, outraging many viewers, and the former vice president, who handled human rights issues for the Uribe administration, posted an apology on Nov. 11. (Colombia Reports 11/11/11, ___ )
*2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
Haitian activists have started an international campaign to force Port-au-Prince apparel assembly plants to rehire six union members who were dismissed in the last week of September, allegedly for their union activities [see Update #1099]. As part of the campaign, Yannick Etienne, an organizer with the Haitian leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), was in Montreal on Nov. 14 meeting with local labor rights activists and with media to put pressure on Gildan Activewear Inc., a Montreal-based apparel firm that has garments stitched at one of the Haitian plants.
The fired workers are members of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), which was officially launched in September to organize in Haiti’s mostly non-union garment assembly sector; the plants produce for export, largely to North America, and benefit from tax exemptions. Four of the SOTA members worked at Genesis S.A., a plant in the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) facility near the Port-au-Prince airport; the factory, which is owned by the wealthy Apaid family, produces almost exclusively for Gildan. A fifth unionist worked at another Sonapi plant, One World Apparel, which is owned by former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker and stitches garments for Hanesbrands Inc., based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Etienne told the Montreal Gazette that Batay Ouvriye and SOTA are pushing Gildan “to demand explanations from its Haitian factories.” Gildan senior vice-president of public and affairs Peter Iliopoulos says the company is investigating the Genesis firings and SOTA’s accusation “is something that we take very seriously.” Hanesbrands spokesperson Matt Hill said the One World Apparel firing is “under investigation” as well, and the US company will take “appropriate action.” Better Work Haiti, a labor standards program partnered with the International Labor Organization (ILO), is also said to be investigating the firings. Despite the promises, “we are still waiting,” Etienne said. (Montreal Gazette 11/14/11)
Georges Sassine, who heads the Haitian factory owners’ association, denies SOTA’s charges. “These incidents, they have nothing to do with people trying to form a union,” he told Inter Press Service (IPS) in October. “Now suddenly, the whole international community is on my back telling me I’m against people organizing.” According to Sassine, the problem is Batay Ouvriye, which he believes is trying to shut down factories completely, not organize a union. One World Apparel’s Baker also claims not to oppose labor organizing but says it has to be done “in the right way.”
Despite the owners’ assertion that they allow organizing, only one of the 23 assembly plants in Haiti has a union, according to Richard Lavallée, Better Work Haiti's director. The one union plant, in Ouanaminthe in Northeast department at the Dominican border, was organized by Batay Ouvriye [see Update #829].
Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the UN special envoy to Haiti, regularly promotes the creation of assembly plants as a way to develop Haiti’s economy. Last year IPS asked Clinton asked how this would be different from the growth of the assembly plant sector in the 1980s, which seemed to do nothing to improve Haiti’s economic situation. The 1980s manufacturing boom “couldn’t be sustained because nothing ever happened inside Haiti,” Clinton answered. “So this time what we're trying to do is build the capacity of Haitians to govern themselves…. It's a very different thing now. This is a piece of a much broader strategy.” (IPS 10/27/11)
*3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
On Nov. 16 the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, general secretary of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM). AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and United Steelworkers (USW) president Leo Gerard made the presentation at ceremony in the federation’s Washington, DC headquarters; Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Machaud (D-ME) also attended. The two US labor leaders both have links to the Mexican miners’ union: Trumka is the former head of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and Gerard and the USW have been working closely with the SNTMMSRM, which represents steelworkers as well as miners.
Oralia Casso de Gómez, Gómez Urrutia’s wife, accepted the award. The union leader himself couldn’t attend because of a US refusal to grant him a visa for the ceremony. The US State Department would only say that the reasons were “confidential.” Gómez Urrutia has been living in exile in Vancouver, Canada, since 2006, after the government of former Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) brought corruption charges against him.
The AFL-CIO award is the latest sign that the US labor movement is trying to build stronger links to independent unions in Mexico. Last year the SNTMMSRM and the USW were exploring the possibility of a merger [see Update #1040], and currently the AFL-CIO is supporting the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in a complaint it filed on Oct. 27 against the Mexican government under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a side agreement negotiated along with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Current Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly laid off 44,000 SME members in October 2009, setting off a conflict between the government and the union which has still not been completely resolved [see Update #1097]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/17/11 from correspondent; Huffington Post 11/18/11; SDPnoticias.com (Mexico) 11/14/11; Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) press release 10/27/11 via Market Watch)
*4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
Thousands of activists attended the 21st annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), in front of the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, on Nov. 20. The SOA Watch movement, which sponsors the protests, opposes the army’s training of Latin American soldiers, noting that SOA graduates have been among the region's most notorious human rights violators.
Organizers estimated the crowd at about 5,000, while Columbus police said 3,007 people participated. Only one person, Theresa Cusimano of Denver, was arrested for trespassing on the fort’s property; she faces a maximum sentence of six months for her act of civil disobedience. The largest SOA protest to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants [see Update #876], and the number of people arrested reached 85 in 2002. Attorney Bill Quigley, a professor of law at Loyola University in New Orleans who particpated, said he thought the lower activity this year resulted from the Occupy protests: “It’s a good thing that there’s so much going on around the country, and I think it reduced the turnout this year.” (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer 11/20/11; SOA Watch blog 11/20/11)
Chicago activist Chris Spicer, who was recently released from federal prison after serving a six-month sentence for civil disobedience at the 2010 SOA protest, was arrested again in nearby Lumpkin, Georgia, on Nov. 18, this time for trespassing at the Stewart Detention Center during a march of 270 people for immigrant rights. The Stewart facility is the country’s largest privately owned immigrant detention center. “The SOA and inhumane immigration policies are part of the same racist system of violence and domination,” Spicer said, referring to the fact that many immigrants to the US are refugees from violence by US-trained militaries. Stewart County judge Wayne Ammons set Spicer’s bail at $5,000. (SOA Watch blog 11/18/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Argentina: Beyond the ‘High Dollar’
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/17/argentina-beyond-%E2%80%98high-dollar%E2%80%99
Chile: When Triumphant Neoliberalism Begins to Crack
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3303-chile-when-triumphant-neoliberalism-begins-to-crack
Brazil deploys military forces, pledges
http://ww4report.com/node/10542
Masked Gunmen Attack Brazilian Indian Leader in Shock Execution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3313-masked-gunmen-attack-brazilian-indian-leader-in-shock-execution-
Brazil: Forced Evictions Must Not Mar Rio Olympics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3306-brazil-forced-evictions-must-not-mar-rio-olympics
Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3308-bolivia-agrees-to-restore-us-diplomatic-ties
A Political Victory for Bolivia
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/19/political-victory-bolivia
Colombia: new FARC chief "Timochenko" blasts Santos government
http://ww4report.com/node/10554
Colombian Student Protesters Demand Quality - and Equality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3302-colombian-student-protesters-demand-quality-and-equality
Venezuela’s Economic Growth Doubles 2011 Forecast, Grows 4.2% in Third Quarter
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6642
Venezuela Sends National Guard To The Streets To Fight Crime
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/18/venezuela-sends-national-guard-to-the-streets-to-fight-crime/
U.S. Plays Shadowy Role in Salvadoran Security Minister’s Resignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3310-us-plays-shadowy-role-in-salvadoran-security-ministers-resignation
Honduras: Wife Of Ousted President Zelaya To Run In 2013
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/17/honduras-wife-of-ousted-president-zelaya-to-run-in-2013/
Mexico: Zetas kill bloggers
http://ww4report.com/node/10540
Another Tijuana narco-tunnel uncovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541
Ciudad Juárez Is Not Only Violence (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/18/ciudad-ju%C3%A1rez-not-only-violence
Mexico: Police Beatings, Jail Time and Threats Won’t Deter Indignadxs de Juarez Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3311-mexico-police-beatings-jail-time-and-threats-wont-deter-juarez-activists
Mexico: PRI Wins Michoacan Governor Election, Preliminary Results Say
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/15/mexico-pri-wins-michoacan-governor-election-preliminary-results-say/
The Mexican Lefts Pick a Candidate
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/15/mexican-lefts-pick-candidate
Lopez Obrador to run for Mexican presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3307-lopez-obrador-to-run-for-mexican-presidency-
The Assault on Autonomous Education in Southeast Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3305-the-assault-on-autonomous-education-in-southeast-mexico
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, 15 November 2011
WNU #1105: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1105, November 13, 2011
1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
Chilean students are planning to join with Colombian students in a binational demonstration on Nov. 24 as part of ongoing protests in defense of education in the two countries. Leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) made the announcement after a 12-hour meeting on Nov. 12 in the Catholic University of the North in the city of Antofagasta; the leaders also called for local demonstrations in Chile on Nov. 14, 17 and 18.
Chilean students have been on strike for six months around demands to reverse the privatized and decentralized higher educational system put in place under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; a similar strike began in Colombia on Oct. 11 and 12 to protest proposed legislation that students said would lead to privatization of their universities. These are the second and third major strikes by students in Latin America in the past two years; the first came in the spring of 2010, when students shut down Puerto Rico’s public university [see Updates #1057, 1102, 1104].
In both Chile and Colombia there are signs that the student strikers and the rightwing governments may be able to work out compromises. In Chile, Confech and secondary school leaders met with opposition senators and deputies on Nov. 9 in the port city of Valparaíso, where the National Congress holds its sessions; some 30,000 students and teachers marched there later in the day. Opposition politicians are now calling for free education for 70% of the poorer students at public universities, and possibly a similar measure for private universities; these politicians also propose returning control of the primary and secondary schools to the central government.
Under pressure from both students and the opposition, the government of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera has offered to increase the share of education by 7.2% in the budget for 2012--to $11.65 billion out of a total budget of $60 billion. The students have rejected this as “insufficient,” but political observers see a significant shift in Finance Minister Felipe Larraín acknowledgment that there may have to be changes in the tax structure. Previously the government insisted that it would not increase taxes. (La Tercera (Chile) 11/13/11; EFE 11/13/11 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami); La Jornada (Mexico) 11/10/11 from correspondent)
Chilean students too may be under pressure to settle after six months of protests. Public support for their demands remains high but seems to be slipping. Support for the demands fell to from 79% in September to 67% in October, according to a survey of 1,110 people by the Adimark GfK research group, while opposition to the students’ tactics rose from 45% to 57%. Support for President Piñera remained around 31%. (Bloomberg 11/7/11)
In Colombia the government moved toward a compromise after less than a month of strikes and mobilizations. On Nov. 9 President Juan Manuel Santos offered to withdraw his proposed changes to Law 30, which governs higher education, if the students ended the strike. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the strike’s national coordinating group, met on Nov. 12 to discuss Santos’ offer. The next day student leaders announced that they would lift the strike if the government met three conditions: it would need to suspend discussions of the proposed legislation in Congress, agree to a dialogue with the students on building a new educational system, and give guarantees that the academic period would be completed. (LJ 11/11/11 from AFP, DPA, Notimex; Europa Press 11/14/11)
Even while apparently considering a compromise, the two governments have continued to use force against the student movements. In Chile the carabineros militarized police arrested 57 protesters for “disorders and illegal occupation” at the Santiago de Chile University. Police agents claimed they found six Molotov cocktails during the raid, along with some acid and fuel. The university rector’s office said the protesters had maintained an occupation of school facilities despite a decision by a majority of students to end it while continuing the mobilization. (Adital (Brazil) 11/11/11 from TeleSUR)
In Colombia, police agents from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) and the Mobile Carabinero Squad (Emcar) used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a demonstration on Nov. 11 in Popayán municipality in the southwestern department of Cauca. Ten students were arrested. According to participants and local grassroots organizations, the demonstration, part of a national day of protest by students and unionists, had been peaceful until police agents intervened. The Isaías Francisco Cifuentes Human Rights Network of the Colombian Southwest said letters of protest could be sent to President Juan Manuel Santos (comunicacionesvp@presidencia.gov.co), Attorney General Viviane Morales, (denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co ) and other officials, along with a copy to redfcifuentes@gmail.com . (Adital 11/11/11)
Correction: The item originally omitted the date of the meeting in Antofagasta.
*2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), acknowledged in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 that the mission had received a petition for relief filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of cholera victims. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010 was caused by poor sanitation at a base operated by MINISTAH, a 10,000-member international military and police operation which has occupied the country since June 2004 [see Update #1094]. Almost 500,000 Haitians have contracted the disease over the past year, and some 6,500 have died from it. MINUSTAH and the United Nations (UN) have refused to accept responsibility for the epidemic. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/11/11)
The petition was filed on Nov. 3 by the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and its Haitian affiliate, the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI). At a press conference in New York on Nov. 8, IJDH director Brian Concannon said the hope was that MINUSTAH would issue a public apology, set up a tribunal for evaluating the victims’ claims and fund a program to provide sanitation, potable water and medical treatment. Haitian grassroots organizations have made similar demands in the past [see Update #1086].
It isn’t clear whether any legal mechanisms exist that could compel MINUSTAH to compensate the victims. The occupation force is covered by a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the Haitian government and the UN. The agreement requires MINUSTAH to set up a standing commission to handle claims, but after seven years in Haiti the force has still not created the commission. At the New York press conference Concannon said the petitioners will press their claims in a Haitian court if MINUSTAH fails to act on the petition, but he suggested that the real goal was to appeal to international public opinion. “We’re hoping that this is the case that’s too big to fail,” he said. (Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/8/11)
Meanwhile, the Haitian government and Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health, a Boston-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that runs a network of clinics in Haiti, are planning a pilot program to vaccinate 100,000 people against cholera starting in January. Dr. Paul Farmer, a US medical doctor and a Partners in Health co-founder, announced the $870,000 program at an Oct. 19 press conference in Miami, saying that vaccination was now necessary because medical NGOs were withdrawing from Haiti. The vaccine, Shanchol, is produced by the Paris-based multinational Sanofi SA (formerly Sanofi-Aventis).
[Farmer also serves as the UN deputy special envoy to Haiti, assisting former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), while at the same time sitting on the board of directors of the IJDH, the group that filed the petition against MINUSTAH.]
Other medical experts question the value of vaccinations in fighting the water-borne epidemic when Haiti needs funding to build permanent infrastructure to make clean water available to the population. One problem with the vaccine is that has to be administered in two doses two weeks apart, a difficult procedure in a country where hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced because of a January 2010 earthquake. The French-based group Doctors Without Border (known by its French intitials, MSF) calculates that vaccinating the entire population of 9.5 million would cost $40 million; MSF says the vaccine’s protection starts to diminish after three years. (Reuters 10/19/11; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/10/11)
On Nov. 8 the New York Times noted that Cuban doctors in Haiti have had “a lead role” in fighting the epidemic. A Cuban clinic in Mirebalais in the Central Plateau was the first to report the outbreak, and since then the Cuban medical teams have treated 76,000 of the country’s nearly half million cases, with 272 fatalities—a mortality rate of just 0.36%. The average for the country is 1.4%, more than three times the rate at the Cuban clinics. (NYT 11/8/11)
*3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
At a Nov. 10 session, the Mexican Senate called on the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally. The programs, Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 and 2010, were supposed to help US agents trace illegal gun smuggling by monitoring suspect weapons purchases. But the agents lost track of some 2,300 firearms that were transported into Mexico, largely for the use of drug cartels [see Update #1104].
“If we sent packages of drugs to the US in a government operation,” said Jesús Murillo Karam, a senator from Hidalgo state for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), “they’d be asking us to put those officials in jail—and they’d be right, as we are when they send us arms this way.” The senators agreed that Mexico should demand the US officials’ extradition; they also expressed their support for an initiative by US attorney general Eric Holder for controlling gun sales near the Mexico-US border. (Prensa Latina 11/10/11; Milenio (Mexico) 11/11/11)
In the course of the debate, Sen. Pablo Gómez Alvarez, who represents the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), charged that President Calderón was proposing operations like Fast and Furious as part of his “war on drugs.” Sen. Gómez was referring to a package of amendments to the Federal Law Against Organized Crime that were sent to the Senate on Aug. 31, 2010; the Senate has yet to act on the proposed legislation. One section of the proposed amendments would allow the government to use “goods or resources that could be the object, instrument or product of crime…in order to permit, under close watch, their delivery, distribution or transportation within the national territory.” The goal would be “to identify and, if possible, detain, with the use of necessary technological advances, the persons or organizations involved.”
Gómez said the amendments would also allow for undercover agents to infiltrate criminal organizations, giving the agents a “license to kill,” like the fictitious James Bond. The senator called the measure “the best way for legally creating a criminal state in order to fight crime.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/13/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Paraguay Cattle Health Scare Blamed On Human Error
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/08/paraguay-cattle-health-scare-blamed-on-human-error/
Brazil: court approves controversial dam construction
http://ww4report.com/node/10528
Bolivia: TIPNIS 'Untouchable' But Still Controversial
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/11/bolivia-tipnis-untouchable-still-controversial
Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties —but just says no to DEA
http://ww4report.com/node/10525
Peru: anti-mining protesters occupy Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10531
Ecuador: indigenous leaders file OAS complaint against Correa
http://www.ww4report.com/node/9754#comment-329283
AFL-CIO Makes Two Major Labor Conflicts a Test of Labor Action Plan with Colombia
http://www.usleap.org/afl-cio-makes-two-major-labor-conflicts-test-labor-action-plan-colombia
Venezuela Rejects “Aggressive” Accusations by US Official Brownfield on Drug Trafficking
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6627
Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of U.S. Policy (Photo Essay)
https://nacla.org/nicaragua-surviving-legacy-us-policy-photo-essay
A Peaceful Nicaraguan Election Brings a Mandate for Sandinista Social Programs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/3296-a-peaceful-nicaraguan-election-brings-a-mandate-for-sandinista-social-programs
Amnesty calls on Nicaragua to investigate electoral violence
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10512#comment-329259
Voters Elect Presidents in Nicaragua and Guatemala
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/9/voters-elect-presidents-nicaragua-and-guatemala
Honduras: Purging Schools of Police Crime
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3299-honduras-purging-schools-of-police-crime
“Genocidal” General Wins Presidential Elections in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3293-genocidal-general-wins-presidential-elections-in-guatemala
Chiapas: political prisoners suspend hunger strike, fearing risk to lives (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10524
Report on the 2011 Observation and Solidarity Brigade to Zapatista Communities (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3297-report-on-the-2011-observation-and-solidarity-brigade-to-zapatista-communities
Mexico: HRW charges widespread rights abuses in "drug war"
http://ww4report.com/node/10523
Mexico: interior secretary killed in (mysterious?) air crash —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10526
The U.S. War in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/8/us-war-mexico
Cuba: Same-Sex Couples Want to Be Counted
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3300-cuba-same-sex-couples-want-to-be-counted
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 #1105, November 13, 2011
1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
Chilean students are planning to join with Colombian students in a binational demonstration on Nov. 24 as part of ongoing protests in defense of education in the two countries. Leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) made the announcement after a 12-hour meeting on Nov. 12 in the Catholic University of the North in the city of Antofagasta; the leaders also called for local demonstrations in Chile on Nov. 14, 17 and 18.
Chilean students have been on strike for six months around demands to reverse the privatized and decentralized higher educational system put in place under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; a similar strike began in Colombia on Oct. 11 and 12 to protest proposed legislation that students said would lead to privatization of their universities. These are the second and third major strikes by students in Latin America in the past two years; the first came in the spring of 2010, when students shut down Puerto Rico’s public university [see Updates #1057, 1102, 1104].
In both Chile and Colombia there are signs that the student strikers and the rightwing governments may be able to work out compromises. In Chile, Confech and secondary school leaders met with opposition senators and deputies on Nov. 9 in the port city of Valparaíso, where the National Congress holds its sessions; some 30,000 students and teachers marched there later in the day. Opposition politicians are now calling for free education for 70% of the poorer students at public universities, and possibly a similar measure for private universities; these politicians also propose returning control of the primary and secondary schools to the central government.
Under pressure from both students and the opposition, the government of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera has offered to increase the share of education by 7.2% in the budget for 2012--to $11.65 billion out of a total budget of $60 billion. The students have rejected this as “insufficient,” but political observers see a significant shift in Finance Minister Felipe Larraín acknowledgment that there may have to be changes in the tax structure. Previously the government insisted that it would not increase taxes. (La Tercera (Chile) 11/13/11; EFE 11/13/11 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami); La Jornada (Mexico) 11/10/11 from correspondent)
Chilean students too may be under pressure to settle after six months of protests. Public support for their demands remains high but seems to be slipping. Support for the demands fell to from 79% in September to 67% in October, according to a survey of 1,110 people by the Adimark GfK research group, while opposition to the students’ tactics rose from 45% to 57%. Support for President Piñera remained around 31%. (Bloomberg 11/7/11)
In Colombia the government moved toward a compromise after less than a month of strikes and mobilizations. On Nov. 9 President Juan Manuel Santos offered to withdraw his proposed changes to Law 30, which governs higher education, if the students ended the strike. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the strike’s national coordinating group, met on Nov. 12 to discuss Santos’ offer. The next day student leaders announced that they would lift the strike if the government met three conditions: it would need to suspend discussions of the proposed legislation in Congress, agree to a dialogue with the students on building a new educational system, and give guarantees that the academic period would be completed. (LJ 11/11/11 from AFP, DPA, Notimex; Europa Press 11/14/11)
Even while apparently considering a compromise, the two governments have continued to use force against the student movements. In Chile the carabineros militarized police arrested 57 protesters for “disorders and illegal occupation” at the Santiago de Chile University. Police agents claimed they found six Molotov cocktails during the raid, along with some acid and fuel. The university rector’s office said the protesters had maintained an occupation of school facilities despite a decision by a majority of students to end it while continuing the mobilization. (Adital (Brazil) 11/11/11 from TeleSUR)
In Colombia, police agents from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) and the Mobile Carabinero Squad (Emcar) used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a demonstration on Nov. 11 in Popayán municipality in the southwestern department of Cauca. Ten students were arrested. According to participants and local grassroots organizations, the demonstration, part of a national day of protest by students and unionists, had been peaceful until police agents intervened. The Isaías Francisco Cifuentes Human Rights Network of the Colombian Southwest said letters of protest could be sent to President Juan Manuel Santos (comunicacionesvp@presidencia.gov.co), Attorney General Viviane Morales, (denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co ) and other officials, along with a copy to redfcifuentes@gmail.com . (Adital 11/11/11)
Correction: The item originally omitted the date of the meeting in Antofagasta.
*2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), acknowledged in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 that the mission had received a petition for relief filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of cholera victims. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010 was caused by poor sanitation at a base operated by MINISTAH, a 10,000-member international military and police operation which has occupied the country since June 2004 [see Update #1094]. Almost 500,000 Haitians have contracted the disease over the past year, and some 6,500 have died from it. MINUSTAH and the United Nations (UN) have refused to accept responsibility for the epidemic. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/11/11)
The petition was filed on Nov. 3 by the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and its Haitian affiliate, the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI). At a press conference in New York on Nov. 8, IJDH director Brian Concannon said the hope was that MINUSTAH would issue a public apology, set up a tribunal for evaluating the victims’ claims and fund a program to provide sanitation, potable water and medical treatment. Haitian grassroots organizations have made similar demands in the past [see Update #1086].
It isn’t clear whether any legal mechanisms exist that could compel MINUSTAH to compensate the victims. The occupation force is covered by a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the Haitian government and the UN. The agreement requires MINUSTAH to set up a standing commission to handle claims, but after seven years in Haiti the force has still not created the commission. At the New York press conference Concannon said the petitioners will press their claims in a Haitian court if MINUSTAH fails to act on the petition, but he suggested that the real goal was to appeal to international public opinion. “We’re hoping that this is the case that’s too big to fail,” he said. (Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/8/11)
Meanwhile, the Haitian government and Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health, a Boston-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that runs a network of clinics in Haiti, are planning a pilot program to vaccinate 100,000 people against cholera starting in January. Dr. Paul Farmer, a US medical doctor and a Partners in Health co-founder, announced the $870,000 program at an Oct. 19 press conference in Miami, saying that vaccination was now necessary because medical NGOs were withdrawing from Haiti. The vaccine, Shanchol, is produced by the Paris-based multinational Sanofi SA (formerly Sanofi-Aventis).
[Farmer also serves as the UN deputy special envoy to Haiti, assisting former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), while at the same time sitting on the board of directors of the IJDH, the group that filed the petition against MINUSTAH.]
Other medical experts question the value of vaccinations in fighting the water-borne epidemic when Haiti needs funding to build permanent infrastructure to make clean water available to the population. One problem with the vaccine is that has to be administered in two doses two weeks apart, a difficult procedure in a country where hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced because of a January 2010 earthquake. The French-based group Doctors Without Border (known by its French intitials, MSF) calculates that vaccinating the entire population of 9.5 million would cost $40 million; MSF says the vaccine’s protection starts to diminish after three years. (Reuters 10/19/11; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/10/11)
On Nov. 8 the New York Times noted that Cuban doctors in Haiti have had “a lead role” in fighting the epidemic. A Cuban clinic in Mirebalais in the Central Plateau was the first to report the outbreak, and since then the Cuban medical teams have treated 76,000 of the country’s nearly half million cases, with 272 fatalities—a mortality rate of just 0.36%. The average for the country is 1.4%, more than three times the rate at the Cuban clinics. (NYT 11/8/11)
*3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
At a Nov. 10 session, the Mexican Senate called on the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally. The programs, Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 and 2010, were supposed to help US agents trace illegal gun smuggling by monitoring suspect weapons purchases. But the agents lost track of some 2,300 firearms that were transported into Mexico, largely for the use of drug cartels [see Update #1104].
“If we sent packages of drugs to the US in a government operation,” said Jesús Murillo Karam, a senator from Hidalgo state for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), “they’d be asking us to put those officials in jail—and they’d be right, as we are when they send us arms this way.” The senators agreed that Mexico should demand the US officials’ extradition; they also expressed their support for an initiative by US attorney general Eric Holder for controlling gun sales near the Mexico-US border. (Prensa Latina 11/10/11; Milenio (Mexico) 11/11/11)
In the course of the debate, Sen. Pablo Gómez Alvarez, who represents the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), charged that President Calderón was proposing operations like Fast and Furious as part of his “war on drugs.” Sen. Gómez was referring to a package of amendments to the Federal Law Against Organized Crime that were sent to the Senate on Aug. 31, 2010; the Senate has yet to act on the proposed legislation. One section of the proposed amendments would allow the government to use “goods or resources that could be the object, instrument or product of crime…in order to permit, under close watch, their delivery, distribution or transportation within the national territory.” The goal would be “to identify and, if possible, detain, with the use of necessary technological advances, the persons or organizations involved.”
Gómez said the amendments would also allow for undercover agents to infiltrate criminal organizations, giving the agents a “license to kill,” like the fictitious James Bond. The senator called the measure “the best way for legally creating a criminal state in order to fight crime.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/13/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Paraguay Cattle Health Scare Blamed On Human Error
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/08/paraguay-cattle-health-scare-blamed-on-human-error/
Brazil: court approves controversial dam construction
http://ww4report.com/node/10528
Bolivia: TIPNIS 'Untouchable' But Still Controversial
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/11/bolivia-tipnis-untouchable-still-controversial
Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties —but just says no to DEA
http://ww4report.com/node/10525
Peru: anti-mining protesters occupy Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10531
Ecuador: indigenous leaders file OAS complaint against Correa
http://www.ww4report.com/node/9754#comment-329283
AFL-CIO Makes Two Major Labor Conflicts a Test of Labor Action Plan with Colombia
http://www.usleap.org/afl-cio-makes-two-major-labor-conflicts-test-labor-action-plan-colombia
Venezuela Rejects “Aggressive” Accusations by US Official Brownfield on Drug Trafficking
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6627
Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of U.S. Policy (Photo Essay)
https://nacla.org/nicaragua-surviving-legacy-us-policy-photo-essay
A Peaceful Nicaraguan Election Brings a Mandate for Sandinista Social Programs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/3296-a-peaceful-nicaraguan-election-brings-a-mandate-for-sandinista-social-programs
Amnesty calls on Nicaragua to investigate electoral violence
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10512#comment-329259
Voters Elect Presidents in Nicaragua and Guatemala
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/9/voters-elect-presidents-nicaragua-and-guatemala
Honduras: Purging Schools of Police Crime
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3299-honduras-purging-schools-of-police-crime
“Genocidal” General Wins Presidential Elections in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3293-genocidal-general-wins-presidential-elections-in-guatemala
Chiapas: political prisoners suspend hunger strike, fearing risk to lives (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10524
Report on the 2011 Observation and Solidarity Brigade to Zapatista Communities (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3297-report-on-the-2011-observation-and-solidarity-brigade-to-zapatista-communities
Mexico: HRW charges widespread rights abuses in "drug war"
http://ww4report.com/node/10523
Mexico: interior secretary killed in (mysterious?) air crash —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10526
The U.S. War in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/8/us-war-mexico
Cuba: Same-Sex Couples Want to Be Counted
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3300-cuba-same-sex-couples-want-to-be-counted
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/
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http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
WNU #1104: Colombian Students Continue Massive Marches
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1104, November 6, 2011
1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
Tens of thousands of students and their supporters marched in cities across Colombia on Nov. 3 in a continuing struggle against proposed changes to Law 30, the legislation that has governed higher education since 1992. More than 1.8 million students from 37 public universities and at least 17 private ones have carried out an open-ended strike since Oct. 11 to protest the changes, which they say will “reduce education to a commodity.” They are also protesting Colombia’s free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, which the US Congress approved on Oct. 12 [see Updates #1101, 1102].
According to press reports, as many as 600,000 people joined the Nov. 3 demonstrations in 31 cities, including Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales and Armenia. In Bogotá the sheer number of protesters forced the local mass transit system, TransMilenio, to shut down during the evening, and major roads, including routes 30 and 45, were impassable because of traffic jams. The Bogotá protests included a public debate in the late afternoon; Education Minister María Fernanda Campo and other officials were invited but failed to attend. Later, at least 10,000 protesters held an evening of celebration in the Plaza de Bolívar, with dancing, puppets and a “kiss-a-thon” illuminated with torches.
The government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos has already sent its legislative proposal to Congress, and a committee of the Chamber of Representatives of the Congress is scheduled to begin debating on Nov. 8. The changes would give more academic and financial independence to individual universities, but students say this would force the institutions to generate their own income, opening up the system to the profit motive and to exploitation by multinational corporations. The strikers are demanding free, high-quality public university education. “[I]n a soldier they invest 18 milion pesos [about $9,400],” the students said, referring to Colombia’s mandatory military service; “in a student, hardly more than 2 million [$1,044].”
Student leaders insist that the government must withdraw the proposed changes before any negotiations can take place. The strike will continue indefinitely, they say, with mass demonstrations planned for each week—the same tactic Chilean students have used in a protest which has shut down much of Chile’s educational system since June [see Update #1102]. “[W]e will not permit the loss of public education,” Sergio Fernández, a spokesperson for the Colombian Student Organization (OCE), told Bogotá’s Radio W. “We would prefer to lose the semester, or whatever it takes, than to lose this right.” (Semana (Colombia) 11/3/11 from EFE and from staff; Prensa Latina 11/4/11; Colombia Reports 11/4/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/4/11 from PL, AFP, DPA, Notimex)
The 11 Congress members from the center-left Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) have joined with two representatives of the indigenous sectors and two from the Green Party (PV) to call for the government to withdraw its education proposal. The legislators argued that there can’t be a fair debate on the issue, since the government counts on the support of more than 90% of the legislators. When Education Minister Campo announced on Nov. 4 that the government would not withdraw the measure, PDS senator Camilo Romero Galeano called for her resignation. (Caracol (Colombia) 11/4/11; Radio Santa Fe (Bogotá) 11/4/11)
*2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
A US Congress member, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), has written US president Barack Obama asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children in Argentina during the 1976-1983 “dirty war” against suspected leftists. An estimated 30,000 people were disappeared, including hundreds of pregnant women whose babies are believed to have been taken by the military dictatorship then in power and given to adoptive parents. Argentine authorities have been seeking in formation on these cases to aid in the prosecution of former officials and to allow children to be reunited with their biological relatives.
“Thousands of families have waited more than 30 years to learn the fates of their loved ones, and we have an opportunity to make a contribution to truth and justice by helping to bring this troubling chapter in Argentina’s history to a close,” Hinchey wrote. “I ask that you follow through on your administration’s commitment to openness by reviewing these files for declassification. The release of these documents would once again demonstrate our nation’s dedication to human rights and open government.”
Hinchey was referring to documents held by the US military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central intelligence Agency (CIA). Last May the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted down an amendment Hinchey wrote that would have required the director of national intelligence to issue a report to Congress on Argentine human rights violations under the military dictatorship. (Buenos Aires Herald 11/3/11; AP 11/3/11 via CBS News)
*3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
Honduran police officials gave contradictory responses on Nov. 1 to a report published the day before about the disappearance of some 300 light automatic rifles (FAL, from the initials in Spanish) and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets from a police unit. The weapons, which were in the control of the Cobras special operations police group, were taken from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo broke the story on Oct. 31.
National Police spokesperson Silvio Inestroza insisted that this was an old case, referring to the similar disappearance of 186 weapons in 2007, also from a Cobras unit. But Police Internal Affairs director Simeón Flores said that a new arms theft had been reported two months earlier, and he asked why it hadn’t been investigated. José Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, the newly appointed head of the National Police, said that he didn’t know the details but that he had appointed a commission to study the matter. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11; El Heraldo 11/2/11)
Police director Ramírez had in fact only been in office since Oct. 31. Security Secretary Pompeyo Bonilla appointed him to replace José Luis Muñoz Licona following another police scandal: Tegucigalpa police chief Jorge Alberto Barralaga Hernández released four agents who are suspects in the murder of two university students; he told them to take a few days off and report back on Oct. 30. The four suspects never reappeared, and Barralaga Hernandez and Muñoz Licona were both dismissed. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 10/31/11)
Adding to the embarrassments for the government, on Oct. 30 the Associated Press wire service quoted an unnamed US law enforcement official who called Honduras “the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the US.” An estimated 250 to 300 tons of cocaine are shipped from South America through Honduras each year, according to the AP article. Much of the cocaine comes by sea, but Honduras is also the region’s main center for smuggling drugs by air. The unnamed US official said that 79% of the drug flights from South America to the north land in Honduras.
Large numbers of people are reportedly involved in the trade, from the populations of impoverished fishing communities to corrupt soldiers. Drug traffickers stole a military plane from the San Pedro Sula army base earlier this year, according to Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran security ministry; he claims that soldiers were involved in the crime. Rich landowners with property on the coast have also profited. The authorities “seized 13 luxurious homes and ranches and 17 boats” in a mass raid in the last week of October, according to the AP article. (AP 10/30/11 via Miami Herald)
[One of the country’s richest landowners, cooking oil and food product magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum, may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties in 2003 and 2004, according to a secret US diplomatic cable; see Update #1096.]
Meanwhile, the country’s homicide rate more than doubled from 2005 to 2010, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, Global Study on Homicide 2011. Honduras registered 82.1 homicides for every 100,000 people in the country in 2010, the highest rate per capita in the world. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11)
A CID-Gallup poll from October found that 79% of Hondurans questioned consider violence and crime the country’s most important problems. Some 54% said the government of President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa was the most corrupt in Honduran history, and 63% thought the president “never” or “almost never” does what is best for the people. Lobo won the presidency in November 2009 in a controversial election organized by a de facto government installed after former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) was overthrown in a military coup. (Télam (Argentina) 10/28/11 via Terra.com; Honduras Culture and Politics 10/31/11)
*4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns “walk” into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush, a Republican, as well as the administration of current Democratic president Barack Obama. The latest revelations concern a program codenamed Operation Wide Receiver, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reportedly allowed some 350 or 400 guns to enter Mexico illegally during 2006 and 2007.
US media and legislators revealed in February that the ATF let some 2,000 firearms “walk” into Mexico during 2009 and 2010 in Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled effort to trace the activities of gun smugglers in the US Southwest [see Update #1103]. Led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), Republican politicians have used the scandal to attack the Obama administration; some have called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., who as head of the Justice Department is ultimately responsible for activities of the ATF.
In early October Issa and Grassley released documents and emails which they apparently thought further implicated Democratic Justice Department officials in Fast and Furious. But it seems that some of the material referred to the earlier program, Operation Wide Receiver, which instead implicated Republican officials. Wide Receiver “has not received a lot of attention,” the Washington Post noted on Oct. 6. (WP 10/6/11; New York Times 10/31/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)
The partisan maneuvering over the two ATF operations has tended to obscure the larger issue of the impact of lax gun regulation in the US on Mexico’s “drug war,” which has led to the deaths of some 45,000 Mexicans since the beginning of 2007, 200 of them reportedly by weapons allowed to “walk” under Fast and Furious. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 1, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said that of 94,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities over the past five years, 64,000—68%--had come from the US. (LJ 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)
*5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
Residents of San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. They blocked the entrance to the company’s San José mine for 40 days in the spring of 2009, charging that there had already been environmental damage even though the mine wasn’t yet in operation; they also said the authorities had licensed the project without community consultation. The protest was ended abruptly when some 700 police agents, armed with assault rifles and backed up by a helicopter, stormed the community on May 6 of that year [see Update #983 and World War 4 Report 5/27/09].
The mine is now operating, and residents report that it has depleted the area’s scarce water resources and has contaminated the subsoil with sulphuric acid. The community is currently fighting the project by using a 30-minute documentary to call national and international attention to the damage caused by mining in Oaxaca, where mining concessions take up 742,791 hectares, 7.78% of the state’s surface. The documentary, “Minas y Mentiras” (“Mines and Lies”), was produced by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Oaxacan Center in Defense of the Territories; it can be viewed on the internet at
http://vimeo.com/27948780. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/5/11)
Correction: This item originally described Fortuna Silver as “Toronto-based.” It is based in Vancouver.
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Latin American and Caribbean States Back Palestine UNESCO Vote
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/05/latin-american-and-caribbean-states-back-palestine-unesco-vote/
The Politics of Human Rights
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/4/politics-human-rights
Remnants of Pinochet: Conservative Chilean Politicians Push for Harsher Measures Against Students
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3283-remnants-of-pinochet-conservative-chilean-politicians-push-for-harsher-measures-against-students
Brazil: "Occupy" Movement Rolls to Rio
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3291-brazil-qoccupyq-movement-rolls-to-rio
Bolivia's Uncertain Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3284-bolivias-uncertain-revolution
The Bolivian TIPNIS March—In Photos
https://nacla.org/bolivian-tipnis-march-photos
Peru to Reopen Investigation into Forced Sterilizations of Women
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3288-peru-to-reopen-investigation-into-forced-sterilizations-of-women
Peru Fires Top Indigenous Rights Official After She Blocks Gas Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3287-peru-fires-top-indigenous-rights-official-after-she-blocks-gas-project-
Colombia's scandal-plagued DAS intelligence agency dissolved
http://ww4report.com/node/10493
Paramilitary Ties in Colombian Local Elections
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/31/paramilitary-ties-colombian-local-elections
Connecting the Dots: Colombian Army Officers and Civilian Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3286-connecting-the-dots-colombian-army-officers-and-civilian-killings
Colombian army kills FARC leader "Alfonso Cano"
http://ww4report.com/node/10505
FARC succession struggle seen in wake of Alfonso Cano killing
http://ww4report.com/node/10510
Students and Workers Occupy Agroecology University: Statement from the Occupiers (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6605
Nicaragua: Ortega re-elected; US charges irregularities, voter intimidation
http://ww4report.com/node/10512
Attorneys Urge Court to Hear Lawsuit Against Honduran Coup Leader
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3290-attorneys-urge-court-to-hear-lawsuit-against-honduran-coup-leader-
Honduras Sends Hundreds Of Soldiers To The Street In Operation Lightning
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/02/honduras-sends-hundreds-of-soldiers-to-the-street-in-operation-lightning/
Guatemala: president-elect accused in 1980s genocide
http://ww4report.com/node/10511
Mexico: Wixáritari Indians Fight Mining in Sacred Desert Site
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3285-mexico-wixaritari-indians-fight-mining-in-sacred-desert-site
López Obrador, Supporters Found Morena, New Left Party (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1356
Mexican Movement for Global Change Searches for Unity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3289-mexican-movement-for-global-change-searches-for-unity
The Days of the Dead (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/1/days-dead
Mexican Authorities Crack Down on Protests
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november062011/mexico-rights.php
The Art of Ripping Off Mexican Electronic Workers
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5659
Canadian Labour Organizations Host SME Leaders; File NAALC Complaint in Support of SME (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1357
Cuba Releases New Real Estate Rules, Will Allow Home Sales
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/04/cuba-releases-new-real-estate-rules-will-allow-home-sales/
Five years for a drop of water (Haiti)
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/3/five-years-for-a-drop-of-water.html
Local Purchases of Rice as Food Aid Overstated (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/local-purchases-of-rice-as-food-aid-overstated
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 #1104, November 6, 2011
1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
Tens of thousands of students and their supporters marched in cities across Colombia on Nov. 3 in a continuing struggle against proposed changes to Law 30, the legislation that has governed higher education since 1992. More than 1.8 million students from 37 public universities and at least 17 private ones have carried out an open-ended strike since Oct. 11 to protest the changes, which they say will “reduce education to a commodity.” They are also protesting Colombia’s free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, which the US Congress approved on Oct. 12 [see Updates #1101, 1102].
According to press reports, as many as 600,000 people joined the Nov. 3 demonstrations in 31 cities, including Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales and Armenia. In Bogotá the sheer number of protesters forced the local mass transit system, TransMilenio, to shut down during the evening, and major roads, including routes 30 and 45, were impassable because of traffic jams. The Bogotá protests included a public debate in the late afternoon; Education Minister María Fernanda Campo and other officials were invited but failed to attend. Later, at least 10,000 protesters held an evening of celebration in the Plaza de Bolívar, with dancing, puppets and a “kiss-a-thon” illuminated with torches.
The government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos has already sent its legislative proposal to Congress, and a committee of the Chamber of Representatives of the Congress is scheduled to begin debating on Nov. 8. The changes would give more academic and financial independence to individual universities, but students say this would force the institutions to generate their own income, opening up the system to the profit motive and to exploitation by multinational corporations. The strikers are demanding free, high-quality public university education. “[I]n a soldier they invest 18 milion pesos [about $9,400],” the students said, referring to Colombia’s mandatory military service; “in a student, hardly more than 2 million [$1,044].”
Student leaders insist that the government must withdraw the proposed changes before any negotiations can take place. The strike will continue indefinitely, they say, with mass demonstrations planned for each week—the same tactic Chilean students have used in a protest which has shut down much of Chile’s educational system since June [see Update #1102]. “[W]e will not permit the loss of public education,” Sergio Fernández, a spokesperson for the Colombian Student Organization (OCE), told Bogotá’s Radio W. “We would prefer to lose the semester, or whatever it takes, than to lose this right.” (Semana (Colombia) 11/3/11 from EFE and from staff; Prensa Latina 11/4/11; Colombia Reports 11/4/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/4/11 from PL, AFP, DPA, Notimex)
The 11 Congress members from the center-left Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) have joined with two representatives of the indigenous sectors and two from the Green Party (PV) to call for the government to withdraw its education proposal. The legislators argued that there can’t be a fair debate on the issue, since the government counts on the support of more than 90% of the legislators. When Education Minister Campo announced on Nov. 4 that the government would not withdraw the measure, PDS senator Camilo Romero Galeano called for her resignation. (Caracol (Colombia) 11/4/11; Radio Santa Fe (Bogotá) 11/4/11)
*2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
A US Congress member, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), has written US president Barack Obama asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children in Argentina during the 1976-1983 “dirty war” against suspected leftists. An estimated 30,000 people were disappeared, including hundreds of pregnant women whose babies are believed to have been taken by the military dictatorship then in power and given to adoptive parents. Argentine authorities have been seeking in formation on these cases to aid in the prosecution of former officials and to allow children to be reunited with their biological relatives.
“Thousands of families have waited more than 30 years to learn the fates of their loved ones, and we have an opportunity to make a contribution to truth and justice by helping to bring this troubling chapter in Argentina’s history to a close,” Hinchey wrote. “I ask that you follow through on your administration’s commitment to openness by reviewing these files for declassification. The release of these documents would once again demonstrate our nation’s dedication to human rights and open government.”
Hinchey was referring to documents held by the US military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central intelligence Agency (CIA). Last May the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted down an amendment Hinchey wrote that would have required the director of national intelligence to issue a report to Congress on Argentine human rights violations under the military dictatorship. (Buenos Aires Herald 11/3/11; AP 11/3/11 via CBS News)
*3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
Honduran police officials gave contradictory responses on Nov. 1 to a report published the day before about the disappearance of some 300 light automatic rifles (FAL, from the initials in Spanish) and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets from a police unit. The weapons, which were in the control of the Cobras special operations police group, were taken from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo broke the story on Oct. 31.
National Police spokesperson Silvio Inestroza insisted that this was an old case, referring to the similar disappearance of 186 weapons in 2007, also from a Cobras unit. But Police Internal Affairs director Simeón Flores said that a new arms theft had been reported two months earlier, and he asked why it hadn’t been investigated. José Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, the newly appointed head of the National Police, said that he didn’t know the details but that he had appointed a commission to study the matter. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11; El Heraldo 11/2/11)
Police director Ramírez had in fact only been in office since Oct. 31. Security Secretary Pompeyo Bonilla appointed him to replace José Luis Muñoz Licona following another police scandal: Tegucigalpa police chief Jorge Alberto Barralaga Hernández released four agents who are suspects in the murder of two university students; he told them to take a few days off and report back on Oct. 30. The four suspects never reappeared, and Barralaga Hernandez and Muñoz Licona were both dismissed. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 10/31/11)
Adding to the embarrassments for the government, on Oct. 30 the Associated Press wire service quoted an unnamed US law enforcement official who called Honduras “the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the US.” An estimated 250 to 300 tons of cocaine are shipped from South America through Honduras each year, according to the AP article. Much of the cocaine comes by sea, but Honduras is also the region’s main center for smuggling drugs by air. The unnamed US official said that 79% of the drug flights from South America to the north land in Honduras.
Large numbers of people are reportedly involved in the trade, from the populations of impoverished fishing communities to corrupt soldiers. Drug traffickers stole a military plane from the San Pedro Sula army base earlier this year, according to Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran security ministry; he claims that soldiers were involved in the crime. Rich landowners with property on the coast have also profited. The authorities “seized 13 luxurious homes and ranches and 17 boats” in a mass raid in the last week of October, according to the AP article. (AP 10/30/11 via Miami Herald)
[One of the country’s richest landowners, cooking oil and food product magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum, may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties in 2003 and 2004, according to a secret US diplomatic cable; see Update #1096.]
Meanwhile, the country’s homicide rate more than doubled from 2005 to 2010, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, Global Study on Homicide 2011. Honduras registered 82.1 homicides for every 100,000 people in the country in 2010, the highest rate per capita in the world. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11)
A CID-Gallup poll from October found that 79% of Hondurans questioned consider violence and crime the country’s most important problems. Some 54% said the government of President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa was the most corrupt in Honduran history, and 63% thought the president “never” or “almost never” does what is best for the people. Lobo won the presidency in November 2009 in a controversial election organized by a de facto government installed after former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) was overthrown in a military coup. (Télam (Argentina) 10/28/11 via Terra.com; Honduras Culture and Politics 10/31/11)
*4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns “walk” into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush, a Republican, as well as the administration of current Democratic president Barack Obama. The latest revelations concern a program codenamed Operation Wide Receiver, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reportedly allowed some 350 or 400 guns to enter Mexico illegally during 2006 and 2007.
US media and legislators revealed in February that the ATF let some 2,000 firearms “walk” into Mexico during 2009 and 2010 in Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled effort to trace the activities of gun smugglers in the US Southwest [see Update #1103]. Led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), Republican politicians have used the scandal to attack the Obama administration; some have called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., who as head of the Justice Department is ultimately responsible for activities of the ATF.
In early October Issa and Grassley released documents and emails which they apparently thought further implicated Democratic Justice Department officials in Fast and Furious. But it seems that some of the material referred to the earlier program, Operation Wide Receiver, which instead implicated Republican officials. Wide Receiver “has not received a lot of attention,” the Washington Post noted on Oct. 6. (WP 10/6/11; New York Times 10/31/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)
The partisan maneuvering over the two ATF operations has tended to obscure the larger issue of the impact of lax gun regulation in the US on Mexico’s “drug war,” which has led to the deaths of some 45,000 Mexicans since the beginning of 2007, 200 of them reportedly by weapons allowed to “walk” under Fast and Furious. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 1, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said that of 94,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities over the past five years, 64,000—68%--had come from the US. (LJ 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)
*5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
Residents of San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. They blocked the entrance to the company’s San José mine for 40 days in the spring of 2009, charging that there had already been environmental damage even though the mine wasn’t yet in operation; they also said the authorities had licensed the project without community consultation. The protest was ended abruptly when some 700 police agents, armed with assault rifles and backed up by a helicopter, stormed the community on May 6 of that year [see Update #983 and World War 4 Report 5/27/09].
The mine is now operating, and residents report that it has depleted the area’s scarce water resources and has contaminated the subsoil with sulphuric acid. The community is currently fighting the project by using a 30-minute documentary to call national and international attention to the damage caused by mining in Oaxaca, where mining concessions take up 742,791 hectares, 7.78% of the state’s surface. The documentary, “Minas y Mentiras” (“Mines and Lies”), was produced by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Oaxacan Center in Defense of the Territories; it can be viewed on the internet at
http://vimeo.com/27948780. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/5/11)
Correction: This item originally described Fortuna Silver as “Toronto-based.” It is based in Vancouver.
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Latin American and Caribbean States Back Palestine UNESCO Vote
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/05/latin-american-and-caribbean-states-back-palestine-unesco-vote/
The Politics of Human Rights
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/4/politics-human-rights
Remnants of Pinochet: Conservative Chilean Politicians Push for Harsher Measures Against Students
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3283-remnants-of-pinochet-conservative-chilean-politicians-push-for-harsher-measures-against-students
Brazil: "Occupy" Movement Rolls to Rio
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3291-brazil-qoccupyq-movement-rolls-to-rio
Bolivia's Uncertain Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3284-bolivias-uncertain-revolution
The Bolivian TIPNIS March—In Photos
https://nacla.org/bolivian-tipnis-march-photos
Peru to Reopen Investigation into Forced Sterilizations of Women
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3288-peru-to-reopen-investigation-into-forced-sterilizations-of-women
Peru Fires Top Indigenous Rights Official After She Blocks Gas Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3287-peru-fires-top-indigenous-rights-official-after-she-blocks-gas-project-
Colombia's scandal-plagued DAS intelligence agency dissolved
http://ww4report.com/node/10493
Paramilitary Ties in Colombian Local Elections
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/31/paramilitary-ties-colombian-local-elections
Connecting the Dots: Colombian Army Officers and Civilian Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3286-connecting-the-dots-colombian-army-officers-and-civilian-killings
Colombian army kills FARC leader "Alfonso Cano"
http://ww4report.com/node/10505
FARC succession struggle seen in wake of Alfonso Cano killing
http://ww4report.com/node/10510
Students and Workers Occupy Agroecology University: Statement from the Occupiers (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6605
Nicaragua: Ortega re-elected; US charges irregularities, voter intimidation
http://ww4report.com/node/10512
Attorneys Urge Court to Hear Lawsuit Against Honduran Coup Leader
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3290-attorneys-urge-court-to-hear-lawsuit-against-honduran-coup-leader-
Honduras Sends Hundreds Of Soldiers To The Street In Operation Lightning
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/02/honduras-sends-hundreds-of-soldiers-to-the-street-in-operation-lightning/
Guatemala: president-elect accused in 1980s genocide
http://ww4report.com/node/10511
Mexico: Wixáritari Indians Fight Mining in Sacred Desert Site
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3285-mexico-wixaritari-indians-fight-mining-in-sacred-desert-site
López Obrador, Supporters Found Morena, New Left Party (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1356
Mexican Movement for Global Change Searches for Unity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3289-mexican-movement-for-global-change-searches-for-unity
The Days of the Dead (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/1/days-dead
Mexican Authorities Crack Down on Protests
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november062011/mexico-rights.php
The Art of Ripping Off Mexican Electronic Workers
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5659
Canadian Labour Organizations Host SME Leaders; File NAALC Complaint in Support of SME (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1357
Cuba Releases New Real Estate Rules, Will Allow Home Sales
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/04/cuba-releases-new-real-estate-rules-will-allow-home-sales/
Five years for a drop of water (Haiti)
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/3/five-years-for-a-drop-of-water.html
Local Purchases of Rice as Food Aid Overstated (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/local-purchases-of-rice-as-food-aid-overstated
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/
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
NYC, Nov. 7: John Mccutcheon Benefit Show for the People of Nicaragua
Monday, November 7th, 2011 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
263 West 86th St (corner West End Ave)
New York, NY 10024
Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
263 West 86th St (corner West End Ave)
New York, NY 10024
Join Dos Pueblos to celebrate 24 years of solidarity with the people of Nicaragua and contribute to a global future of human rights and peace. The evening will feature a performance by award-winning singer/songwriter John McCutcheon, whose music can "reach into human doings and find strings that tie all of us together."
For more info please call 917-776-4246 or email info@tipitapa.org
 |
| “McCutcheon is the most impressive instrumentalist I ever heard”-- Johnny Cash |
Check out Dos Pueblos and this event at:
Dos Pueblos Website: http://www.tipitapa.org/
Facebook: Dos Pueblos page Facebook event page:https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269445889743901
Eventbrite: Dos Pueblos presents John McCutcheon
Dos Pueblos Website: http://www.tipitapa.org/
Facebook: Dos Pueblos page Facebook event page:https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269445889743901
Eventbrite: Dos Pueblos presents John McCutcheon
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
WNU #1103: Are Mexican Officials “in the Dark” on US Drug War?
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1103, October 30, 2011
1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Maneuver
3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
On Oct. 26 Mexican officials emphatically denied that US agencies were violating Mexican sovereignty by carrying out undercover operations aimed at Mexican drug cartels. The presence of agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Mexico “isn’t something new, it’s been happening since a long time ago,” Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said at a press conference in Mexico City that was meant to be about Mexico’s participation in a Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France, and in the Iberian-American Summit in Asunción, Paraguay. Espinosa Cantellano said she couldn’t reveal the number and location of the agents for security reasons, “but of course the government knows about this presence and we are very strict in watching out that the legal framework is applied.”
President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s spokesperson, Alejandra Sota Mirafuentes, insisted at the press conference that cooperation and exchange of information between the two governments “is and has been fully respectful of the Mexican legal framework, including the so-called ’92 rules, the bilateral agreements currently in effect.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/27/11)
The official denials came in response to an Oct. 25 article in the New York Times about US infiltration of Mexican criminal organizations. According to reporter Ginger Thompson, “Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants--including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives.” This is “partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil,” Thompson wrote. “The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening,” Woodrow Wilson Center security expert Eric Olson told the Times, “even though it’s not supposed to be happening.”
Thompson also noted that “complicated ethical issues tend to arise” when the US government uses informants who work in criminal enterprises. (NYT 10/25/11)
The revelations come as many Mexicans are growing more disillusioned with President Calderón’s US-backed “war on drugs,” in which 40,000 Mexicans have died since the beginning of 2007; Mexicans are also angry about the US government’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed some 2,000 weapons to go illegally from the US to Mexico [see Updates #1079, 1095]. Adding to the tensions, on Oct. 28 Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told an interviewer on the CNN cable news network that 200 Mexicans had been killed by weapons that entered Mexico as a result of the program. (Notimex 10/29/11 via LJ)
These developments are likely to hurt Calderón’s center-right National Action Party (PAN) in the 2012 presidential election. The centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is clearly hoping to benefit in its efforts to regain the presidency, which the party held from the 1930s until the PRI’s Francisco Labastida Ochoa lost to PAN candidate Vicente Fox Quesada in 2000. Labastida himself, now a senator from the northern state of Sinaloa, was quick to condemn Calderón for the reported death toll from Fast and Furious. It is “shameful,” he said in an interview, that Calderón hasn’t taken concrete legal actions against the US government. Calderón’s administration has a “sellout” attitude, an “absolutely servile” attitude, according to Labastidia, who said he had “thought carefully” about which adjectives to use. (LJ 10/30/11)
*2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Maneuver
A dispute between the government of rightwing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again the week of Oct. 24 as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code. Militant protests by the Ngöbe-Buglé and others last February and March forced the Assembly to rescind a law which opponents said would encourage open-pit mining for metals by foreign companies and endanger the environment [see Update #1070].
An ad hoc commission of the Assembly and a coordinating committee of indigenous groups then negotiated a new bill incorporating indigenous demands for protection of their territory and the environment. But the bill that finally appeared before the Assembly in October, Law 394, retained objectionable features of the previous law, according to the indigenous groups, which blocked the Pan American highway in protest.
“The government isn’t complying with the accords, which is a clear sign that we have to start up our actions again,” Ngöbe-Buglé activist Rogelio Montezuma said on Oct. 24 as the National Front in Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) and the Traditional General Ngöbe-Buglé Congress demonstrated outside the National Assembly. “We, the original peoples, are telling the national government we don’t want mining.” (Adital (Brazil) 10/28/11; Prensa Latina 10/28/11)
As of Oct. 28, the government and the indigenous groups had come to an agreement about Law 394, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Ricardo Quijano, who said “the mining bill will not affect the [indigenous] territories” and won’t include the features the indigenous groups objected to. There were reports that the government would offer an additional bill including measures agreed to in the negotiations between the indigenous groups and the National Assembly’s ad hoc commission. (TVN Noticias (Panama) 10/28/11)
*3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
Haitian police arrested legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Oct. 27 as he returned from an official visit to France; the agents then took him to the National Penitentiary in the capital. Chamber of Deputies president Sorel Jacynthe and a delegation of other legislators were kept from entering the airport to welcome Bélizaire, while several hundred demonstrators protested outside and chanted slogans against Haitian president Michel Martelly. The president himself left for the US the same day for unexplained health reasons. This was his second medical trip to the US since he took office in May; he was expected to return on Nov. 6.
Martelly’s government charged that Bélizaire, who represents the Delmas and Tabarre districts of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, had taken advantage of the January 2010 earthquake to escape from the penitentiary, where he had been imprisoned on a weapons charge since 2004. Martelly and Bélizaire had had a shouting match in the National Palace on Oct. 12, and on Oct. 14 and 16 Martelly made a request for the justice system to arrest fugitives from justice who were in the Parliament.
Bélizaire was released on Oct. 28, but the arrest resulted in strong protests from legislators, who noted that their immunity from prosecution could only be suspended by the Parliament itself. There were also questions about the claim that Bélizaire was a fugitive from justice, since the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) had cleared him to run for the deputy post in the November 2010 elections; he won the seat in a March 2011 runoff. Right after the arrest, 71 of the 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies signed a resolution demanding the resignation of Justice Minister Josué Pierre-Louis, Interior Minister Thierry Mayard-Paul and other officials, while 16 of the 30 senators signed a resolution charging that Martelly harbored a “desire…to restore dictatorship.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/27/11, 10/28/11; AP 10/28/11 via CBS News)
Security employees at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport held a brief strike on Oct. 28 to protest actions by Interior Minister Mayard-Paul and his bodyguards during Bélizaire’s arrest. Employees charged that in addition to violating the airport security zone, Mayard-Paul had personally hit several of the airport guards. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 10/29/11)
Arnel Bélizaire—whose first name is also given as “Anel,” following the pronunciation in Haitian Creole—seems to have an interesting and contradictory record. According to Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), Bélizaire was arrested on Sept. 14, 1995, for abus de confiance (breach of trust or embezzlement) but was freed four days later. He was arrested again on Oct. 14, 2004, for possession of automatic weapons, Espérance says, but escaped from the National Penitentiary during a mysterious mass jailbreak on Feb. 19, 2005. Dominican authorities arrested Bélizaire on charges of auto theft and weapons possession on July 2, 2005; he was quickly extradited to Haiti and returned to the National Penitentiary on July 4. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/24/11)
Currently Bélizaire seems to have some connection to the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), since he ran for deputy as a candidate of the Veye Yo (“Watch Them”) party, which ran FL politicians when the FL itself was denied ballot status [see Update #1039]. But when he escaped from prison in 2005 Bélizaire was described as a leader of the ex-soldiers who helped overthrow Aristide in February 2004 [see Update #786]. He even claimed that while he was in prison in February 2005 the de facto government of Gérard Latortue offered him $10,000 to murder Aristide’s prime minister, Yvon Neptune, who was also in the National Penitentiary. But he said he decided instead to protect Neptune during the chaos of the Feb. 19 jailbreak. (People’s World 5/13/05)
It is not clear whether Deputy Bélizaire is the Anel Bélizaire who was held in US immigration detention at the Krome center in Florida starting in 1998; the detainee carried out a hunger strike there in 1999 and 2000. (Immigration News Briefs January 2000)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Climate Change Vulnerability Index released as floods clobber listed nations (Central America, Mexico, Haiti)
http://ww4report.com/node/10484
Argentina: ex-military officers sentenced to life for crimes against humanity
http://ww4report.com/node/10477
Cristina Kirchner and Argentina's Good Fortune
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3272-cristina-kirchner-and-argentinas-good-fortune
Uruguay scraps 'dirty war' amnesty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3281-uruguay-scraps-dirty-war-amnesty-
Brazilians Get Ready to Dig Up the Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3275-brazilians-get-ready-to-dig-up-the-trut
Brazil and Colombia: An Unexpected Alliance
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5633
Peru: government fires new indigenous affairs official after she blocks gas project
http://ww4report.com/node/10481
Unrest threatens Ecuador development projects
http://ww4report.com/node/10480
Is the FARC Retaking the Military Offensive in Colombia?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/24/farc-retaking-military-offensive-colombia
Colombia: ex-guerilla to be Bogotá mayor
http://ww4report.com/node/10485
Venezuela Passes New Leasing Law Proposed by Popular Initiative
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6588
El Salvador: Water Bill Stagnates in Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3282-el-salvador-water-bill-stagnates-in-congress
WikiLeaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman
http://www.thenation.com/article/164120/wikileaks-honduras-us-linked-brutal-businessman
Justice and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala: 1954 Revisited
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3279-justice-and-jacobo-arbenz-in-guatemala-1954-revisited
As Firm as a Tree: Portraits of Diodora, a Guatemalan Anti-Mining Activist
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3273-2011-10-as-firm-as-a-tree-portraits-of-diodora
"Anonymous" hackstivists threaten to expose Zeta secrets (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10482
Mexico's ex-prez Fox again speaks out for drug legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/10483
Mexico Goverment-Drug Cartel Collusion: The Hybrid Threat
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/26/mexico-goverment-drug-cartel-collusion-hybrid-threat
Double Speak and Intervention in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/25/double-speak-and-intervention-mexico
Mexico: Café sin Carbono?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3274-mexico-cafe-sin-carbono
The UN and Human Rights: Condemning the U.S. Embargo of Cuba
https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/26/un-and-human-rights-condemning-us-embargo-cuba
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 #1103, October 30, 2011
1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Maneuver
3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
On Oct. 26 Mexican officials emphatically denied that US agencies were violating Mexican sovereignty by carrying out undercover operations aimed at Mexican drug cartels. The presence of agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Mexico “isn’t something new, it’s been happening since a long time ago,” Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said at a press conference in Mexico City that was meant to be about Mexico’s participation in a Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France, and in the Iberian-American Summit in Asunción, Paraguay. Espinosa Cantellano said she couldn’t reveal the number and location of the agents for security reasons, “but of course the government knows about this presence and we are very strict in watching out that the legal framework is applied.”
President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s spokesperson, Alejandra Sota Mirafuentes, insisted at the press conference that cooperation and exchange of information between the two governments “is and has been fully respectful of the Mexican legal framework, including the so-called ’92 rules, the bilateral agreements currently in effect.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/27/11)
The official denials came in response to an Oct. 25 article in the New York Times about US infiltration of Mexican criminal organizations. According to reporter Ginger Thompson, “Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants--including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives.” This is “partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil,” Thompson wrote. “The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening,” Woodrow Wilson Center security expert Eric Olson told the Times, “even though it’s not supposed to be happening.”
Thompson also noted that “complicated ethical issues tend to arise” when the US government uses informants who work in criminal enterprises. (NYT 10/25/11)
The revelations come as many Mexicans are growing more disillusioned with President Calderón’s US-backed “war on drugs,” in which 40,000 Mexicans have died since the beginning of 2007; Mexicans are also angry about the US government’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed some 2,000 weapons to go illegally from the US to Mexico [see Updates #1079, 1095]. Adding to the tensions, on Oct. 28 Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told an interviewer on the CNN cable news network that 200 Mexicans had been killed by weapons that entered Mexico as a result of the program. (Notimex 10/29/11 via LJ)
These developments are likely to hurt Calderón’s center-right National Action Party (PAN) in the 2012 presidential election. The centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is clearly hoping to benefit in its efforts to regain the presidency, which the party held from the 1930s until the PRI’s Francisco Labastida Ochoa lost to PAN candidate Vicente Fox Quesada in 2000. Labastida himself, now a senator from the northern state of Sinaloa, was quick to condemn Calderón for the reported death toll from Fast and Furious. It is “shameful,” he said in an interview, that Calderón hasn’t taken concrete legal actions against the US government. Calderón’s administration has a “sellout” attitude, an “absolutely servile” attitude, according to Labastidia, who said he had “thought carefully” about which adjectives to use. (LJ 10/30/11)
*2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Maneuver
A dispute between the government of rightwing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again the week of Oct. 24 as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code. Militant protests by the Ngöbe-Buglé and others last February and March forced the Assembly to rescind a law which opponents said would encourage open-pit mining for metals by foreign companies and endanger the environment [see Update #1070].
An ad hoc commission of the Assembly and a coordinating committee of indigenous groups then negotiated a new bill incorporating indigenous demands for protection of their territory and the environment. But the bill that finally appeared before the Assembly in October, Law 394, retained objectionable features of the previous law, according to the indigenous groups, which blocked the Pan American highway in protest.
“The government isn’t complying with the accords, which is a clear sign that we have to start up our actions again,” Ngöbe-Buglé activist Rogelio Montezuma said on Oct. 24 as the National Front in Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) and the Traditional General Ngöbe-Buglé Congress demonstrated outside the National Assembly. “We, the original peoples, are telling the national government we don’t want mining.” (Adital (Brazil) 10/28/11; Prensa Latina 10/28/11)
As of Oct. 28, the government and the indigenous groups had come to an agreement about Law 394, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Ricardo Quijano, who said “the mining bill will not affect the [indigenous] territories” and won’t include the features the indigenous groups objected to. There were reports that the government would offer an additional bill including measures agreed to in the negotiations between the indigenous groups and the National Assembly’s ad hoc commission. (TVN Noticias (Panama) 10/28/11)
*3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
Haitian police arrested legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Oct. 27 as he returned from an official visit to France; the agents then took him to the National Penitentiary in the capital. Chamber of Deputies president Sorel Jacynthe and a delegation of other legislators were kept from entering the airport to welcome Bélizaire, while several hundred demonstrators protested outside and chanted slogans against Haitian president Michel Martelly. The president himself left for the US the same day for unexplained health reasons. This was his second medical trip to the US since he took office in May; he was expected to return on Nov. 6.
Martelly’s government charged that Bélizaire, who represents the Delmas and Tabarre districts of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, had taken advantage of the January 2010 earthquake to escape from the penitentiary, where he had been imprisoned on a weapons charge since 2004. Martelly and Bélizaire had had a shouting match in the National Palace on Oct. 12, and on Oct. 14 and 16 Martelly made a request for the justice system to arrest fugitives from justice who were in the Parliament.
Bélizaire was released on Oct. 28, but the arrest resulted in strong protests from legislators, who noted that their immunity from prosecution could only be suspended by the Parliament itself. There were also questions about the claim that Bélizaire was a fugitive from justice, since the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) had cleared him to run for the deputy post in the November 2010 elections; he won the seat in a March 2011 runoff. Right after the arrest, 71 of the 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies signed a resolution demanding the resignation of Justice Minister Josué Pierre-Louis, Interior Minister Thierry Mayard-Paul and other officials, while 16 of the 30 senators signed a resolution charging that Martelly harbored a “desire…to restore dictatorship.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/27/11, 10/28/11; AP 10/28/11 via CBS News)
Security employees at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport held a brief strike on Oct. 28 to protest actions by Interior Minister Mayard-Paul and his bodyguards during Bélizaire’s arrest. Employees charged that in addition to violating the airport security zone, Mayard-Paul had personally hit several of the airport guards. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 10/29/11)
Arnel Bélizaire—whose first name is also given as “Anel,” following the pronunciation in Haitian Creole—seems to have an interesting and contradictory record. According to Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), Bélizaire was arrested on Sept. 14, 1995, for abus de confiance (breach of trust or embezzlement) but was freed four days later. He was arrested again on Oct. 14, 2004, for possession of automatic weapons, Espérance says, but escaped from the National Penitentiary during a mysterious mass jailbreak on Feb. 19, 2005. Dominican authorities arrested Bélizaire on charges of auto theft and weapons possession on July 2, 2005; he was quickly extradited to Haiti and returned to the National Penitentiary on July 4. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/24/11)
Currently Bélizaire seems to have some connection to the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), since he ran for deputy as a candidate of the Veye Yo (“Watch Them”) party, which ran FL politicians when the FL itself was denied ballot status [see Update #1039]. But when he escaped from prison in 2005 Bélizaire was described as a leader of the ex-soldiers who helped overthrow Aristide in February 2004 [see Update #786]. He even claimed that while he was in prison in February 2005 the de facto government of Gérard Latortue offered him $10,000 to murder Aristide’s prime minister, Yvon Neptune, who was also in the National Penitentiary. But he said he decided instead to protect Neptune during the chaos of the Feb. 19 jailbreak. (People’s World 5/13/05)
It is not clear whether Deputy Bélizaire is the Anel Bélizaire who was held in US immigration detention at the Krome center in Florida starting in 1998; the detainee carried out a hunger strike there in 1999 and 2000. (Immigration News Briefs January 2000)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Climate Change Vulnerability Index released as floods clobber listed nations (Central America, Mexico, Haiti)
http://ww4report.com/node/10484
Argentina: ex-military officers sentenced to life for crimes against humanity
http://ww4report.com/node/10477
Cristina Kirchner and Argentina's Good Fortune
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3272-cristina-kirchner-and-argentinas-good-fortune
Uruguay scraps 'dirty war' amnesty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3281-uruguay-scraps-dirty-war-amnesty-
Brazilians Get Ready to Dig Up the Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3275-brazilians-get-ready-to-dig-up-the-trut
Brazil and Colombia: An Unexpected Alliance
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5633
Peru: government fires new indigenous affairs official after she blocks gas project
http://ww4report.com/node/10481
Unrest threatens Ecuador development projects
http://ww4report.com/node/10480
Is the FARC Retaking the Military Offensive in Colombia?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/24/farc-retaking-military-offensive-colombia
Colombia: ex-guerilla to be Bogotá mayor
http://ww4report.com/node/10485
Venezuela Passes New Leasing Law Proposed by Popular Initiative
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6588
El Salvador: Water Bill Stagnates in Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3282-el-salvador-water-bill-stagnates-in-congress
WikiLeaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman
http://www.thenation.com/article/164120/wikileaks-honduras-us-linked-brutal-businessman
Justice and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala: 1954 Revisited
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3279-justice-and-jacobo-arbenz-in-guatemala-1954-revisited
As Firm as a Tree: Portraits of Diodora, a Guatemalan Anti-Mining Activist
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3273-2011-10-as-firm-as-a-tree-portraits-of-diodora
"Anonymous" hackstivists threaten to expose Zeta secrets (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10482
Mexico's ex-prez Fox again speaks out for drug legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/10483
Mexico Goverment-Drug Cartel Collusion: The Hybrid Threat
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/26/mexico-goverment-drug-cartel-collusion-hybrid-threat
Double Speak and Intervention in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/25/double-speak-and-intervention-mexico
Mexico: Café sin Carbono?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3274-mexico-cafe-sin-carbono
The UN and Human Rights: Condemning the U.S. Embargo of Cuba
https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/26/un-and-human-rights-condemning-us-embargo-cuba
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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