Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1156, December 16, 2012
1. Mexico: HSBC Gets Off Easy in "Drug War" Case
2. Argentina: Ford Motor Investigated for “Dirty War” Torture
3. Colombia: Petroleum Workers Leader Murdered
4. Haiti: "Earthquake Relief" Helps Build New Luxury Hotel
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: HSBC Gets Off Easy in "Drug War" Case
The London-based corporation HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, will pay the US government $1.92 billion in fines for its failure to prevent money laundering through some of its affiliates, including its Mexican branch, US assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer announced at a press conference in Brooklyn on Dec. 11. However, the US Justice Department has decided not to bring criminal charges against the bank. Breuer noted that bank executives faced some penalties. “HSBC has replaced virtually all of its senior management,” he said, “and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials” over a five-year period.
As indicated in a 330-page report by the US Senate in July, Mexican drug cartels were major beneficiaries of the bank’s decision not to institute standard precautions against laundering [see Update #1137]. According to Breuer, the bank “failed to monitor over $670 billion in wire transfers from HSBC Mexico between 2006 and 2009, and failed to monitor over $9.4 billion in purchases of physical US dollars from HSBC Mexico over that same period.” “From 2006 to 2010 the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia, and other drug traffickers laundered at least $881 million in illegal narcotics trafficking proceeds through HSBC Bank USA,” Breuer said. Traffickers “would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows in HSBC Mexico’s branches.” The US also accused the bank of circumventing US trade sanctions against several countries, including Cuba, Iran and Sudan.
Analysts indicated that the Justice Department failed to press criminal charges for fear that this would put one of the world’s largest banks at risk and might destabilize the international financial system. Since 2010 the Justice Department and the Treasury Department have investigated at least six banks—Credit Suisse, ING and Barclays in Europe, and JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia and Citigroup in the US—for similar failures to monitor transfers. The investigations have brought the US government more than $2 billion in fines, not counting the HSBC settlement, but to date no bank or bank executive has faced criminal charges. (New York Times 12/11/12; US Department of Justice 12/11/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/12/12 from correspondent)
Noting that HSBC’s $1.92 billion fine represents about five weeks’ income for the bank, Rolling Stone financial columnist Matt Taibbi proposed in a blog posting that the Justice Department should treat the bank the way it regularly treats “ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases”—by jailing all the executives involved and confiscating their bank accounts and personal property, along with HSBC’s entire holdings. “[B]y approving this settlement,” Taibbi concluded, “Breuer removed the government's moral authority to prosecute anyone for any other drug offense. Not that most people didn’t already know that the drug war is a joke, but this makes it official.” (Rolling Stone blog 12/13/12)
The HSBC case isn’t Lanny Breuer’s first contact with Mexico’s bloody “war on drugs.” The New York Times reported in September that the Justice Department had admonished him in connection with Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US allowed thousands of guns to be purchased illegally and smuggled into Mexico, largely for use by the drug cartels. In 2011 he reportedly proposed to Mexican officials that the US and Mexico cooperate in a similar program to monitor illegal gun purchases as a way of tracking gun smuggling operations [see Update #1145].
*2. Argentina: Ford Motor Investigated for “Dirty War” Torture
On Dec. 5 Argentine judge Alicia Vence opened an investigation into the possible involvement of four former executives of Ford Motor Company’s Argentine subsidiary in the kidnapping and torture of at least 25 autoworkers during the “dirty war” against suspected leftists under the 1976-83 military dictatorship. According to prosecutor Félix Crous, former Ford Motor Argentina president Nicolás Courard, former manufacturing director Pedro Müller, former industrial relations director Guillermo Galarraga and former security chief Héctor Sibilla are suspected of collaborating with the military in the abuses, which took place in 1976 next to the company’s plant in the city of General Pacheco in Buenos Aires province, just north of the city of Buenos Aires.
Previously the only person facing charges in the case had been military commander Santiago Riveros, who has already been convicted of other crimes of state terrorism. Ford Motor acknowledges that it asked for military protection during the period, saying two executives were murdered and two others were wounded in attacks by the Montoneros rebel groups from 1973 to 1975, but the company denies that its plant was used as a torture center.
Workers were a principal target of the “dirty war”; 30% of the estimated 30,000 people disappeared worked in factories. Executives from a number of companies are now under investigation for possible human rights abuses during the dictatorship. The companies include Mercedes-Benz Argentina and Acindar, a metal manufacturing firm now owned by ArcelorMittal. José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, the dictatorship’s economy minister from 1976 to 1981, is a former Acindar president; he was arrested in May 2010 in connection with the kidnapping of industrialist Federico Gutheim and his son Miguel Gutheim [see Update #1032]. Food processing and biofuel magnate Carlos Pedro Blaquier also faces charges of collaborating with the military during the period [see Update #1090]. Former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, now an adviser to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies’ Human Rights Commission, is supporting Blaquier’s claim of innocence. (El País (Madrid) 12/6/12 from correspondent)
These charges come while a court in the capital is hearing the third trial on crimes committed at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) during the dictatorship. Some 5,000 detainees were held there; most never returned. The trial is the largest ever dealing with the “dirty war”: 68 defendants are charged with crimes against 789 people, with about 900 witnesses expected to testify over two years. The trial started on Nov. 28; as of Dec. 9 the charges were still being read.
In the first trial the only defendant, former navy officer Héctor Febres, was charged with participating in torture, kidnapping and other crimes. Febres was found dead in his cell on Dec. 11, 2007, two days before he was to be sentenced; he died of a heart attack, but traces of cyanide were found in his body, and the death is considered a suicide [see Update #929]. The second trial resulted in the conviction of 16 former military and police officers; 12 of them, including former Navy captain and spy Alfredo Astiz (“The Blond Angel of Death”), were sentenced to life in prison on Oct. 26, 2011, while four received shorter sentences [World War 4 Report 10/27/11].
The current trial is the first to deal with the notorious “death flights,” in which as many as 1,000 of the ESMA detainees were drugged with pentothal, loaded on to planes, flown over the Río de la Plata, the Atlantic or the Paraná River delta, and then pushed out, naked and with their hands and feet bound. Some of the defendants were already convicted of other crimes in the second trial: Astiz, Están Jorge Acosta (“The Tiger”), Juan Antonio Azic, Adolfo Donda and Ricardo Cavallo. The new trial includes eight men charged with piloting the planes, including Juan Alberto Poch, who was working as a pilot for the Dutch airline Transavia when he was arrested in September 2009 [see Update #1032].
An important part of the evidence against the defendants comes from several corpses that washed ashore in 1977. Forensics experts identified them in 2005 as the bodies of detainees who disappeared from the ESMA, including several women from a group that Astiz had infiltrated; two founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group that demonstrated each week in central Buenos Aires to demand the return of their disappeared children; and the French nun Léonie Duquet. Another missing nun, Alice Domon, was apparently killed on the same flight, but her body was never found; naval personnel at the base reportedly joked that Duquet and Domon were the “flying nuns.”
Another important part of the evidence resulted from investigations by Argentine journalist Miriam Lewin, who herself was detained in the ESMA. She located a plane used in the death flights, one of five Irish-built Skyvan planes that the Argentine coast guard acquired in 1971. This allowed prosecutors and human rights organizations to investigate flight logs and other records. The plane is currently used to carry goods from south Florida to the Bahamas. (IPS 12/3/12 via Upside Down World ; Christian Science Monitor 12/7/12; El País 12/9/12 from correspondent)
*3. Colombia: Petroleum Workers Leader Murdered
Two unidentified men on a motorcycle gunned down Colombian labor leader Milton Enrique Rivas Parra on Dec. 11 in Puerto Gaitán, a city in the central department of Meta. He was hit by 17 bullets, according to his family. Rivas was a leader in the Meta section of the Workers’ Labor Union of the Petroleum Industry (USO) and in a local grassroots organization, the Villa Ortiz Community Action Council. He had been receiving death threats, which he first reported to Colombian prosecutors on Aug. 25.
The USO has been carrying out an organizing drive over the last year at several companies, including the Canadian-Colombian multinational Pacific Rubiales. Vivas was involved in organizing at Termotecnica Coindustrial S A, a subcontractor for Cepcolsa, the Colombian subsidiary of the Spanish company CEPSA. Negotiations between the company and the union were held in November; the newly formed European industrial union federation IndustriALL joined with the USO negotiating committee as a demonstration of international support. But the talks broke off on Nov. 24 without an agreement.
Citing unidentified sources, the Meta police claimed that Vivas may have quit the union a month before his death and may have been involved in an argument with another unionist on Dec. 10. Labor leaders dismissed the implication that Vivas’ murder resulted from disputes within the union, noting that 2,500 labor leaders and activists have been killed in Colombia in less than 20 years, largely by rightwing forces. On Dec. 14 the USO wrote that its members would continue a strike against Termotecnica despite the “tense situation” in Puerto Gaitán after Vivas’ death. “The workers and leaders of the USO unanimously reject the accusations by the police,” the union said, “and warn that they will file complaints with the relevant national and international organizations, where they will present recordings in which members of the ESMAD [the police force’s Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD)] announce that they will murder the participants in the protest against Termotecnica.” (IndustriALL website 11/30/12; El Tiempo (Bogotá) 12/12/12; USO website 12/14/12; Rebelión (Spain) 12/16/12)
*4. Haiti: "Earthquake Relief" Helps Build New Luxury Hotel
The Clinton Bush Fund, which former presidents Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009) established shortly after Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake, is closing down on Dec. 31, the group’s vice president for marketing and communications said on Dec. 7. The fund will have disbursed all of the $54.4 million it raised, she indicated. The organization says on its website that its goal was “to assist the Haitian people in building their own country back better.” The group says it has “[d]irectly created or sustained 7,350 jobs and counting” and “[d]irectly trained 20,050 people and counting.” (New York Times 12/7/12 from AP)
One of the fund’s projects—the Oasis Hotel in Pétionville, a suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince—opened on Dec. 12 with a soiree and 800 invitation-only guests. Munching hors-d’oeuvres and sipping “free-flowing wine,” the Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles wrote, the participants observed “the bamboo, locally grown orchids and sexy white furniture that lined the expansive courtyard.” The 128-room hotel cost $35 million to build; $2 million was provided by the Clinton Bush Fund [see Update #1080]. President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) called the hotel “a symbol of the new Haiti.”
According to Tourism Minister Stephanie Balmir Villedrouin, Martelly’s government has approved a $161 million hotel project that will bring a total of 1,200 new hotel rooms to the country next year. A 106-room Best Western and an El Rancho with 72 rooms and 13 apartments are set to open in the coming months; Comfort Suites and Marriott are also planning hotels in Port-au-Prince. (Miami Herald 12/13/12)
On Dec. 10, two days before the Oasis opening, the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA), a grassroots housing coalition, issued a press release charging that Port-au-Prince area mayors, police agents, justices of the peace and property owners—some with questionable land titles—were continuing forcible evictions of people left homeless by the 2010 earthquake. Some 150 families were threatened, according to the group, which said the displaced persons camps at risk were Vilambeta at Caradeux in the northeastern suburb of Tabarre; Camp Gaston Margron, in the Mariani Zone of Carrefour, southwest of the capital; Fortuna Guery in Port-au-Prince; and Camp Cr3, at Delmas 60, a neighborhood in the Delmas commune east of downtown Port-au-Prince. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/10/12)
Some 360,000 people are still living in the camps or other temporary shelters almost three years after the earthquake—4% of Haiti’s population, according to Johan Peleman, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Haiti. “There’s still not enough construction of new housing going on,” Peleman told the Reuters wire service’s AlertNet, which notes that “just over half the $6.04 billion in aid to Haiti pledged by donors from 2010 to 2012 has been disbursed.” (AlertNet 12/13/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, US/immigration
Americas: Human Rights Defenders Increasingly Targeted and Attacked
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4026-americas-human-rights-defenders-increasingly-targeted-and-attacked-
Interview: Noam Chomsky on Latin America
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/12/13/interview-noam-chomsky-latin-america
Look from Above or Look from Below: An Interview with Raúl Zibechi (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4017-look-from-above-or-look-from-below-an-interview-with-raul-zibechi
What really happened in Curuguaty? (Paraguay)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8601
Bolivia: End of the Road for TIPNIS Consulta
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/12/13/bolivia-end-road-tipnis-consulta
Environmental Dissonance: Global Warming and Bolivia’s Kallawaya Healers
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4020-environmental-dissonance-global-warming-and-bolivias-kallawaya-healers
Native Communities in Peru Take Charge of Environmental Monitoring
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4019-native-communities-in-peru-take-charge-of-environmental-monitoring
Peru: Multinationals Undermining Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4021-peru-multinationals-undermining-justice
Colombia puts security forces under martial jurisdiction
http://ww4report.com/node/11632#comment-391748
Armed Peace does not Equate with Civil Peace (Colombia)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8633
Colombia: Dismantling a Half-Century of Conflict
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8725
The End of the Chávez Era? (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/12/14/end-ch%C3%A1vez-era
Venezuelan President Chavez’s “Complex” Recovery Creates Uncertainty
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7550
Unions March in Venezuela over Labor Rights
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7549
Universal Health Care in El Salvador – A Personal Reflection
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4015-universal-health-care-in-el-salvador-a-personal-reflection
Congress vs. the Supreme Court: The Power Grab (Honduras)
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/12/congress-vs-supreme-court-power-grab.html
Ismael and Manuelita Died in Defense of Three Basic Rights (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8650
Mexico bans Maya ceremony at ancestral temples
http://ww4report.com/node/11791
Lead Poisoning Underscores Mexico’s Need to Hasten Toxic Waste Inventory
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8684
Killing Spree on the Border (Mexico/US)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8735
Why Build a Border Wall? (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/12/11/why-build-border-wall
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Showing posts with label Colombia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colombia. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
WNU #1155: Colombia GM Workers Resume Hunger Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1155, December 9, 2012
1. Colombia: Injured GM Workers Resume Hunger Strike
2. Mexico: Evidence Mounts of Police Repression on Dec. 1
3. Mexico: Will Court Ruling Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Colombia: Injured GM Workers Resume Hunger Strike
On Nov. 20 Jorge Parra, a former employee of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), resumed a liquids-only hunger strike that he and 11 other former employees started last summer to pressure the company to reinstate them and compensate them for work-related injuries [see Update #1142]. They had suspended the fast on Aug. 24 after General Motors agreed to enter mediation, but they decided to go back on strike when management appeared unwilling to meet their demands. The former workers say Colmotores fired them because they developed disabilities due to injuries on the job, repetitive stress injuries or other work-related illnesses.
Parra, the president of the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol), was in the US to attend the annual protest at Fort Benning, Georgia against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), Nov. 16-18 [see Update #1153]. United Auto Workers (UAW) president Bob King, who was also at the protest, told Parra that the mediation was going nowhere, leading to the decision to resume the strike. Melvin Thompson, a Detroit autoworker and former president of UAW Local 140, went on a water-only hunger strike as a statement of solidarity with the Colmotores workers, and eight Colombian workers joined the hunger strike at the encampment they’ve maintained in front of the US embassy in Bogotá since Aug. 1, 2011. Parra remained in the US, demanding a meeting with top GM executives.
About 50 UAW members and other supporters protested at GM headquarters in Detroit on Nov. 29, chanting “down with exploitation, up with mediation!” A small group also demonstrated outside the US State Department in Washington, DC, where Hillary Clinton was presenting the department’s annual Award for Corporate Excellence. Although GM didn’t win, it was selected to be one of the 11 finalists. [As a result of a 2009 bailout, the US government is GM’s largest shareholder; see Update #1141.] On Dec. 7 more than a dozen protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the Rochester, Michigan home of GM vice president Cathy Clegg, the company official in charge of labor relations.
Former UAW local 909 president Frank Hammer noted in an interview with The Real News Network that the strong solidarity by US autoworkers was partly a result of the pressure unionists in Michigan are under as rightwing forces push for the state legislature to pass an anti-labor “right-to-work” law. “I think that here in Michigan, our union rights are on the chopping block,” Hammer said. “[I]f General Motors had its way, we would look a lot more like Colombia.”
Brazilian unionists have also expressed solidarity. “We know that not only in Brazil are we being attacked by GM’s plans,” Herbert Claros da Silva, vice president of the metalworkers union in San José dos Campos in Brazil, wrote in a letter to US activists. “We also know that in Colombia, Mexico, France and Germany, [GM wants] to end the jobs and workers’ rights.” (Workday Minnesota 12/3/12 from Labor Notes; The Oakland Press (Pontiac, Michigan) 12/7/12; TRNN 12/9/12)
Supporters of the Colmotores workers have started an online petition calling on GM chair and GEO Dan Akerson, GM South America president Jaime Ardila, US ambassador to Colombia Peter McKinley, Colombia labor minister Rafael Pardo Rueda, and US labor secretary Hilda Solis to reach an agreement that will end the strike. The petition is at https://www.change.org/petitions/gm-resolve-situation-of-workers-dismissed-for-occupational-injuries?utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
*2. Mexico: Evidence Mounts of Police Repression on Dec. 1
On Dec. 9 Mexican authorities released 56 of the 69 people who had been in detention for more than a week on suspicion of “attacking public peace” during protests in Mexico City against the inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A total of 106 people were reportedly arrested on a day which included violent confrontations between police and protesters and widespread destruction of property [see Update #1154], but 28 were quickly released. Judge María del Carmen Mora Brito of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) court system ordered the Dec. 9 releases after “analyzing videos, testimonies and expert witnesses’ reports,” the DF Superior Court of Justice (TSJDF) announced in a communiqué. (Europa Press 12/10/12)
The judge's action followed a week of demonstrations against police repression and charges that agents had repeatedly attacked, beaten and arrested peaceful protesters and bystanders while failing to arrest the people who had been engaged in vandalism. There were also accusations that agents provocateurs had infiltrated the protests. Complaints about the police seemed to be supported by videos that circulated widely on the internet. One, a compilation by the student video collective Imágenes En Rebeldía, appears to show unprovoked police attacks, arrests of nonviolent protesters, and men dressed in civilian clothes and armed with crowbars and chains standing and walking among uniformed federal police agents behind metal barriers around the Chamber of Deputies building.
On Dec. 6 the DF Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) reported that the DF police had arrested at least 22 people arbitrarily and that four people showed signs of having been tortured. A total of 88 people claimed to have been arrested without justification, the governmental commission said; 15 youths were charged with taking part in vandalism on Juárez Avenue even though the vandalism occurred after the time of their arrests. Among the people arrested on Dec. 1 was Mircea Topolenau, a Romanian photographer covering the events for a magazine. CDHDF president Luis González Placencia noted that his organization was only reporting actions by the DF police and that it was up to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to investigate alleged abuses by the federal police. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/7/12)
On Dec. 7 the Mexican branch of the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) presented President Peña Nieto and Miguel Angel Mancera, the head of the DF government, with 20,000 signatures from Mexican citizens demanding an investigation of police abuses. “Every innocent person arrested, accused of a crime he or she didn’t commit, not only represents a tragedy in itself and a clear violation of human rights, but is also a reflection of a system of justice that has failed to try the guilty party and is maintaining impunity,” AI Mexico impact and mobilization coordinator Daniel Zapico said. (LJ 12/8/12) Mancera took office on Dec. 5, succeeding Marcelo Ebrard; both men are members of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which has governed the DF since 1997.
Two protesters were seriously injured during the Dec. 1 protests. Drama teacher Francisco Kuykendall Leal was hit by a tear gas canister and was hospitalized with cranial injuries. He is an active supporter of The Other Campaign, a political movement inspired by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) [see Update #832]. Uriel Sandoval Díaz, a student majoring in environmental and climate change studies at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), lost an eye and suffered fractures when he was hit by a rubber bullet. “This struggle won’t end until poverty ends,” Uriel said from a wheelchair as he was being released from the General Hospital on Dec. 6. “An eye is nothing [when] every day thousands of human beings have nothing to eat.” (Kaos en la Red 12/4/12 from Desinformémonos; Milenio (Mexico) 12/7/12)
In related news, an online petition has been started calling on Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust to withdraw the offer of a fellowship at the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to outgoing president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). Tens of thousands of Mexicans have died in the militarized “war on drugs” Calderón initiated soon after he took office in December 2006. The petition is at http://www.change.org/petitions/harvard-university-president-faust-deny-outgoing-mexican-president-felipe-calderon-employment-at-harvard
*3. Mexico: Will Court Ruling Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?
A four-justice panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) decided unanimously on Dec. 5 to uphold a challenge that three same-sex couples brought against the marriage law in the southern state of Oaxaca. State authorities had refused to marry the couples last year under Oaxaca Civil Code Article 143, which defines marriage as “a civil contract carried out between one man and one woman, who join together to perpetuate the species and to provide mutual aid.” The justices ruled that the requirement “to procreate to perpetuate the species violates the constitutional principle of self-determination of persons and the right of each individual to the free development of personality.” The SCJN ordered the Oaxaca Civil Registry to act on the applications the three couples made for marriage authorization and not to discriminate against them.
The decision doesn’t completely invalidate Article 143, but it opens the way for same-sex couples denied the right to wed in any of the country’s 31 states to appeal to the Supreme Court. One of the justices, José Ramón Cossío, told the Mexican daily La Jornada that the SCJN didn’t strike the law down because if it had, “in a practical sense we would have left the Oaxaca Civil Code without an article [on marriage], and it would have affected people of the same sex as much as heterosexuals.” But in the future the justices might make a general declaration of unconstitutionality, Cossío said, and “afterwards it is foreseeable that the effect might be broader”—that is, the court could rule to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/5/12)
The Federal District (DF, Mexico City) already permits same-sex marriage. The SCJN ruled in August 2010 that same-sex marriages performed in the DF are valid in all the country’s states; it also upheld the DF’s legalization of adoption by same-sex couples [see Update #1044].
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago
Argentina’s Biggest Human Rights Trial Begins
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4001-argentinas-biggest-human-rights-trial-begins
ICJ opens hearings in Chile-Peru maritime dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/11750
Paraguayan Government Deploys Joint Military-Police Force to Monitor Upcoming Human Rights March for "Violent Infiltrators"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4013-paraguayan-government-deploys-joint-military-police-force-to-monitor-upcoming-human-rights-march-for-qviolent-infiltratorsq
Peru's cabinet in bid to save Conga project
http://ww4report.com/node/11752
Ecuador's Correa Seeks South American Allies in Conflict with Anti-Mining Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4006-ecuadors-correa-seeks-south-american-allies-in-conflict-with-anti-mining-social-movements
A Dream Come True for the Mining Industry: A Response to Correa's Proposal to "Deal With Radicals"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4012-a-dream-come-true-for-the-mining-industry-a-response-to-correas-proposal-to-qdeal-with-radicalsq
Ecuador: indigenous protests as oil blocs sold
http://ww4report.com/node/11751
International Court Investigates Colombia for “False Positive” Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4008-international-court-investigates-colombia-for-false-positive-killings
Colombian Military and a Local Businessman Agree to Build a Base on Stolen Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4005-colombian-military-and-a-local-businessman-agree-to-build-a-base-on-stolen-land
Venezuela’s Chavez’s Cancer Returns, Leaves Vice-President in Charge
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7532
Latin leaders legitimize legalization (Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica)
http://globalganjareport.com/content/latin-leaders-legitimize-legalization
Canal intrigues behind Nicaragua border disputes
http://ww4report.com/node/11749
Honduras: Drug War as Counterinsurgency?
http://ww4report.com/node/11757
'Outing' Honduras: A Human Rights Catastrophe in the Making
http://nacla.org/news/2012/11/29/outing-honduras-human-rights-catastrophe-making
Honduran President Calls Supreme Court an Enemy of the State
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/12/lobo-supreme-court-is-enemy-of-state.html
Deaf Ear Turned to Local Opposition to Mines in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4011-deaf-ear-turned-to-local-opposition-to-mines-in-guatemala
Peña’s Promises (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8435
Mexico’s presidential inauguration marked by vows and violence
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8449
A New Era for Mexico, Juarez?
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/12/05/a-new-era-for-mexico-juarez/
Convicts, Collateral Damage, and the “War on Drugs” in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/12/5/convicts-collateral-damage-and-%E2%80%9Cwar-drugs%E2%80%9D-us-mexico-borderlands
New Report Finds Economic Insecurity Increasingly Puts Haitian Girls at Risk of Violence
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-report-finds-economic-insecurity-increasingly-puts-haitian-girls-at-risk-of-violence
Hunger Strike against Trinidad Highway Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/caribbean-archives-45/4007-hunger-strike-against-trinidad-highway-continues
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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1155, December 9, 2012
1. Colombia: Injured GM Workers Resume Hunger Strike
2. Mexico: Evidence Mounts of Police Repression on Dec. 1
3. Mexico: Will Court Ruling Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Colombia: Injured GM Workers Resume Hunger Strike
On Nov. 20 Jorge Parra, a former employee of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), resumed a liquids-only hunger strike that he and 11 other former employees started last summer to pressure the company to reinstate them and compensate them for work-related injuries [see Update #1142]. They had suspended the fast on Aug. 24 after General Motors agreed to enter mediation, but they decided to go back on strike when management appeared unwilling to meet their demands. The former workers say Colmotores fired them because they developed disabilities due to injuries on the job, repetitive stress injuries or other work-related illnesses.
Parra, the president of the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol), was in the US to attend the annual protest at Fort Benning, Georgia against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), Nov. 16-18 [see Update #1153]. United Auto Workers (UAW) president Bob King, who was also at the protest, told Parra that the mediation was going nowhere, leading to the decision to resume the strike. Melvin Thompson, a Detroit autoworker and former president of UAW Local 140, went on a water-only hunger strike as a statement of solidarity with the Colmotores workers, and eight Colombian workers joined the hunger strike at the encampment they’ve maintained in front of the US embassy in Bogotá since Aug. 1, 2011. Parra remained in the US, demanding a meeting with top GM executives.
About 50 UAW members and other supporters protested at GM headquarters in Detroit on Nov. 29, chanting “down with exploitation, up with mediation!” A small group also demonstrated outside the US State Department in Washington, DC, where Hillary Clinton was presenting the department’s annual Award for Corporate Excellence. Although GM didn’t win, it was selected to be one of the 11 finalists. [As a result of a 2009 bailout, the US government is GM’s largest shareholder; see Update #1141.] On Dec. 7 more than a dozen protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the Rochester, Michigan home of GM vice president Cathy Clegg, the company official in charge of labor relations.
Former UAW local 909 president Frank Hammer noted in an interview with The Real News Network that the strong solidarity by US autoworkers was partly a result of the pressure unionists in Michigan are under as rightwing forces push for the state legislature to pass an anti-labor “right-to-work” law. “I think that here in Michigan, our union rights are on the chopping block,” Hammer said. “[I]f General Motors had its way, we would look a lot more like Colombia.”
Brazilian unionists have also expressed solidarity. “We know that not only in Brazil are we being attacked by GM’s plans,” Herbert Claros da Silva, vice president of the metalworkers union in San José dos Campos in Brazil, wrote in a letter to US activists. “We also know that in Colombia, Mexico, France and Germany, [GM wants] to end the jobs and workers’ rights.” (Workday Minnesota 12/3/12 from Labor Notes; The Oakland Press (Pontiac, Michigan) 12/7/12; TRNN 12/9/12)
Supporters of the Colmotores workers have started an online petition calling on GM chair and GEO Dan Akerson, GM South America president Jaime Ardila, US ambassador to Colombia Peter McKinley, Colombia labor minister Rafael Pardo Rueda, and US labor secretary Hilda Solis to reach an agreement that will end the strike. The petition is at https://www.change.org/petitions/gm-resolve-situation-of-workers-dismissed-for-occupational-injuries?utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
*2. Mexico: Evidence Mounts of Police Repression on Dec. 1
On Dec. 9 Mexican authorities released 56 of the 69 people who had been in detention for more than a week on suspicion of “attacking public peace” during protests in Mexico City against the inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A total of 106 people were reportedly arrested on a day which included violent confrontations between police and protesters and widespread destruction of property [see Update #1154], but 28 were quickly released. Judge María del Carmen Mora Brito of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) court system ordered the Dec. 9 releases after “analyzing videos, testimonies and expert witnesses’ reports,” the DF Superior Court of Justice (TSJDF) announced in a communiqué. (Europa Press 12/10/12)
The judge's action followed a week of demonstrations against police repression and charges that agents had repeatedly attacked, beaten and arrested peaceful protesters and bystanders while failing to arrest the people who had been engaged in vandalism. There were also accusations that agents provocateurs had infiltrated the protests. Complaints about the police seemed to be supported by videos that circulated widely on the internet. One, a compilation by the student video collective Imágenes En Rebeldía, appears to show unprovoked police attacks, arrests of nonviolent protesters, and men dressed in civilian clothes and armed with crowbars and chains standing and walking among uniformed federal police agents behind metal barriers around the Chamber of Deputies building.
On Dec. 6 the DF Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) reported that the DF police had arrested at least 22 people arbitrarily and that four people showed signs of having been tortured. A total of 88 people claimed to have been arrested without justification, the governmental commission said; 15 youths were charged with taking part in vandalism on Juárez Avenue even though the vandalism occurred after the time of their arrests. Among the people arrested on Dec. 1 was Mircea Topolenau, a Romanian photographer covering the events for a magazine. CDHDF president Luis González Placencia noted that his organization was only reporting actions by the DF police and that it was up to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to investigate alleged abuses by the federal police. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/7/12)
On Dec. 7 the Mexican branch of the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) presented President Peña Nieto and Miguel Angel Mancera, the head of the DF government, with 20,000 signatures from Mexican citizens demanding an investigation of police abuses. “Every innocent person arrested, accused of a crime he or she didn’t commit, not only represents a tragedy in itself and a clear violation of human rights, but is also a reflection of a system of justice that has failed to try the guilty party and is maintaining impunity,” AI Mexico impact and mobilization coordinator Daniel Zapico said. (LJ 12/8/12) Mancera took office on Dec. 5, succeeding Marcelo Ebrard; both men are members of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which has governed the DF since 1997.
Two protesters were seriously injured during the Dec. 1 protests. Drama teacher Francisco Kuykendall Leal was hit by a tear gas canister and was hospitalized with cranial injuries. He is an active supporter of The Other Campaign, a political movement inspired by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) [see Update #832]. Uriel Sandoval Díaz, a student majoring in environmental and climate change studies at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), lost an eye and suffered fractures when he was hit by a rubber bullet. “This struggle won’t end until poverty ends,” Uriel said from a wheelchair as he was being released from the General Hospital on Dec. 6. “An eye is nothing [when] every day thousands of human beings have nothing to eat.” (Kaos en la Red 12/4/12 from Desinformémonos; Milenio (Mexico) 12/7/12)
In related news, an online petition has been started calling on Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust to withdraw the offer of a fellowship at the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to outgoing president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). Tens of thousands of Mexicans have died in the militarized “war on drugs” Calderón initiated soon after he took office in December 2006. The petition is at http://www.change.org/petitions/harvard-university-president-faust-deny-outgoing-mexican-president-felipe-calderon-employment-at-harvard
*3. Mexico: Will Court Ruling Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?
A four-justice panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) decided unanimously on Dec. 5 to uphold a challenge that three same-sex couples brought against the marriage law in the southern state of Oaxaca. State authorities had refused to marry the couples last year under Oaxaca Civil Code Article 143, which defines marriage as “a civil contract carried out between one man and one woman, who join together to perpetuate the species and to provide mutual aid.” The justices ruled that the requirement “to procreate to perpetuate the species violates the constitutional principle of self-determination of persons and the right of each individual to the free development of personality.” The SCJN ordered the Oaxaca Civil Registry to act on the applications the three couples made for marriage authorization and not to discriminate against them.
The decision doesn’t completely invalidate Article 143, but it opens the way for same-sex couples denied the right to wed in any of the country’s 31 states to appeal to the Supreme Court. One of the justices, José Ramón Cossío, told the Mexican daily La Jornada that the SCJN didn’t strike the law down because if it had, “in a practical sense we would have left the Oaxaca Civil Code without an article [on marriage], and it would have affected people of the same sex as much as heterosexuals.” But in the future the justices might make a general declaration of unconstitutionality, Cossío said, and “afterwards it is foreseeable that the effect might be broader”—that is, the court could rule to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/5/12)
The Federal District (DF, Mexico City) already permits same-sex marriage. The SCJN ruled in August 2010 that same-sex marriages performed in the DF are valid in all the country’s states; it also upheld the DF’s legalization of adoption by same-sex couples [see Update #1044].
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago
Argentina’s Biggest Human Rights Trial Begins
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4001-argentinas-biggest-human-rights-trial-begins
ICJ opens hearings in Chile-Peru maritime dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/11750
Paraguayan Government Deploys Joint Military-Police Force to Monitor Upcoming Human Rights March for "Violent Infiltrators"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4013-paraguayan-government-deploys-joint-military-police-force-to-monitor-upcoming-human-rights-march-for-qviolent-infiltratorsq
Peru's cabinet in bid to save Conga project
http://ww4report.com/node/11752
Ecuador's Correa Seeks South American Allies in Conflict with Anti-Mining Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4006-ecuadors-correa-seeks-south-american-allies-in-conflict-with-anti-mining-social-movements
A Dream Come True for the Mining Industry: A Response to Correa's Proposal to "Deal With Radicals"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4012-a-dream-come-true-for-the-mining-industry-a-response-to-correas-proposal-to-qdeal-with-radicalsq
Ecuador: indigenous protests as oil blocs sold
http://ww4report.com/node/11751
International Court Investigates Colombia for “False Positive” Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4008-international-court-investigates-colombia-for-false-positive-killings
Colombian Military and a Local Businessman Agree to Build a Base on Stolen Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4005-colombian-military-and-a-local-businessman-agree-to-build-a-base-on-stolen-land
Venezuela’s Chavez’s Cancer Returns, Leaves Vice-President in Charge
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7532
Latin leaders legitimize legalization (Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica)
http://globalganjareport.com/content/latin-leaders-legitimize-legalization
Canal intrigues behind Nicaragua border disputes
http://ww4report.com/node/11749
Honduras: Drug War as Counterinsurgency?
http://ww4report.com/node/11757
'Outing' Honduras: A Human Rights Catastrophe in the Making
http://nacla.org/news/2012/11/29/outing-honduras-human-rights-catastrophe-making
Honduran President Calls Supreme Court an Enemy of the State
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/12/lobo-supreme-court-is-enemy-of-state.html
Deaf Ear Turned to Local Opposition to Mines in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4011-deaf-ear-turned-to-local-opposition-to-mines-in-guatemala
Peña’s Promises (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8435
Mexico’s presidential inauguration marked by vows and violence
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8449
A New Era for Mexico, Juarez?
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/12/05/a-new-era-for-mexico-juarez/
Convicts, Collateral Damage, and the “War on Drugs” in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/12/5/convicts-collateral-damage-and-%E2%80%9Cwar-drugs%E2%80%9D-us-mexico-borderlands
New Report Finds Economic Insecurity Increasingly Puts Haitian Girls at Risk of Violence
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-report-finds-economic-insecurity-increasingly-puts-haitian-girls-at-risk-of-violence
Hunger Strike against Trinidad Highway Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/caribbean-archives-45/4007-hunger-strike-against-trinidad-highway-continues
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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
WNU #1153: Leaders and Movements Protest Attack on Gaza
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1153, November 25, 2012
1. Latin America: Leaders and Movements Protest Attack on Gaza
2. Argentina: Unions Call First General Strike in 10 Years
3. Mexico: Torture and Disappearances Are on the Rise
4. US: SOA Protests Continue; Church Expels Activist Priest
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, Trade
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Leaders and Movements Protest Attack on Gaza
In a Nov. 17 statement the leaders of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), a trade bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay (suspended), Uruguay and Venezuela, expressed their “strongest condemnation of the violence unleashed between Israel and Palestine” and their “concern with the disproportionate use of force” since Israel began a military offensive against Gaza on Nov. 14. Mercosur also expressed “its support to the request from the state of Palestine to obtain the status of [United Nations] observer member.”
The four active Mercosur members are among the 11 Latin American countries that have recognized Palestine as a state [see Update #1063]; the others are Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru. Mercosur signed a “free trade” agreement with the Palestinian National Authority in December 2011; it signed a similar trade agreement with Israel in 2007, a move opposed by many leftists, who feel cutting off trade with Mercosur would put pressure on the Israeli government. Israel’s annual exports to Mercosur are worth about $700 million; Brazil by itself is the third largest recipient of Israeli exports in the world. (MercoPress (Montevideo) 11/17/12; Aporrea.org (Venezuela) 11/19/12; People’s Daily (China) 11/21/12)
[Paraguay was suspended from Mercosur after the legislature's sudden impeachment of President Fernando Lugo on June 22 but remains a member; see Update #1135.]
Some Latin American leaders were stronger than others in their condemnation of the Israeli operation, codenamed “Pillar of Defense,” which was suspended in a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21. On Nov. 19 Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said “the first step” for resolving the conflict “should be the creation of a free and independent Palestinian state that can negotiate peace as an equal with the state of Israel.” Also on Nov. 19, El Salvador’s governing leftist party, the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), condemned the offensive as a “new massacre…against the people of Palestine” and charged that Israel had provoked the conflict. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had characterized “Pillar of Defense” as “savage” a few days earlier, while the Cuban government repeated its “most firm support for the just cause of the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights, which include the creation of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
“[W]e back the right of the Palestinian people to be able to have their own free, independent and autonomous state,” Chile’s rightwing president, Sebastián Piñera, said during a visit to Turkey on Nov. 19, but he stressed that Chile “also support[s] Israel’s right to count on secure borders in peace.” According to the Spanish wire service EFE, Chile has the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East.
Many groups in the region held protests against the Israeli offensive. About 30 Uruguayans demonstrated in Montevideo on Nov. 19 in front of the Israeli embassy, calling Israel a “genocidal state.” Dozens of members of the Salvadoran Palestinian Association and other organizations protested the same day in front of the Israeli embassy in El Salvador. (EFE 11/19/12 via Diario de Yucatán (Mexico))
A Mexican group protested at the Angel of Independence in Mexico City on Nov. 20, and another demonstration was held in front of the Israeli embassy. Activists were planning a further show of support for the Palestinians in front of the United Nations (UN) office in Mexico City on Nov. 27, two days before Palestinian National Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is scheduled to ask the UN General Assembly for observer status for Palestine. (Adital (Brazil) 11/22/12) Hundreds of Colombians and resident Palestinians demonstrated at the Israeli embassy in Bogotá on Nov. 20; the protest tied up traffic in the city center for about two hours. A protest in Managua the next day by Nicaraguans, resident Palestinians and US citizen Nan McCurry targeted the US embassy. “I’m asking the government of my country to stop supporting Israel so that this war will end immediately,” McCurry said in a brief speech. (People’s Daily 11/21/12, 11/21/12)
A number of Arab and Palestinian groups, with the support of Brazil’s Unified Workers’ Central (CUT), are holding a Free Palestine World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. The goal is “to consolidate and strengthen the international solidarity movement for the rights of the Palestinians.” (Adital (Brazil) 11/20/12)
*2. Argentina: Unions Call First General Strike in 10 Years
Argentina’s largest union federation, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), and the more radical Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) sponsored a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20 to protest President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s economic policies. The majority of the country’s unions supported the strike call, as did leftist parties and the leftist Classist and Combative Current (CCC), but the CGT section led by Antonio Caló, representing 33 industrial and service unions, ignored the strike call. Organizers called the action a success, while President Fernández dismissed it as “a phenomenon limited to some service unions and to the area around the federal capital.”
The strikers blocked the main highways into Buenos Aires and other major cities. Schools, courts, banks and gas stations were closed in Buenos Aires province, where about a third of the country’s population lives, and hospitals only accepted emergency cases. In the central province of Santa Fe, the strike shut down Rosario, the main port for the export of agricultural goods; oil production was affected in Río Negro, Neuquén and La Pampa provinces. Airports remained open but had many less flights than usual.
In addition to blocking roads, strikers reportedly threw stones at buses and punctured tires to keep people from going to work. CTA Pablo Micheli leader said strikers had blocked roads at 300 points; the media estimated that the number was 160. While claiming that hundreds of thousands of workers supported the strike, Micheli admitted that without the blockages “the strike wouldn’t have had the rate of observation that it had.” “[I]n Argentina there’s no right to strike,” he said. “We were forced to have piquetes [militant road blockages] so that the workers could justify not having gone to their work places.”
The strikers’ demands included an increase in the minimum wage and in social assistance programs; the elimination of a tax on workers’ incomes; and an increase in retirement pensions. The groups supporting the strike protested the loss of purchasing power by much of the population; some private economists claim the annual inflation rate will come to 25% this year.
The Nov. 20 action was Argentina’s first general strike since December 2002, and it marked the end of a long-time alliance between CGT general secretary Hugo Moyano and the faction of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) formed by President Fernández and her late husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) [see Update #988]. (Terra.es (Spain) 11/21/12 from Europa Press and unidentified wire services;La Jornada (Mexico) 11/21/12 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: Torture and Disappearances Are on the Rise
Complaints about abuses by Mexican police and soldiers have increased dramatically over the past seven years, according to testimony by Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, the president of the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), to the Mexican Senate’s Human Rights Commission on Nov. 21. Plascencia was reporting principally on the period from Jan. 1, 2005 to July 31, 2012, which overlaps the administration of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and his militarization of the “war on drugs.” Calderón took office on Dec. 1, 2006; he will be succeeded this Dec. 1 by Enrique Peña Nieto.
During the 2005-2012 period the CNDH received 5,568 complaints about alleged failures to follow required procedures in issuing or executing warrants for searches, Plascencia said. The agency is also investigating 2,126 cases of people who were reportedly disappeared. There were more than 9,000 complaints citing arbitrary detentions, a 121% increase during the period. In 2005 there was only one complaint of torture; in 2011 the number of complaints about torture or other cruel and degrading treatment had risen to 2,040. Since 2005 the CNDH has received a total of 34,385 complaints against federal public servants, with an 84% increase just in the last three years. The alleged abuses were “mainly concentrated under the headings of illegal searches, forcible disappearances, arbitrary detentions, executions and torture,” Plascencia said. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/22/12)
On Nov. 21 Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero publicly apologized at a ceremony in Acapulco for the deaths of two students and a gas station worker during a confrontation on Dec. 12, 2011 between police and students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the Guerrero village of Ayotzinapa. The apology was in response to a March recommendation by the CNDH, which also required compensation for the victims’ families and for people injured in the incident [see Update #1123]. Víctor Hugo Pérez, human rights director for the federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP), was also present to offer his “profound and heartfelt apology” for the role of federal police agents in the confrontation.
The brother of the gas station worker was the only relative of a victim to attend. The other families and students from the college boycotted the ceremony; instead, they held a press conference where they demanded punishment for the officials they say are responsible for the killings. State police agents Ismael Matadamas Salinas and Rey David Cortés Flores are the only suspects detained in the case, although the Guerrero legislature is considering a petition for lifting the immunity of former state chief prosecutor Guerrero Alberto López Rosas and former state public security secretary Ramón Almonte Borja. (LJ 11/20/12, 11/22/12)
*4. US: SOA Protests Continue; Church Expels Activist Priest
The 22nd annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), brought several thousand activists to the Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, for a series of events from Nov. 16 to Nov. 18. One demonstrator, Robert Norman Chantal of Americus, Georgia, was arrested when he climbed over the base's fence during the concluding event, a symbolic funeral march, on Nov. 18. He was released later on his own recognizance, according to a Fort Benning representative. Chantal, who faces a possible six-month sentence, will be tried in a US District Court on Jan. 9.
The protest’s sponsor, SOA Watch, opposes the US Army’s training of Latin American soldiers, charging that SOA graduates have been among the region’s most notorious human rights violators. The group’s protests have gained some sympathy in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela have ended their relations with the school, and in September Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega told a human rights delegation that Nicaragua will withdraw from SOA/WHINSEC [see Update #1144]. There may also some movement in US ruling circles. On Nov. 14 Denis McDonough, national deputy security adviser to US president Barack Obama, met with an SOA Watch delegation; the group asked for the school to be shut down by executive order. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) is planning to introduce legislation in Congress in January to suspend operations at the school and investigate human rights abuses in Latin America. (SOA Watch press release 11/18/12; Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer 11/18/12)
On Nov. 19, the day after this year’s protests, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a Catholic religious order, issued a statement confirming that the Vatican was dismissing SOA Watch’s founder, Father Roy Bourgeois, from the priesthood and from his order for participating in an August 2008 rite ordaining a woman as a priest. Bourgeois said that the dismissal was “very difficult and painful” but that his “only regret is that it took me so long to confront the issue of male power and domination in the Catholic Church.” (Religion News Service 11/21/12 via Washington Post)
The Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) responded to the decision with a statement noting Bourgeois’ solidarity with Hondurans after the June 2009 military coup and praising him as “a humanist, a tireless fighter for the imparting of justice, a defender of the poor and a companion to social struggles throughout the continent.” (Adital (Brazil) 11/23/12) Bourgeois’ supporters have started an online petition at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11972 where people can express their solidarity with his “decision to follow his conscience.”
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, Trade
#Radical Media: Communication Unbound (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/11/20/radical-media-communication-unbound
Latin America’s Left Turn Collides with Indigenous Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3974-latin-americas-left-turn-collides-with-indigenous-movements
Argentina fights US order to pay $1.33 billion debt
http://ww4report.com/node/11719
Industrial Soy and Sugar Cane Fuel Native Land Conflicts in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3978-industrial-soy-and-sugar-cane-fuel-native-land-conflicts-in-brazil
Brazil: crime wars rock Sao Paulo
http://ww4report.com/node/11728
Brazil: Amazon native killed by federal police
http://ww4report.com/node/11727
Brazil: violence halts work at Belo Monte dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11726
Bolivia: dissent over indigenous identity in census
http://ww4report.com/node/11725
Peru: Amazonian leaders press land demarcation
http://ww4report.com/node/11724
Peru: campesino alliance with "illegal" miners
http://ww4report.com/node/11723
Colombia: indigenous peace proposal advanced
http://ww4report.com/node/11722
Colombia rejects Hague ruling in Nicaragua maritime dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/11729
Mass Participation in Debate on Venezuela’s Socialist Plan
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7498
EL Salvador: Proposed Culture Law Would Provide Healthcare and Funding for Artists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3985-el-salvador-proposed-culture-law-would-provide-healthcare-and-funding-for-artists
Murders of Teenagers and Opposition Party Members Underscore Impunity in Honduras and the Failure of U.S. “Vetting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3977-murders-of-teenagers-and-opposition-party-members-underscore-impunity-in-honduras-and-the-failure-of-us-vetting
Honduras’ Party Primaries: Voters Went to the Polls, But Can Next Year’s Elections be “Free and Fair”?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-party-primaries-voters-went-to-the-polls-but-can-next-years-elections-be-free-and-fair
Action Alert! Protect Pacific Resistance in San José del Golfo, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3983-action-alert-protect-pacific-resistance-in-san-jose-del-golfo-guatemala
Canadian Mining on Trial (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3980-canadian-mining-on-trial
Guatemala’s ‘Little School of the Americas’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3976-guatemalas-little-school-of-the-americas
Should Chiapas Farmers Suffer for California’s Carbon? (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3975-should-chiapas-farmers-suffer-for-californias-carbon
War or Peace in Mexico?
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/11/24/war-or-peace-in-mexico/
Mexico: pressure mounts for drug legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/11730
Returning Migrant Children Pose Educational Challenge in Mexico
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/returning-migrant-children-pose-educational-challenge-in-mexico.php
The Caribbean’s Agricultural Crisis
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/11/23/caribbean%E2%80%99s-agricultural-crisis
Cholera Continues to Spread After Hurricane Sandy (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cholera-continues-to-spread-after-hurricane-sandy
Quebec fracking ban challenged under NAFTA
http://ww4report.com/node/11731
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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1153, November 25, 2012
1. Latin America: Leaders and Movements Protest Attack on Gaza
2. Argentina: Unions Call First General Strike in 10 Years
3. Mexico: Torture and Disappearances Are on the Rise
4. US: SOA Protests Continue; Church Expels Activist Priest
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, Trade
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Leaders and Movements Protest Attack on Gaza
In a Nov. 17 statement the leaders of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), a trade bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay (suspended), Uruguay and Venezuela, expressed their “strongest condemnation of the violence unleashed between Israel and Palestine” and their “concern with the disproportionate use of force” since Israel began a military offensive against Gaza on Nov. 14. Mercosur also expressed “its support to the request from the state of Palestine to obtain the status of [United Nations] observer member.”
The four active Mercosur members are among the 11 Latin American countries that have recognized Palestine as a state [see Update #1063]; the others are Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru. Mercosur signed a “free trade” agreement with the Palestinian National Authority in December 2011; it signed a similar trade agreement with Israel in 2007, a move opposed by many leftists, who feel cutting off trade with Mercosur would put pressure on the Israeli government. Israel’s annual exports to Mercosur are worth about $700 million; Brazil by itself is the third largest recipient of Israeli exports in the world. (MercoPress (Montevideo) 11/17/12; Aporrea.org (Venezuela) 11/19/12; People’s Daily (China) 11/21/12)
[Paraguay was suspended from Mercosur after the legislature's sudden impeachment of President Fernando Lugo on June 22 but remains a member; see Update #1135.]
Some Latin American leaders were stronger than others in their condemnation of the Israeli operation, codenamed “Pillar of Defense,” which was suspended in a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21. On Nov. 19 Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said “the first step” for resolving the conflict “should be the creation of a free and independent Palestinian state that can negotiate peace as an equal with the state of Israel.” Also on Nov. 19, El Salvador’s governing leftist party, the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), condemned the offensive as a “new massacre…against the people of Palestine” and charged that Israel had provoked the conflict. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had characterized “Pillar of Defense” as “savage” a few days earlier, while the Cuban government repeated its “most firm support for the just cause of the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights, which include the creation of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
“[W]e back the right of the Palestinian people to be able to have their own free, independent and autonomous state,” Chile’s rightwing president, Sebastián Piñera, said during a visit to Turkey on Nov. 19, but he stressed that Chile “also support[s] Israel’s right to count on secure borders in peace.” According to the Spanish wire service EFE, Chile has the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East.
Many groups in the region held protests against the Israeli offensive. About 30 Uruguayans demonstrated in Montevideo on Nov. 19 in front of the Israeli embassy, calling Israel a “genocidal state.” Dozens of members of the Salvadoran Palestinian Association and other organizations protested the same day in front of the Israeli embassy in El Salvador. (EFE 11/19/12 via Diario de Yucatán (Mexico))
A Mexican group protested at the Angel of Independence in Mexico City on Nov. 20, and another demonstration was held in front of the Israeli embassy. Activists were planning a further show of support for the Palestinians in front of the United Nations (UN) office in Mexico City on Nov. 27, two days before Palestinian National Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is scheduled to ask the UN General Assembly for observer status for Palestine. (Adital (Brazil) 11/22/12) Hundreds of Colombians and resident Palestinians demonstrated at the Israeli embassy in Bogotá on Nov. 20; the protest tied up traffic in the city center for about two hours. A protest in Managua the next day by Nicaraguans, resident Palestinians and US citizen Nan McCurry targeted the US embassy. “I’m asking the government of my country to stop supporting Israel so that this war will end immediately,” McCurry said in a brief speech. (People’s Daily 11/21/12, 11/21/12)
A number of Arab and Palestinian groups, with the support of Brazil’s Unified Workers’ Central (CUT), are holding a Free Palestine World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. The goal is “to consolidate and strengthen the international solidarity movement for the rights of the Palestinians.” (Adital (Brazil) 11/20/12)
*2. Argentina: Unions Call First General Strike in 10 Years
Argentina’s largest union federation, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), and the more radical Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) sponsored a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20 to protest President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s economic policies. The majority of the country’s unions supported the strike call, as did leftist parties and the leftist Classist and Combative Current (CCC), but the CGT section led by Antonio Caló, representing 33 industrial and service unions, ignored the strike call. Organizers called the action a success, while President Fernández dismissed it as “a phenomenon limited to some service unions and to the area around the federal capital.”
The strikers blocked the main highways into Buenos Aires and other major cities. Schools, courts, banks and gas stations were closed in Buenos Aires province, where about a third of the country’s population lives, and hospitals only accepted emergency cases. In the central province of Santa Fe, the strike shut down Rosario, the main port for the export of agricultural goods; oil production was affected in Río Negro, Neuquén and La Pampa provinces. Airports remained open but had many less flights than usual.
In addition to blocking roads, strikers reportedly threw stones at buses and punctured tires to keep people from going to work. CTA Pablo Micheli leader said strikers had blocked roads at 300 points; the media estimated that the number was 160. While claiming that hundreds of thousands of workers supported the strike, Micheli admitted that without the blockages “the strike wouldn’t have had the rate of observation that it had.” “[I]n Argentina there’s no right to strike,” he said. “We were forced to have piquetes [militant road blockages] so that the workers could justify not having gone to their work places.”
The strikers’ demands included an increase in the minimum wage and in social assistance programs; the elimination of a tax on workers’ incomes; and an increase in retirement pensions. The groups supporting the strike protested the loss of purchasing power by much of the population; some private economists claim the annual inflation rate will come to 25% this year.
The Nov. 20 action was Argentina’s first general strike since December 2002, and it marked the end of a long-time alliance between CGT general secretary Hugo Moyano and the faction of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) formed by President Fernández and her late husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) [see Update #988]. (Terra.es (Spain) 11/21/12 from Europa Press and unidentified wire services;La Jornada (Mexico) 11/21/12 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: Torture and Disappearances Are on the Rise
Complaints about abuses by Mexican police and soldiers have increased dramatically over the past seven years, according to testimony by Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, the president of the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), to the Mexican Senate’s Human Rights Commission on Nov. 21. Plascencia was reporting principally on the period from Jan. 1, 2005 to July 31, 2012, which overlaps the administration of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and his militarization of the “war on drugs.” Calderón took office on Dec. 1, 2006; he will be succeeded this Dec. 1 by Enrique Peña Nieto.
During the 2005-2012 period the CNDH received 5,568 complaints about alleged failures to follow required procedures in issuing or executing warrants for searches, Plascencia said. The agency is also investigating 2,126 cases of people who were reportedly disappeared. There were more than 9,000 complaints citing arbitrary detentions, a 121% increase during the period. In 2005 there was only one complaint of torture; in 2011 the number of complaints about torture or other cruel and degrading treatment had risen to 2,040. Since 2005 the CNDH has received a total of 34,385 complaints against federal public servants, with an 84% increase just in the last three years. The alleged abuses were “mainly concentrated under the headings of illegal searches, forcible disappearances, arbitrary detentions, executions and torture,” Plascencia said. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/22/12)
On Nov. 21 Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero publicly apologized at a ceremony in Acapulco for the deaths of two students and a gas station worker during a confrontation on Dec. 12, 2011 between police and students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the Guerrero village of Ayotzinapa. The apology was in response to a March recommendation by the CNDH, which also required compensation for the victims’ families and for people injured in the incident [see Update #1123]. Víctor Hugo Pérez, human rights director for the federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP), was also present to offer his “profound and heartfelt apology” for the role of federal police agents in the confrontation.
The brother of the gas station worker was the only relative of a victim to attend. The other families and students from the college boycotted the ceremony; instead, they held a press conference where they demanded punishment for the officials they say are responsible for the killings. State police agents Ismael Matadamas Salinas and Rey David Cortés Flores are the only suspects detained in the case, although the Guerrero legislature is considering a petition for lifting the immunity of former state chief prosecutor Guerrero Alberto López Rosas and former state public security secretary Ramón Almonte Borja. (LJ 11/20/12, 11/22/12)
*4. US: SOA Protests Continue; Church Expels Activist Priest
The 22nd annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), brought several thousand activists to the Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, for a series of events from Nov. 16 to Nov. 18. One demonstrator, Robert Norman Chantal of Americus, Georgia, was arrested when he climbed over the base's fence during the concluding event, a symbolic funeral march, on Nov. 18. He was released later on his own recognizance, according to a Fort Benning representative. Chantal, who faces a possible six-month sentence, will be tried in a US District Court on Jan. 9.
The protest’s sponsor, SOA Watch, opposes the US Army’s training of Latin American soldiers, charging that SOA graduates have been among the region’s most notorious human rights violators. The group’s protests have gained some sympathy in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela have ended their relations with the school, and in September Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega told a human rights delegation that Nicaragua will withdraw from SOA/WHINSEC [see Update #1144]. There may also some movement in US ruling circles. On Nov. 14 Denis McDonough, national deputy security adviser to US president Barack Obama, met with an SOA Watch delegation; the group asked for the school to be shut down by executive order. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) is planning to introduce legislation in Congress in January to suspend operations at the school and investigate human rights abuses in Latin America. (SOA Watch press release 11/18/12; Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer 11/18/12)
On Nov. 19, the day after this year’s protests, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a Catholic religious order, issued a statement confirming that the Vatican was dismissing SOA Watch’s founder, Father Roy Bourgeois, from the priesthood and from his order for participating in an August 2008 rite ordaining a woman as a priest. Bourgeois said that the dismissal was “very difficult and painful” but that his “only regret is that it took me so long to confront the issue of male power and domination in the Catholic Church.” (Religion News Service 11/21/12 via Washington Post)
The Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) responded to the decision with a statement noting Bourgeois’ solidarity with Hondurans after the June 2009 military coup and praising him as “a humanist, a tireless fighter for the imparting of justice, a defender of the poor and a companion to social struggles throughout the continent.” (Adital (Brazil) 11/23/12) Bourgeois’ supporters have started an online petition at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11972 where people can express their solidarity with his “decision to follow his conscience.”
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, Trade
#Radical Media: Communication Unbound (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/11/20/radical-media-communication-unbound
Latin America’s Left Turn Collides with Indigenous Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3974-latin-americas-left-turn-collides-with-indigenous-movements
Argentina fights US order to pay $1.33 billion debt
http://ww4report.com/node/11719
Industrial Soy and Sugar Cane Fuel Native Land Conflicts in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3978-industrial-soy-and-sugar-cane-fuel-native-land-conflicts-in-brazil
Brazil: crime wars rock Sao Paulo
http://ww4report.com/node/11728
Brazil: Amazon native killed by federal police
http://ww4report.com/node/11727
Brazil: violence halts work at Belo Monte dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11726
Bolivia: dissent over indigenous identity in census
http://ww4report.com/node/11725
Peru: Amazonian leaders press land demarcation
http://ww4report.com/node/11724
Peru: campesino alliance with "illegal" miners
http://ww4report.com/node/11723
Colombia: indigenous peace proposal advanced
http://ww4report.com/node/11722
Colombia rejects Hague ruling in Nicaragua maritime dispute
http://ww4report.com/node/11729
Mass Participation in Debate on Venezuela’s Socialist Plan
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7498
EL Salvador: Proposed Culture Law Would Provide Healthcare and Funding for Artists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3985-el-salvador-proposed-culture-law-would-provide-healthcare-and-funding-for-artists
Murders of Teenagers and Opposition Party Members Underscore Impunity in Honduras and the Failure of U.S. “Vetting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3977-murders-of-teenagers-and-opposition-party-members-underscore-impunity-in-honduras-and-the-failure-of-us-vetting
Honduras’ Party Primaries: Voters Went to the Polls, But Can Next Year’s Elections be “Free and Fair”?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-party-primaries-voters-went-to-the-polls-but-can-next-years-elections-be-free-and-fair
Action Alert! Protect Pacific Resistance in San José del Golfo, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3983-action-alert-protect-pacific-resistance-in-san-jose-del-golfo-guatemala
Canadian Mining on Trial (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3980-canadian-mining-on-trial
Guatemala’s ‘Little School of the Americas’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3976-guatemalas-little-school-of-the-americas
Should Chiapas Farmers Suffer for California’s Carbon? (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3975-should-chiapas-farmers-suffer-for-californias-carbon
War or Peace in Mexico?
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/11/24/war-or-peace-in-mexico/
Mexico: pressure mounts for drug legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/11730
Returning Migrant Children Pose Educational Challenge in Mexico
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/11/returning-migrant-children-pose-educational-challenge-in-mexico.php
The Caribbean’s Agricultural Crisis
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/11/23/caribbean%E2%80%99s-agricultural-crisis
Cholera Continues to Spread After Hurricane Sandy (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cholera-continues-to-spread-after-hurricane-sandy
Quebec fracking ban challenged under NAFTA
http://ww4report.com/node/11731
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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 24 September 2012
WNU #1145: Activist Honduran Lawyer Murdered
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1145, September 23, 2012
1. Honduras: Lawyer for Aguán and “Model Cities” Struggles Is Murdered
2. Colombia: Student Hunger Strikes Protest Education Cutbacks
3. Haiti: Thousands Demonstrate Against Corruption, Rising Prices
4. Mexico: Report Blasts US Government for Fast and Furious
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Honduras: Lawyer for Aguán and “Model Cities” Struggles Is Murdered
Activist Honduran attorney Antonio Trejo Cabrera was killed by unknown assailants the evening of Sept. 22 in Tegucigalpa’s América neighborhood near the Toncontín International Airport. Trejo, who was also a Protestant minister, received a call on his telephone while he was in a church attending a wedding; he stepped outside and was gunned down. He died an hour later in a teaching hospital. Trejo was active in two major political conflicts: a long-standing dispute over land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras and a new struggle over the Special Development Regions (RED, also known as “model cities”), a neoliberal project for creating several privatized semi-autonomous zones near ports.
Trejo was the attorney for the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), one of the main campesino collectives involved in the Aguán disputes; he was arrested along with 24 MARCA members at a demonstration outside the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) building in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 21 [see Update #1142]. Annie Bird, co-director of the Toronto-based solidarity organization Rights Action, wrote after Trejo’s death that his “dedicated efforts had regained legal ownership of four farms owned by [wealthy landowners] Miguel Facussé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales…. Now MARCA will have a hard time continuing to defend their land from the judicial hitmen.” In a statement on Sept. 23, another campesino collective, the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), charged that Facussé, Morales and Canales were responsible for Trejo’s murder. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 9/23/12; Rights Action email 9/23/12; Notimex 9/23/12 via Univision)
Trejo was also one of several attorneys who filed a complaint with the Public Ministry charging the legislative deputies who voted in favor of the “model cities” project with “the crime of treason to the nation and abuse of authority.” A number of legal challenges have been filed against the project on the grounds that it cedes national sovereignty to private and foreign groups; the main investors appear to be Canadian and US firms [see Update #1144], although some deputies suggested that one US investor, Michael Strong, might be fronting for some Honduran business interests. The Public Ministry itself has found the project unconstitutional, according to Danelia Ferrera, the director of prosecutors at the ministry, although she said any legal action would be on hold until the CSJ makes a ruling. (El Heraldo 9/15/12, 9/19/12)
Opposition to the “model cities” isn’t limited to court challenges. A number of organizations have joined together in a National Campaign Against the Model Cities, which has called for “the most aggressive actions by all the organized sectors and by the citizenry in general, going beyond mere public pronouncements.” The campaign called for a demonstration on Sept. 19 outside the CSJ. (Adital (Brazil) 9/17/12)
Public school teachers included the “model cities” among the issues they protested with a one-day strike on Sept. 21 that shut down classes for two million students; the teachers also protested a change in the schedule for their pay day, which had previously been on the 20th of each month, and the cost of fuel. In Tegucigalpa the teachers gathered at 8 am outside the Francisco Morazán National Pedagogic University (UPNFM) and then spread out to different parts of the capital. One group of strikers blocked traffic on the Centroamérica Boulevard near the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), which handles teachers' pensions. In northern Honduras a number of teachers and students blocked Puerto Cortés, the country’s most important port, bringing economic activity to a halt. (A conservative parents’ group responded to the strike by calling for teachers to be subject to drug testing.) (El Heraldo 9/22/12)
Members of the Garífuna ethnic group have combined opposition to the “model cities” project with their continuing struggle to regain land they claim along the northern coast. One of the supposedly “uninhabited” regions being considered for the first “model city” is the area near Puerto Castilla in Colón department, territory that the Garífuna say their ancestors began settling in the early 19th century, more than a decade before 1821, when Honduras became an independent country. On Aug. 26 some 200 Garífuna families occupied the Vallecito area on the coast, with support from a leading Garífuna organization, the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH); apparently this was intended as a preemptive move to establish the Garífuna claim to the area.
The coastal region is near the Aguán Valley, the site of the land dispute between landowners and campesinos, and the Garífuna settlers say they have been harassed by paramilitaries who may be linked either to drug traffickers or to Aguán landowner and cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé. (Desinformemos 9/17/12 via Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más; Upside Down World 9/18/12)
*2. Colombia: Student Hunger Strikes Protest Education Cutbacks
As of Sept. 18 six students at the Fusagasugá campus of the University of Cundinamarca, in the central Colombian department of Cundinamarca, were continuing a hunger strike they began on Sept. 10 to demand that university authorities negotiate with students on educational issues. The strikers say tuition is too high and sometimes is higher than the legal minimum wage; they are also protesting the university’s use of professors with four-month contracts rather than permanent teaching staff, and the reduction of the semester to just 16 weeks.
There were originally seven strikers; one became ill on Sept. 14 and was taken to the San Rafael Hospital. Students from the National University visited the strikers on Sept. 16 in a show of solidarity. (Adital (Brazil) 9/18/12)
Another student hunger strike began on Sept. 18 at the Amazonia University at Florencia, in the southwestern department of Caquetá. Albeiro Benítez, president of the Amazonia University Student Council (CEUNAM), sewed his lips shut to push demands for a rollback of tuition increases and for a discussion about the quality of education at the school. He was still on hunger strike as of Sept. 22, although his physical condition was weakening.
The action received support from the majority of the university’s political organizations and from Aníbal Quiroga, vice president of the Union Association of University Professors (ASPU). Quiroga said he considered the protest justified because “they raised the tuition for the students and excluded the most vulnerable,” because “the administration took away autonomy from the academic community” and because “protest is being criminalized” in a “‘dirty war’ against the sectors that struggle for the common interest.”
According to La Nación, a daily based in Neiva in the southwestern Department of Huila, the University of Cundinamarca hunger strike was also continuing as of Sept. 22. (La Nación 9/22/12)
*3. Haiti: Thousands Demonstrate Against Corruption, Rising Prices
Several thousand people took to the streets of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city and the capital of North department, on Sept. 21 to protest a rise in the cost of basic foods and what they perceived as corruption and nepotism in the government of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) and Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe. The day of protests was called by various grassroots organizations and local opposition politicians, notably Senator Moïse Jean-Charles of the Unity party of former president René Préval (1996-2001, 2006-2011).
Protesters set up barricades of burning tires in various streets, especially in the working-class neighborhoods of La Fossette, Samarie and Cité Lescot, blocking traffic in parts of the city. Confrontations broke out when Martelly supporters threw stones at the opposition protesters in Cité Lescot. For their part Martelly opponents were seen ripping the “pink bracelets,” a symbol of support for the government, from the arms of passersby. Agents of the Haitian National Police (PNH) and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) fired in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowds. Commercial banks closed down by 11 am, and public transport was delayed throughout North and Northeast departments. By the evening Cap-Haïtien’s streets were deserted as residents kept to their homes.
There had also been confrontations between police and protesters the night of Sept. 20-21, leaving two people wounded by bullets and one police agent injured by rocks, according to Departmental Director Carl Henry Boucher.
Other protests took place on Sept. 21 in the southern part of the country. Burning barricades appeared in the streets of Les Cayes (South department), and several hundred people reportedly protested in Miragoâne (Nippes department). (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/21/12; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/21/12; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 9/22/12)
The day of protests in Cap-Haïtien on Sept. 21 was the second time this month that people used street actions there to express their dissatisfaction with economic conditions and with President Martelly’s failure to fulfill the promises he made during the 2010-2010 electoral process. A similar protest on Sept. 12 was called by a coalition of about 20 organizations, including the labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), and was backed by Senator Jean-Charles. (AlterPresse 9/13/12)
Adding to tensions over the economy, on Oct. 1 the minimum wage is set to rise for workers in the “free trade zones” (FTZs), the tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export, principally to the US and Canada. After a six-month struggle over wages in the sector, the Parliament passed a law on Oct. 6, 2009 raising the daily minimum wage to 200 gourdes (about $4.75 at current rates) for all industrial and commercial workers except those in the FTZs. The minimum wage remained at 125 gourdes ($3.00) for the assembly plant workers, but in a compromise the law stipulated that their minimum would rise to 200 gourdes this year [see Update #1083, where we originally reported, following our source, that the raise took place in October 2010]. Article 2.2 of the law raises the minimum further for workers paid by the piece in plants producing exclusively for export. In those factories “the price per unit of production (notably the piece, the dozen, the gross, the meter) should be set in such a way as to allow the worker to receive at least three hundred (300) gourdes [about $7.12] for his or her day’s work of (8) eight hours.”
The Martelly government noted on Sept. 19 that the new rates would go into effect on Oct. 1, but it remains to be seen whether businesses will obey the law and whether the government will enforce it. Meanwhile, the government has responded to rising prices by announcing the importation of 300,000 sacks of rice in order to drive down food costs. Several economists dismissed the move as cosmetic. (AlterPresse 9/19/12)
*4. Mexico: Report Blasts US Government for Fast and Furious
On Sept. 19 Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the US Department of Justice, released a 471-page report on Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled program in which the Arizona office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) inadvertently let about 2,000 firearms pass into Mexico during 2009 and 2010, with many of the weapons apparently going to Mexican drug traffickers [see Update #1135]. The inspector general, a sort of internal auditor for the Justice Department, found that the ATF and US prosecutors in Arizona were at fault in the operation, along with Justice officials in Washington who were responsible for supervising the ATF and the federal prosecutors.
The report recommended that the actions of 17 officials be reviewed for administrative or disciplinary measures. Lanny Breuer, chief of the department’s criminal division, has already been admonished; Jason Weinstein, an assistant deputy attorney general, resigned on Sept. 19, and former ATF acting director Kenneth Melson retired on the same day. But Michael Horowitz cleared Attorney General Eric Holder of any responsibility in the case and provided no evidence to back a rightwing conspiracy theory that the government allowed the weapons into Mexico on purpose to create a case for stricter gun control laws. (New York Times 9/20/12)
Mexican media were especially interested in the report’s finding that in 2011 Breuer proposed to Mexican officials that the US and Mexico cooperate in a similar program to monitor illegal gun purchases as a way of tracking gun smuggling operations. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/21/12 from DPA, AFP, Notimex) Apparently nothing came of Breuer’s proposal, but in 2010 the administration of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa had already proposed a law that would allow the Mexican government to carry out operations like Fast and Furious [see Update #1105].
In other news, the Mexican government continues to play down an Aug. 24 incident in which Mexican federal police in at least four vehicles shot up a US embassy van carrying two US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to a Mexican Navy installation; the two agents were wounded and are being treated in the US [see Update #1143]. On Sept. 17 a Mexican official suggested that the attack was the result of simple confusion. The police agents were looking for a gang that had kidnapped an employee of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the same area, the official said. They were focused on the unusual presence of an armored van traveling at high speed on a country road, and they didn’t notice that the vehicle had diplomatic license plates, according to the official, who said he couldn’t be cited by name. (Associated Press 9/17/12 via Terra Argentina)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
Freedom House: The Language of Hubris (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/9/20/freedom-house-language-hubris
Interview with Marta Harnecker on the Latin American Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3870-interview-with-marta-harnecker-on-the-latin-american-left
Book Review: Feeding on Dreams – Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3875-book-review-feeding-on-dreams-confessions-of-an-unrepentant-exile-by-ariel-dorfman
Peru Urged to Prevent Unlawful Killings of Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3874-peru-urged-to-prevent-unlawful-killings-of-protesters
Peru: jungle shoot-out as narco-flight intercepted
http://ww4report.com/node/11523
Peru: Cajamarca regional strike remobilizes
http://ww4report.com/node/11522
"El Loco" Barrera, Colombia's most wanted, busted in Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/11526
Colombian GM Workers Back on Hunger Strike After Negotiations Break Down
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8831
Venezuela, Bolivia give US backtalk over drug war "blacklist"
http://ww4report.com/node/11512
Former US Ambassador Outlines Post-Election Interventions against Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/3871-former-us-ambassador-outlines-post-election-interventions-against-venezuela
Panama: Isolated and Ignored Naso Fear Police Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3872-panama-isolated-and-ignored-naso-fear-police-repression
Honduran Charter Cities Are a Symptom of, Not a Solution to, Instability
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/21/honduran-charter-cities-are-symptom-instability-not-its-solution
Vallecito Resists, Satuye Lives! The Garífuna Resistance to Honduras’ Charter Cities (Honduras)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3869-vallecito-resists-satuye-lives-the-garifuna-resistance-to-honduras-charter-cities
Guatemala: wins, threats for peasant ecologists
http://ww4report.com/node/11524
Guatemalan Government and Mining Company Attack Community Members in San Rafael Las Flores
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3876-guatemalan-government-and-mining-company-attack-community-members-in-san-rafael-las-flores
Guatemala: Ten Arrest Warrants Issued against Community Leaders from Barillas Revoked
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3868-guatemala-ten-arrest-warrants-issued-against-community-leaders-from-barillas-revoked-
Buying Time: Belize Narrowly Avoids Default
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/22/buying-time-belize-narrowly-avoids-default
Mexico's prez-elect broaches oil privatization —almost
http://ww4report.com/node/11525
Army troops sent to patrol Mexico City suburb
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/11/wnu-1105-chilean-and-colombian-students.html
UN Secretary General Recommends Creating Timeline for MINUSTAH Withdrawal
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/un-secretary-general-recommends-creating-timeline-for-minustah-withdrawal
Driving in the "Constitution-Free Zone" (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/21/driving-constitution-free-zone
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1145, September 23, 2012
1. Honduras: Lawyer for Aguán and “Model Cities” Struggles Is Murdered
2. Colombia: Student Hunger Strikes Protest Education Cutbacks
3. Haiti: Thousands Demonstrate Against Corruption, Rising Prices
4. Mexico: Report Blasts US Government for Fast and Furious
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Honduras: Lawyer for Aguán and “Model Cities” Struggles Is Murdered
Activist Honduran attorney Antonio Trejo Cabrera was killed by unknown assailants the evening of Sept. 22 in Tegucigalpa’s América neighborhood near the Toncontín International Airport. Trejo, who was also a Protestant minister, received a call on his telephone while he was in a church attending a wedding; he stepped outside and was gunned down. He died an hour later in a teaching hospital. Trejo was active in two major political conflicts: a long-standing dispute over land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras and a new struggle over the Special Development Regions (RED, also known as “model cities”), a neoliberal project for creating several privatized semi-autonomous zones near ports.
Trejo was the attorney for the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), one of the main campesino collectives involved in the Aguán disputes; he was arrested along with 24 MARCA members at a demonstration outside the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) building in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 21 [see Update #1142]. Annie Bird, co-director of the Toronto-based solidarity organization Rights Action, wrote after Trejo’s death that his “dedicated efforts had regained legal ownership of four farms owned by [wealthy landowners] Miguel Facussé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales…. Now MARCA will have a hard time continuing to defend their land from the judicial hitmen.” In a statement on Sept. 23, another campesino collective, the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), charged that Facussé, Morales and Canales were responsible for Trejo’s murder. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 9/23/12; Rights Action email 9/23/12; Notimex 9/23/12 via Univision)
Trejo was also one of several attorneys who filed a complaint with the Public Ministry charging the legislative deputies who voted in favor of the “model cities” project with “the crime of treason to the nation and abuse of authority.” A number of legal challenges have been filed against the project on the grounds that it cedes national sovereignty to private and foreign groups; the main investors appear to be Canadian and US firms [see Update #1144], although some deputies suggested that one US investor, Michael Strong, might be fronting for some Honduran business interests. The Public Ministry itself has found the project unconstitutional, according to Danelia Ferrera, the director of prosecutors at the ministry, although she said any legal action would be on hold until the CSJ makes a ruling. (El Heraldo 9/15/12, 9/19/12)
Opposition to the “model cities” isn’t limited to court challenges. A number of organizations have joined together in a National Campaign Against the Model Cities, which has called for “the most aggressive actions by all the organized sectors and by the citizenry in general, going beyond mere public pronouncements.” The campaign called for a demonstration on Sept. 19 outside the CSJ. (Adital (Brazil) 9/17/12)
Public school teachers included the “model cities” among the issues they protested with a one-day strike on Sept. 21 that shut down classes for two million students; the teachers also protested a change in the schedule for their pay day, which had previously been on the 20th of each month, and the cost of fuel. In Tegucigalpa the teachers gathered at 8 am outside the Francisco Morazán National Pedagogic University (UPNFM) and then spread out to different parts of the capital. One group of strikers blocked traffic on the Centroamérica Boulevard near the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), which handles teachers' pensions. In northern Honduras a number of teachers and students blocked Puerto Cortés, the country’s most important port, bringing economic activity to a halt. (A conservative parents’ group responded to the strike by calling for teachers to be subject to drug testing.) (El Heraldo 9/22/12)
Members of the Garífuna ethnic group have combined opposition to the “model cities” project with their continuing struggle to regain land they claim along the northern coast. One of the supposedly “uninhabited” regions being considered for the first “model city” is the area near Puerto Castilla in Colón department, territory that the Garífuna say their ancestors began settling in the early 19th century, more than a decade before 1821, when Honduras became an independent country. On Aug. 26 some 200 Garífuna families occupied the Vallecito area on the coast, with support from a leading Garífuna organization, the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH); apparently this was intended as a preemptive move to establish the Garífuna claim to the area.
The coastal region is near the Aguán Valley, the site of the land dispute between landowners and campesinos, and the Garífuna settlers say they have been harassed by paramilitaries who may be linked either to drug traffickers or to Aguán landowner and cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé. (Desinformemos 9/17/12 via Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más; Upside Down World 9/18/12)
*2. Colombia: Student Hunger Strikes Protest Education Cutbacks
As of Sept. 18 six students at the Fusagasugá campus of the University of Cundinamarca, in the central Colombian department of Cundinamarca, were continuing a hunger strike they began on Sept. 10 to demand that university authorities negotiate with students on educational issues. The strikers say tuition is too high and sometimes is higher than the legal minimum wage; they are also protesting the university’s use of professors with four-month contracts rather than permanent teaching staff, and the reduction of the semester to just 16 weeks.
There were originally seven strikers; one became ill on Sept. 14 and was taken to the San Rafael Hospital. Students from the National University visited the strikers on Sept. 16 in a show of solidarity. (Adital (Brazil) 9/18/12)
Another student hunger strike began on Sept. 18 at the Amazonia University at Florencia, in the southwestern department of Caquetá. Albeiro Benítez, president of the Amazonia University Student Council (CEUNAM), sewed his lips shut to push demands for a rollback of tuition increases and for a discussion about the quality of education at the school. He was still on hunger strike as of Sept. 22, although his physical condition was weakening.
The action received support from the majority of the university’s political organizations and from Aníbal Quiroga, vice president of the Union Association of University Professors (ASPU). Quiroga said he considered the protest justified because “they raised the tuition for the students and excluded the most vulnerable,” because “the administration took away autonomy from the academic community” and because “protest is being criminalized” in a “‘dirty war’ against the sectors that struggle for the common interest.”
According to La Nación, a daily based in Neiva in the southwestern Department of Huila, the University of Cundinamarca hunger strike was also continuing as of Sept. 22. (La Nación 9/22/12)
*3. Haiti: Thousands Demonstrate Against Corruption, Rising Prices
Several thousand people took to the streets of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city and the capital of North department, on Sept. 21 to protest a rise in the cost of basic foods and what they perceived as corruption and nepotism in the government of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) and Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe. The day of protests was called by various grassroots organizations and local opposition politicians, notably Senator Moïse Jean-Charles of the Unity party of former president René Préval (1996-2001, 2006-2011).
Protesters set up barricades of burning tires in various streets, especially in the working-class neighborhoods of La Fossette, Samarie and Cité Lescot, blocking traffic in parts of the city. Confrontations broke out when Martelly supporters threw stones at the opposition protesters in Cité Lescot. For their part Martelly opponents were seen ripping the “pink bracelets,” a symbol of support for the government, from the arms of passersby. Agents of the Haitian National Police (PNH) and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) fired in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowds. Commercial banks closed down by 11 am, and public transport was delayed throughout North and Northeast departments. By the evening Cap-Haïtien’s streets were deserted as residents kept to their homes.
There had also been confrontations between police and protesters the night of Sept. 20-21, leaving two people wounded by bullets and one police agent injured by rocks, according to Departmental Director Carl Henry Boucher.
Other protests took place on Sept. 21 in the southern part of the country. Burning barricades appeared in the streets of Les Cayes (South department), and several hundred people reportedly protested in Miragoâne (Nippes department). (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/21/12; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 9/21/12; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 9/22/12)
The day of protests in Cap-Haïtien on Sept. 21 was the second time this month that people used street actions there to express their dissatisfaction with economic conditions and with President Martelly’s failure to fulfill the promises he made during the 2010-2010 electoral process. A similar protest on Sept. 12 was called by a coalition of about 20 organizations, including the labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), and was backed by Senator Jean-Charles. (AlterPresse 9/13/12)
Adding to tensions over the economy, on Oct. 1 the minimum wage is set to rise for workers in the “free trade zones” (FTZs), the tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export, principally to the US and Canada. After a six-month struggle over wages in the sector, the Parliament passed a law on Oct. 6, 2009 raising the daily minimum wage to 200 gourdes (about $4.75 at current rates) for all industrial and commercial workers except those in the FTZs. The minimum wage remained at 125 gourdes ($3.00) for the assembly plant workers, but in a compromise the law stipulated that their minimum would rise to 200 gourdes this year [see Update #1083, where we originally reported, following our source, that the raise took place in October 2010]. Article 2.2 of the law raises the minimum further for workers paid by the piece in plants producing exclusively for export. In those factories “the price per unit of production (notably the piece, the dozen, the gross, the meter) should be set in such a way as to allow the worker to receive at least three hundred (300) gourdes [about $7.12] for his or her day’s work of (8) eight hours.”
The Martelly government noted on Sept. 19 that the new rates would go into effect on Oct. 1, but it remains to be seen whether businesses will obey the law and whether the government will enforce it. Meanwhile, the government has responded to rising prices by announcing the importation of 300,000 sacks of rice in order to drive down food costs. Several economists dismissed the move as cosmetic. (AlterPresse 9/19/12)
*4. Mexico: Report Blasts US Government for Fast and Furious
On Sept. 19 Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the US Department of Justice, released a 471-page report on Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled program in which the Arizona office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) inadvertently let about 2,000 firearms pass into Mexico during 2009 and 2010, with many of the weapons apparently going to Mexican drug traffickers [see Update #1135]. The inspector general, a sort of internal auditor for the Justice Department, found that the ATF and US prosecutors in Arizona were at fault in the operation, along with Justice officials in Washington who were responsible for supervising the ATF and the federal prosecutors.
The report recommended that the actions of 17 officials be reviewed for administrative or disciplinary measures. Lanny Breuer, chief of the department’s criminal division, has already been admonished; Jason Weinstein, an assistant deputy attorney general, resigned on Sept. 19, and former ATF acting director Kenneth Melson retired on the same day. But Michael Horowitz cleared Attorney General Eric Holder of any responsibility in the case and provided no evidence to back a rightwing conspiracy theory that the government allowed the weapons into Mexico on purpose to create a case for stricter gun control laws. (New York Times 9/20/12)
Mexican media were especially interested in the report’s finding that in 2011 Breuer proposed to Mexican officials that the US and Mexico cooperate in a similar program to monitor illegal gun purchases as a way of tracking gun smuggling operations. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/21/12 from DPA, AFP, Notimex) Apparently nothing came of Breuer’s proposal, but in 2010 the administration of Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa had already proposed a law that would allow the Mexican government to carry out operations like Fast and Furious [see Update #1105].
In other news, the Mexican government continues to play down an Aug. 24 incident in which Mexican federal police in at least four vehicles shot up a US embassy van carrying two US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to a Mexican Navy installation; the two agents were wounded and are being treated in the US [see Update #1143]. On Sept. 17 a Mexican official suggested that the attack was the result of simple confusion. The police agents were looking for a gang that had kidnapped an employee of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the same area, the official said. They were focused on the unusual presence of an armored van traveling at high speed on a country road, and they didn’t notice that the vehicle had diplomatic license plates, according to the official, who said he couldn’t be cited by name. (Associated Press 9/17/12 via Terra Argentina)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
Freedom House: The Language of Hubris (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/9/20/freedom-house-language-hubris
Interview with Marta Harnecker on the Latin American Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3870-interview-with-marta-harnecker-on-the-latin-american-left
Book Review: Feeding on Dreams – Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3875-book-review-feeding-on-dreams-confessions-of-an-unrepentant-exile-by-ariel-dorfman
Peru Urged to Prevent Unlawful Killings of Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3874-peru-urged-to-prevent-unlawful-killings-of-protesters
Peru: jungle shoot-out as narco-flight intercepted
http://ww4report.com/node/11523
Peru: Cajamarca regional strike remobilizes
http://ww4report.com/node/11522
"El Loco" Barrera, Colombia's most wanted, busted in Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/11526
Colombian GM Workers Back on Hunger Strike After Negotiations Break Down
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8831
Venezuela, Bolivia give US backtalk over drug war "blacklist"
http://ww4report.com/node/11512
Former US Ambassador Outlines Post-Election Interventions against Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/3871-former-us-ambassador-outlines-post-election-interventions-against-venezuela
Panama: Isolated and Ignored Naso Fear Police Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3872-panama-isolated-and-ignored-naso-fear-police-repression
Honduran Charter Cities Are a Symptom of, Not a Solution to, Instability
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/21/honduran-charter-cities-are-symptom-instability-not-its-solution
Vallecito Resists, Satuye Lives! The Garífuna Resistance to Honduras’ Charter Cities (Honduras)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3869-vallecito-resists-satuye-lives-the-garifuna-resistance-to-honduras-charter-cities
Guatemala: wins, threats for peasant ecologists
http://ww4report.com/node/11524
Guatemalan Government and Mining Company Attack Community Members in San Rafael Las Flores
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3876-guatemalan-government-and-mining-company-attack-community-members-in-san-rafael-las-flores
Guatemala: Ten Arrest Warrants Issued against Community Leaders from Barillas Revoked
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3868-guatemala-ten-arrest-warrants-issued-against-community-leaders-from-barillas-revoked-
Buying Time: Belize Narrowly Avoids Default
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/22/buying-time-belize-narrowly-avoids-default
Mexico's prez-elect broaches oil privatization —almost
http://ww4report.com/node/11525
Army troops sent to patrol Mexico City suburb
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/11/wnu-1105-chilean-and-colombian-students.html
UN Secretary General Recommends Creating Timeline for MINUSTAH Withdrawal
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/un-secretary-general-recommends-creating-timeline-for-minustah-withdrawal
Driving in the "Constitution-Free Zone" (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/9/21/driving-constitution-free-zone
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
WNU #1142: Mexican Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1142, August 26, 2012
1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car at around 8 am on Aug. 24 in the state of Morelos just of south of Mexico City, near the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway. The police agents shot a number of times at the car, lightly wounding two US officials who were traveling with a member of the Mexican Navy to a nearby Navy training installation. The embassy car had diplomatic license plates, while the federal police were reportedly traveling in four unmarked vehicles.
Mexican authorities detained 12 federal police agents the evening of Aug. 24 in connection with the shooting and began an investigation. The federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is reportedly focusing on “confusion” on the part of the agents, who claimed they had been in the area to investigate a kidnapping by a criminal group that operates in Huitzilac and Cuernavaca municipalities in Morelos. The US embassy described the attack as an “ambush.”
Mexican media identified the wounded US officials as Jess Hood Garner and Stan Dove Boss, said to be shooting instructors from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). They were apparently on their way to the installation to train Navy personnel. The US government strongly promotes the militarized “drug war” that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa declared shortly after taking office in December 2006, and the US supplies the Mexican military and police with training and equipment under the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative, an aid program that was launched in 2008. Since the beginning of 2007 Mexico has suffered some 50,000 drug-related deaths. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/26/12)
On Aug. 25 the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada noted that US agents have been involved in Mexican anti-drug operations, and sometimes in operations Mexican agencies don’t know about [see Update #1103]. The newspaper charged that by interfering in drug operations the US has encouraged lack of coordination and even rivalry between different Mexican security forces, especially through US officials’ “marked favoritism for the Navy.” “[T]he strategy for combating drugs that the United States has imposed on various nations south of its border…has turned out to be detrimental for bilateral relations [between Mexico and the US]—now plunged into a mutual loss of confidence—and for national sovereignty, and has represented, at the end of the day, a risk for the security of US officials themselves in our country.” (LJ 8/25/12)
*2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
Some 45 campesinos from the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras were arrested during protests on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22 demanding that the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) issue rulings in favor of campesino struggles for land. The protests were sponsored by a number of organizations—including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA)—that have led land occupations and other demonstrations since 2009 in an effort to obtain farmland that they say big landowners acquired illegally during the 1990s [see Update #1137].
Tensions started to mount on Aug. 20 when a group of campesinos arrived at the CSJ building in Tegucigalpa expecting to meet with judges. But according to MUCA members, CSJ president Jorge Rivera Avilés decided not to receive their representatives and in fact had already made an agreement with representatives of two major landowners, Miguel Facussé and René Morales. The protesters also reported being attacked by the police at the building that day.
On Aug. 21 a group of about 80 campesinos escalated their protest by taking over the CSJ building’s five main doors; they also set up barricades on the street in front of the court, blocking traffic. (According to the Brazilian news service Adital, a total of 350 protesters, including children and older people, were participating in the demonstration.) After the campesinos had kept employees and others from entering or leaving the building for about three hours, agents from the Preventive Police arrived and asked the protesters to end the blockade. The campesinos refused. A squadron of Cobras, the notorious anti-riot police, then appeared and carried out a surprise attack, using tear gas and nightsticks.
A total of 27 or 28 protesters were arrested, including two women, a minor, and three people who had to be taken to a hospital for emergency treatment. Some of the protesters sought refuge in the headquarters of the militant Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS), but police agents used tear gas on them as well
On Aug. 22 a campesino group in the Aguán Valley--at first mostly women carrying machetes and clubs--responded to the arrests in Tegucigalpa by blocking the highway that connects Saba and La Ceiba with rocks and two trucks to demand the release of the 27 detained protesters. Police and military units broke up the blockade, arresting 18 protesters; several injuries were reported.
The Aguán campesinos’ eight demands on the CSJ included the suspension of criminal cases against campesinos detained for protesting and the removal of judges that the protesters said had favored the big landowners over campesinos in their decisions; the protesters were referring especially to a case in July in which the Ceiba and Francisco Morazán Appeals Court overturned a June decision by a lower court awarding 2,000 hectares of land to MARCA members. The campesinos were also asking the CSJ to declare unconstitutional a government move to ban firearms in Colón department, which includes the Aguán region. The measure discriminates in favor of the landowners, according to Rafael Alegría, a national campesino leader. The security guards hired by the big landowners and the business owners can go around with whatever arms they want, he told reporters, but ranchers, shopkeepers and campesinos can’t.
More than 70 people have been killed in the Aguán region over the past three years, most of them campesinos. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 8/21/12; La Prensa (Tegucigalpa) 8/21/12, 8/22/12; Adital (Brazil) 8/22/12; Agencia Venezolana de Noticias 8/23/12)
On Aug. 22 the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) issued a statement condemning the “brutal aggression” against campesino protesters on Aug. 21. The statement also cited death threats made against Donny Reyes, the coordinator of the LGBT Rainbow Coalition, and against members of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), a group that fights against corruption and for the defense of natural resources. The statement suggested writing letters to CSJ President Jorge Rivera Avilés (presidencia@poderjudicial.gob.hn) and Justice and Human Rights Minister Ana Pineda (info@sjdh.gob). (Copinh statement 8/22/12)
*3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
A group of former employees of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), announced on the morning of Aug. 24 that they had agreed to enter into mediation to resolve a dispute with the company. As part of the agreement, they were ending a liquids-only hunger strike that 12 workers started on Aug. 1 to pressure Colmotores to reinstate them and compensate them for injuries. They said that until the dispute was settled, they would continue an encampment in front of the US embassy in Bogotá which they have maintained for more than a year [see Update #1141].
According to the former employees’ organization, the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol), some 200 of the company’s workers have disabilities caused by injuries on the job, repetitive stress injuries or work-related illnesses. Asotrecol says the company simply fires injured workers instead of compensating them and moving them to jobs they can handle. Colomotores management has repeatedly denied Asotrecol’s claims, but apparently it decided to accept mediation rather than face the negative publicity being generated in the US by the three-week hunger strike and by photographs of seven fasters who sewed their lips shut. The workers’ supporters in the US include the nonprofit organization Witness for Peace and the main US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO.
The US Labor Department issued a statement on Aug. 24 welcoming the accord and highlighting its own role, along with the US embassy in Bogotá and the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, in brokering the deal. The statement failed to mention that the US government itself is a party to the dispute, since it is General Motors’ largest shareholder as a result of a major bailout in 2009. “To us it seems unjust and a double standard,” Asotrecol president Jorge Parra told reporters, “for the government of [US president Barack] Obama to demand respect for labor rights in Colombia and the same time allow the abuses that have happened to us.” (AFP 8/24/12 via Univision; AFL-CIO Now blog 8/24/12; US Labor Department press release 8/24/12)
*4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
A reconstituted paramilitary group, “Los Rastrojos Urban Commandos,” made a series of death threats the week of Aug. 13 against members of four human rights organizations and one union in Barrancabermeja in the northern Colombian department of Santander. The first threats came in a manila envelope found on Aug. 14 at the home of human rights activist Himad Choser. The envelope contained a 9 mm bullet and a pamphlet by “Los Rastrojos” declaring Choser an enemy because he had been “denouncing and attacking our economic structure, based on drug trafficking in the region.” The pamphlet described Choser as “at the service of the FARC,” the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The pamphlet also named four organizations and the National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL) as collaborators with Choser.
On Aug. 18 another "Los Rastrojos" pamphlet was left in the office of the People in Action Organization, a group that defends LGBT rights. In this pamphlet the paramilitaries declared a “death sentence against Mr. Ovidio [Nieto], of the organization that defends the gays”; against “the guerrilla William Mendoza,” the local SINALTRAINAL president; and against Choser, “so that this defender of fags won’t agitate the city.” “We’re going to be blunt,” the pamphlet continued. “We won’t give more warnings.”
Local human rights organizations called on the authorities “to fulfill their role as guarantor[s] of the life and tranquility of the residents of our city,” and they asked the international community to monitor and publicize the threats and to demand that the national government take action against criminal groups. (Communiqué 8/20/12 posted on SINALTRAINAL website) [Earlier in the month Colombian unionists called for international solidarity for SINALTRAINAL president Mendoza, who says the government is trying to have him sentenced to prison, where he fears he will be killed; see Update #1141.]
"Los Rastrojos" is one of several criminal groups that carry on the work of rightwing paramilitary groups which ostensibly demobilized during the middle 2000s [see Updates #1086, 1087, World War 4 Report 5/8/12]. On Aug. 18 the Colombian radio station Caracol reported that a leading paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), acquired weapons from criminal groups in the US in 2004 and 2005, at the same time that the group claimed to be demobilizing. Basing its report on documents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Caracol said the AUC acquired 200 M16 rifles, 100 fragmentation grenades, 150 rocket-propelled grenades and 50,000 .22 cartridges from Miami in just one year.
The last section of the AUC to demobilize, the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc, officially gave up its arms on Aug. 16, 2006. Some of its former members then formed “Los Urabeños,” which the Medellín-based news service Colombia Reports describes as “one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Colombia and in control of the drug routes in what used to be the heartland of the AUC.” (Colombia Reports 8/19/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
Proven model predicts higher food prices if speculation is not reined in (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7773
Marketing Consent: A Journey into the Public Relations Underside of Canada's Mining Sector in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3829-marketing-consent-a-journey-into-the-public-relations-underside-of-canadas-mining-sector-in-latin-america
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: 'There is No Political Will to Respect Native Peoples' in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3832-adolfo-perez-esquivel-qthere-is-no-political-will-to-respect-native-peoplesq-in-argentina
Chile urged to ensure justice for victims of enforced disappearances
http://ww4report.com/node/11422
Hydropower Dam to Flood Sacred Amazon Indigenous Site in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3825-hydropower-dam-to-flood-sacred-amazon-indigenous-site-in-brazil
Brazil: court blocks mega-hydro to protect Pantanal
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11435
Brazil: high court orders release of rancher convicted in Dorothy Stang slaying
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1143
Bolivia: Aymara communities occupy Oruro mine
http://ww4report.com/node/11420
Peru: Newmont Mining to abandon Conga project?
http://ww4report.com/node/11419
To the Colombian Military: “Don’t be afraid of peace!”
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7794
The Colombian Paradox: Capital Mobility, Land, and Power
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/colombian-paradox-capital-mobility-land-and-power
Colombia: Despite Repression, the Minga in Huila Continues for the Liberation of Mother Earth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3830-colombia-despite-repression-the-minga-in-huila-continues-for-the-liberation-of-mother-earth
Colombian GM Workers on Hunger Strike Until Death Sew Their Mouths Shut
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8720
US Carter Center: Venezuelan Electoral System one of the Most Automated in the World
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7177
U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3827-us-funded-war-in-el-salvador-casts-shadow-over-romneyryan-campaign
Broken Anvil: Victims Fight for Justice After DEA Operation Leaves Four Dead in Honduras
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#label/wnu1142/1394c720240c7ea2
Lost and Found (Honduras)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7779
Guatemala: The Spoils of an Undeclared War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3823-guatemala-the-spoils-of-an-undeclared-war
Guatemala: ex-National Police chief gets 70 years for "disappearance"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11436
Mining, Repression and the Rhetoric of Democracy and the Rule of Law in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3824-mining-repression-and-the-rhetoric-of-democracy-and-the-rule-of-law-in-guatemala
Mexico: victory for campesino struggle against La Parota dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11421
Mexican Farmers Battle Canadian Mining Company for Control of Their Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3822-mexican-farmers-battle-canadian-mining-company-for-control-of-their-land
Miners in Coahuila Died for Seven Dollars a Day (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7831
Stop, Frisk and Demolish in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august212012/ciudad-stops-kp.php
The Caravan for Peace Begins a Long Ride Across the USA
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/21/caravan-peace-begins-long-ride-across-usa
Caravan of Peace, Cities of Death
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/08/caravan-of-peace-cities-of-death.html
On Haiti, Jared Diamond Hasn't Done His Homework
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/20/haiti-jared-diamond-hasnt-done-his-homework
A Twenty-First Century Border: The Ever-expanding U.S. Boundary (Dominican Republic, US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/twenty-first-century-border-ever-expanding-us-boundary
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.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1142, August 26, 2012
1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car at around 8 am on Aug. 24 in the state of Morelos just of south of Mexico City, near the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway. The police agents shot a number of times at the car, lightly wounding two US officials who were traveling with a member of the Mexican Navy to a nearby Navy training installation. The embassy car had diplomatic license plates, while the federal police were reportedly traveling in four unmarked vehicles.
Mexican authorities detained 12 federal police agents the evening of Aug. 24 in connection with the shooting and began an investigation. The federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is reportedly focusing on “confusion” on the part of the agents, who claimed they had been in the area to investigate a kidnapping by a criminal group that operates in Huitzilac and Cuernavaca municipalities in Morelos. The US embassy described the attack as an “ambush.”
Mexican media identified the wounded US officials as Jess Hood Garner and Stan Dove Boss, said to be shooting instructors from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). They were apparently on their way to the installation to train Navy personnel. The US government strongly promotes the militarized “drug war” that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa declared shortly after taking office in December 2006, and the US supplies the Mexican military and police with training and equipment under the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative, an aid program that was launched in 2008. Since the beginning of 2007 Mexico has suffered some 50,000 drug-related deaths. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/26/12)
On Aug. 25 the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada noted that US agents have been involved in Mexican anti-drug operations, and sometimes in operations Mexican agencies don’t know about [see Update #1103]. The newspaper charged that by interfering in drug operations the US has encouraged lack of coordination and even rivalry between different Mexican security forces, especially through US officials’ “marked favoritism for the Navy.” “[T]he strategy for combating drugs that the United States has imposed on various nations south of its border…has turned out to be detrimental for bilateral relations [between Mexico and the US]—now plunged into a mutual loss of confidence—and for national sovereignty, and has represented, at the end of the day, a risk for the security of US officials themselves in our country.” (LJ 8/25/12)
*2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
Some 45 campesinos from the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras were arrested during protests on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22 demanding that the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) issue rulings in favor of campesino struggles for land. The protests were sponsored by a number of organizations—including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA)—that have led land occupations and other demonstrations since 2009 in an effort to obtain farmland that they say big landowners acquired illegally during the 1990s [see Update #1137].
Tensions started to mount on Aug. 20 when a group of campesinos arrived at the CSJ building in Tegucigalpa expecting to meet with judges. But according to MUCA members, CSJ president Jorge Rivera Avilés decided not to receive their representatives and in fact had already made an agreement with representatives of two major landowners, Miguel Facussé and René Morales. The protesters also reported being attacked by the police at the building that day.
On Aug. 21 a group of about 80 campesinos escalated their protest by taking over the CSJ building’s five main doors; they also set up barricades on the street in front of the court, blocking traffic. (According to the Brazilian news service Adital, a total of 350 protesters, including children and older people, were participating in the demonstration.) After the campesinos had kept employees and others from entering or leaving the building for about three hours, agents from the Preventive Police arrived and asked the protesters to end the blockade. The campesinos refused. A squadron of Cobras, the notorious anti-riot police, then appeared and carried out a surprise attack, using tear gas and nightsticks.
A total of 27 or 28 protesters were arrested, including two women, a minor, and three people who had to be taken to a hospital for emergency treatment. Some of the protesters sought refuge in the headquarters of the militant Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS), but police agents used tear gas on them as well
On Aug. 22 a campesino group in the Aguán Valley--at first mostly women carrying machetes and clubs--responded to the arrests in Tegucigalpa by blocking the highway that connects Saba and La Ceiba with rocks and two trucks to demand the release of the 27 detained protesters. Police and military units broke up the blockade, arresting 18 protesters; several injuries were reported.
The Aguán campesinos’ eight demands on the CSJ included the suspension of criminal cases against campesinos detained for protesting and the removal of judges that the protesters said had favored the big landowners over campesinos in their decisions; the protesters were referring especially to a case in July in which the Ceiba and Francisco Morazán Appeals Court overturned a June decision by a lower court awarding 2,000 hectares of land to MARCA members. The campesinos were also asking the CSJ to declare unconstitutional a government move to ban firearms in Colón department, which includes the Aguán region. The measure discriminates in favor of the landowners, according to Rafael Alegría, a national campesino leader. The security guards hired by the big landowners and the business owners can go around with whatever arms they want, he told reporters, but ranchers, shopkeepers and campesinos can’t.
More than 70 people have been killed in the Aguán region over the past three years, most of them campesinos. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 8/21/12; La Prensa (Tegucigalpa) 8/21/12, 8/22/12; Adital (Brazil) 8/22/12; Agencia Venezolana de Noticias 8/23/12)
On Aug. 22 the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) issued a statement condemning the “brutal aggression” against campesino protesters on Aug. 21. The statement also cited death threats made against Donny Reyes, the coordinator of the LGBT Rainbow Coalition, and against members of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), a group that fights against corruption and for the defense of natural resources. The statement suggested writing letters to CSJ President Jorge Rivera Avilés (presidencia@poderjudicial.gob.hn) and Justice and Human Rights Minister Ana Pineda (info@sjdh.gob). (Copinh statement 8/22/12)
*3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
A group of former employees of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), announced on the morning of Aug. 24 that they had agreed to enter into mediation to resolve a dispute with the company. As part of the agreement, they were ending a liquids-only hunger strike that 12 workers started on Aug. 1 to pressure Colmotores to reinstate them and compensate them for injuries. They said that until the dispute was settled, they would continue an encampment in front of the US embassy in Bogotá which they have maintained for more than a year [see Update #1141].
According to the former employees’ organization, the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol), some 200 of the company’s workers have disabilities caused by injuries on the job, repetitive stress injuries or work-related illnesses. Asotrecol says the company simply fires injured workers instead of compensating them and moving them to jobs they can handle. Colomotores management has repeatedly denied Asotrecol’s claims, but apparently it decided to accept mediation rather than face the negative publicity being generated in the US by the three-week hunger strike and by photographs of seven fasters who sewed their lips shut. The workers’ supporters in the US include the nonprofit organization Witness for Peace and the main US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO.
The US Labor Department issued a statement on Aug. 24 welcoming the accord and highlighting its own role, along with the US embassy in Bogotá and the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, in brokering the deal. The statement failed to mention that the US government itself is a party to the dispute, since it is General Motors’ largest shareholder as a result of a major bailout in 2009. “To us it seems unjust and a double standard,” Asotrecol president Jorge Parra told reporters, “for the government of [US president Barack] Obama to demand respect for labor rights in Colombia and the same time allow the abuses that have happened to us.” (AFP 8/24/12 via Univision; AFL-CIO Now blog 8/24/12; US Labor Department press release 8/24/12)
*4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
A reconstituted paramilitary group, “Los Rastrojos Urban Commandos,” made a series of death threats the week of Aug. 13 against members of four human rights organizations and one union in Barrancabermeja in the northern Colombian department of Santander. The first threats came in a manila envelope found on Aug. 14 at the home of human rights activist Himad Choser. The envelope contained a 9 mm bullet and a pamphlet by “Los Rastrojos” declaring Choser an enemy because he had been “denouncing and attacking our economic structure, based on drug trafficking in the region.” The pamphlet described Choser as “at the service of the FARC,” the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The pamphlet also named four organizations and the National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL) as collaborators with Choser.
On Aug. 18 another "Los Rastrojos" pamphlet was left in the office of the People in Action Organization, a group that defends LGBT rights. In this pamphlet the paramilitaries declared a “death sentence against Mr. Ovidio [Nieto], of the organization that defends the gays”; against “the guerrilla William Mendoza,” the local SINALTRAINAL president; and against Choser, “so that this defender of fags won’t agitate the city.” “We’re going to be blunt,” the pamphlet continued. “We won’t give more warnings.”
Local human rights organizations called on the authorities “to fulfill their role as guarantor[s] of the life and tranquility of the residents of our city,” and they asked the international community to monitor and publicize the threats and to demand that the national government take action against criminal groups. (Communiqué 8/20/12 posted on SINALTRAINAL website) [Earlier in the month Colombian unionists called for international solidarity for SINALTRAINAL president Mendoza, who says the government is trying to have him sentenced to prison, where he fears he will be killed; see Update #1141.]
"Los Rastrojos" is one of several criminal groups that carry on the work of rightwing paramilitary groups which ostensibly demobilized during the middle 2000s [see Updates #1086, 1087, World War 4 Report 5/8/12]. On Aug. 18 the Colombian radio station Caracol reported that a leading paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), acquired weapons from criminal groups in the US in 2004 and 2005, at the same time that the group claimed to be demobilizing. Basing its report on documents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Caracol said the AUC acquired 200 M16 rifles, 100 fragmentation grenades, 150 rocket-propelled grenades and 50,000 .22 cartridges from Miami in just one year.
The last section of the AUC to demobilize, the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc, officially gave up its arms on Aug. 16, 2006. Some of its former members then formed “Los Urabeños,” which the Medellín-based news service Colombia Reports describes as “one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Colombia and in control of the drug routes in what used to be the heartland of the AUC.” (Colombia Reports 8/19/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
Proven model predicts higher food prices if speculation is not reined in (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7773
Marketing Consent: A Journey into the Public Relations Underside of Canada's Mining Sector in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3829-marketing-consent-a-journey-into-the-public-relations-underside-of-canadas-mining-sector-in-latin-america
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: 'There is No Political Will to Respect Native Peoples' in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3832-adolfo-perez-esquivel-qthere-is-no-political-will-to-respect-native-peoplesq-in-argentina
Chile urged to ensure justice for victims of enforced disappearances
http://ww4report.com/node/11422
Hydropower Dam to Flood Sacred Amazon Indigenous Site in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3825-hydropower-dam-to-flood-sacred-amazon-indigenous-site-in-brazil
Brazil: court blocks mega-hydro to protect Pantanal
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11435
Brazil: high court orders release of rancher convicted in Dorothy Stang slaying
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1143
Bolivia: Aymara communities occupy Oruro mine
http://ww4report.com/node/11420
Peru: Newmont Mining to abandon Conga project?
http://ww4report.com/node/11419
To the Colombian Military: “Don’t be afraid of peace!”
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7794
The Colombian Paradox: Capital Mobility, Land, and Power
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/colombian-paradox-capital-mobility-land-and-power
Colombia: Despite Repression, the Minga in Huila Continues for the Liberation of Mother Earth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3830-colombia-despite-repression-the-minga-in-huila-continues-for-the-liberation-of-mother-earth
Colombian GM Workers on Hunger Strike Until Death Sew Their Mouths Shut
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8720
US Carter Center: Venezuelan Electoral System one of the Most Automated in the World
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7177
U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3827-us-funded-war-in-el-salvador-casts-shadow-over-romneyryan-campaign
Broken Anvil: Victims Fight for Justice After DEA Operation Leaves Four Dead in Honduras
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#label/wnu1142/1394c720240c7ea2
Lost and Found (Honduras)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7779
Guatemala: The Spoils of an Undeclared War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3823-guatemala-the-spoils-of-an-undeclared-war
Guatemala: ex-National Police chief gets 70 years for "disappearance"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11436
Mining, Repression and the Rhetoric of Democracy and the Rule of Law in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3824-mining-repression-and-the-rhetoric-of-democracy-and-the-rule-of-law-in-guatemala
Mexico: victory for campesino struggle against La Parota dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11421
Mexican Farmers Battle Canadian Mining Company for Control of Their Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3822-mexican-farmers-battle-canadian-mining-company-for-control-of-their-land
Miners in Coahuila Died for Seven Dollars a Day (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7831
Stop, Frisk and Demolish in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august212012/ciudad-stops-kp.php
The Caravan for Peace Begins a Long Ride Across the USA
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/21/caravan-peace-begins-long-ride-across-usa
Caravan of Peace, Cities of Death
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/08/caravan-of-peace-cities-of-death.html
On Haiti, Jared Diamond Hasn't Done His Homework
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/20/haiti-jared-diamond-hasnt-done-his-homework
A Twenty-First Century Border: The Ever-expanding U.S. Boundary (Dominican Republic, US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/twenty-first-century-border-ever-expanding-us-boundary
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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