Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1126, April 22, 2012
1. International: Campesinos Hold Worldwide Day of Action
2. Honduras: Thousands Occupy Land in Massive Agrarian Protest
3. Argentina: Government Plans to Re-Nationalize Oil Company
4. Mexico: Questions Surround 8 Deaths in Logging Dispute
5: Mexico: Counterinsurgency General Assassinated
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. International: Campesinos Hold Worldwide Day of Action
Campesino groups around the world planned more than 250 activities to mark the International Day of Campesino Struggles on Apr. 17, according to the international rural workers movement Vía Campesina. The day of action--which was announced at the International Campesino Conference held in Mali last Nov. 14-17—was intended to bring attention to the need for carrying out agrarian reform, for stopping the concentration of land in the hands of wealthy landowners, and for maintaining agricultural production based on campesino farming and the principles of food sovereignty. A special focus this year was to be opposition to monoculture for export and to the production of bio-fuel crops.
The Apr. 17 activities were expected to range from marches and land occupations to conferences and photographic exhibits. Countries with participating groups included Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay, Indonesia, Mozambique, Canada, the US, France, Spain, Australia and the Palestinian territories.
Groups in Brazil got a head start on Apr. 16 when the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) occupied the Agrarian Development Ministry in Brasilia; a tax office in Cuiabá, capital of the western state of Mato Grosso; the headquarters of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), located in Rio de Janeiro; and an estate in the southern state of Río Grande do Sul. (Adital (Brazil) 4/17/12; TeleSUR 4/17/12)
In Haiti, more than 1,000 campesinos demonstrated on Apr. 17 in the town of Colladère, near Hinche in the Central Plateau, to demand agrarian reform and oppose the monopolization of land for biofuel production. The protest was organized by the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), whose spokesperson, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, praised a model of biological agriculture which he said was able both to counteract global warming and to provide enough food for the world’s 7 billion inhabitants.
The group used the occasion to present what it called “the country’s first ecological village,” which houses 10 families that moved to the countryside after a January 2010 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and nearby cities. The homes were built using local materials, with financial aid from a US faith-based group, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Iowa City. Jean-Baptiste said the MPP plans to build a total of five of these villages for people displaced by the earthquake. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/17/12)
Campesinos groups chose Apr. 17 for the international day of action as a way of commemorating the massacre of 19 Brazilian campesinos on Apr. 17, 1996, when police attacked a demonstration by some 1,500 MST members in Eldorado dos Carajás in the northern state of Pará. All but two of the police agents involved were acquitted [see Updates #646, 847]. (Adital 4/17/12)
*2. Honduras: Thousands Occupy Land in Massive Agrarian Protest
In a dramatic show of force, more than 3,500 Honduran campesino families occupied land in estates in different parts of the country early in the morning of Apr. 17 to demand implementation of an effective national agrarian reform policy. The mobilization, the Honduran activity for the International Day of Campesino Struggles, was organized by a coalition of 10 campesino groups, including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Honduran branch of the international rural workers’ movement Vía Campesina. In a statement issued on Apr. 17, the organizers said protesters had occupied a total of 12,000 hectares in eight of the country’s 18 departments: Cortés, Yoro, Santa Bárbara, Intibucá, El Paraíso, Choluteca, Comayagua, and Francisco Morazán.
On Apr. 18 security forces dispersed the largest land occupation, at a 2,500-hectare estate operated by a sugar company in San Manuel, near San Pedro Sula in the northern department of Cortés. The campesinos, members of the San Manuel Campesino Movement (MOCSAM), left peacefully in the afternoon after a police contingent arrived with a court order.
The protest organizers said the lands the campesinos occupied either belonged to the government or were not “fulfilling a social function.” “The [Agrarian] Reform Law is clear and states that government lands are for the purposes of the Agrarian Reform,” the organizers said in their statement, but despite requests for these lands over the years with the National Agrarian Institute (INA), the government’s response had been “open repression, violent evictions, the imprisonment of campesinos and campesinas.” If the lands were turned over to the campesino families, they would produce “4 million quintales of corn, 1.5 million quintales of rice, and 800,000 quintales of beans for the food sovereignty of our people,” according to the statement. (A Honduran quintal is about 46 kg.) The protesters were also demanding passage of a law they proposed in October 2011 for “integral agrarian transformation.”
Government officials charged that the mass mobilization was politically motivated. But protesters dismissed the claim. “We aren’t criminals,” Marvin Morales, a schoolteacher and a leader in the San Manuel occupation, told a reporter, “and what has forced us to move into the land is hunger, not the influence of other political sectors.” (Communiqué from Honduran campesino goups 4/17/12, posted on Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular website; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 4/18/12; AP 4/19/12 via Fox News Latino)
On Apr. 19 thousands of students, unionists and others marched in various cities in a protest called by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) to protest increases in the price of fuel, basic foods, public transportation and public utilities. In Tegucigalpa a large march started from the Francisco Morazán National Pedagogic University (UPNFM) and moved to the center of the city, where a committee including activist leaders Juan Barahona and Carlos H. Reyes and former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales presented the National Congress with a list of popular demands. Thousands also marched in the industrial capital, the northern city of San Pedro Sula, and there were protests in El Paraíso, Juticalpa, Choluteca, La Ceiba, Santa Bárbara and Colón. (Red Morazánica de Información 4/19/12 via FNRP website)
*3. Argentina: Government Plans to Re-Nationalize Oil Company
Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced on Apr. 16 that her government planned to take control of 51% of the shares in YPF SA, the country’s largest oil company. The Spanish company Repsol has had majority ownership of the Argentine company, formerly known as Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, since 1999. Later in the week the government took control of YPF Gas, which is also owned mostly by Repsol. A tribunal is to determine how much Argentina will pay in compensation to the companies' private shareholders.
A telephone survey conducted by Argentina’s Poliarquia polling institute and published on Apr. 22 by the daily La Nación found 26% of respondents strongly in favor of the move, with another 36% supporting it less strongly. (New York Times 4/17/12; AFP 4/22/12 via France24)
The plan to expropriate the company came in the midst of continuing economic instability in Europe, and the Spanish government reacted angrily to Argentina’s move. After an interview with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Brussels on Apr. 19, Spanish foreign affairs minister José Manuel García-Margallo told a press conference that Spain and the US “are going to analyze the way in which it might be possible to collaborate together to restore international legality.” He said the two countries might work together in the World Bank, “in the International Monetary Fund [IMF], in the G-20 [Group of 20 major economies], in the Paris Club, in any other institution in which one could carry out an action to try to have the government of Argentina correct itself.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/20/12 from DPA)
The privatization of the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales was the most important element in the massive sell-off of government enterprises carried out by the government of former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) during an era of extreme neoliberal policies that ended with economic collapse in late 2001 and early 2002. The Menem government started by laying off 50,000 employees in four years. On Sept. 24, 1992, the Chamber of Deputies approved a law privatizing the firm, now named YPF SA, with majority control going to provincial governments. The private sector gradually bought more and more shares in the YPF until 1999, when Repsol obtained complete control. Later the Petersen Group, headed by Argentine entrepreneur Enrique Eskenazi, acquired about 25%.
The decision to re-nationalize the company has a number of ironies. President Fernández’s general secretary of the presidency, Oscar Parrilli, was a promoter of the privatization in 1992, when he was a deputy from Neuquén province. “We are here in this session,” he said in a pro-privatization speech in Congress that year, “with the firm conviction that we are taking the steps that Argentine society and the world are demanding of us in order to achieve the transformation of our country.” Cristina Fernández, then a provincial legislator in Santa Cruz, also supported the privatization. (La Capital (Rosario) 4/17/12)
The main force behind selling off YPF was Carlos Menem, who is now a senator for La Rioja province. In an Apr. 20 interview in the daily Crónica he said he planned to vote in favor of the re-nationalization. “The scenario has changed, the situation isn’t the same as when I privatized it,” he explained. “I know they’re going to beat me up, but it won’t be the first time.” (Clarín (Buenos Aires) 4/21/12) [Until last year Menem was in a faction of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) that strongly opposes the PJ faction that Fernández heads. Menem became a Fernández ally around the time he was starting to face trials on various criminal charges; see Update #1097].
*4. Mexico: Questions Surround 8 Deaths in Logging Dispute
Eight indigenous Purépecha were shot dead the morning of Apr. 18 near the autonomous community of Cherán in the western Mexican state of Michoacán. Two of the victims were from Cherán, which has been engaged in a year-long struggle to protect local forests from illegal loggers; six of the people killed were from the town of Casimiro Leco, better known as El Cerecito, where many of the loggers live.
According to Cherán residents, the violence began when a group of men from El Cerecito ambushed some 20 laborers from Cherán who were doing reforestation work as temporary employees for the federal Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat. The Michoacán authorities treated the incident as a shootout, blaming Cherán residents for the deaths of the six people from El Cerecito. Police agents detained a number of Cherán residents later on Apr. 18, and community people responded by detaining a dozen police agents from the Special Operations Group (GOE) and holding them until the next day.
Cherán’s governing council denied that Cherán residents were responsible for the killings of the six from El Cerecito. The workers from Cherán were attacked by “paramilitary groups associated with organized crime and the loggers,” Cherán activist Salvador Campanur told reporters. The same people “are planting corpses in our territory,” Campanur explained. “We don’t know the motive for the six deaths… [T]here are internal disputes between organized crime and the paramilitaries, and what the authorities are doing is to make these deaths appear to be part of a confrontation that didn’t take place.” [Campanur also works with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia last year to oppose the Mexican government’s militarized “war on drugs”; see Update #1079.]
But relatives of the victims from El Cerecito blamed Cherán residents. At the burial of five of the dead, in the community of Tanaco, on Apr. 19, family members—“who live in extreme poverty,” according to reporters from the Mexican daily La Jornada—denounced Cherán residents as “murderers.”
A little more than a year ago, on Apr. 15, 2011, the people of Cherán rose up against the criminal gangs and illegal loggers who had destroyed a large part of the local forests. Cherán residents then declared their community autonomous, throwing out the municipal government and replacing it with an assembly and a council selected according to Purépecha “uses and customs.” Community patrols provide security and guard the entrances to the town, and the inhabitants plan to boycott state and federal elections.
Even in Cherán there is some sympathy for impoverished Purépecha from El Cerecito who engage in illegal logging. “It isn’t just a police matter,” an unnamed teacher at the Superior Technological Institute of de Cherán told La Jornada, noting that the logging provides employment for hundreds of poor families, who in effect become serfs of the people who trade in the timber. “There need to be options for these people,” he said. “Or if not, what are they going to do afterwards?” (LJ 4/19/12, 4/20/12; EFE 4/20/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune)
*5: Mexico: Counterinsurgency General Assassinated
An unknown assailant killed retired Mexican general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro Escapite with three shots to the head on the evening of Apr. 20 at an auto shop in the Anáhuac section of Mexico City; the general had just brought his car there for repairs. The killer and an accomplice escaped on a motorcycle. This was the second attack against the general in two years; he was shot in the abdomen in Mexico City on May 18, 2010, in a supposed robbery attempt.
Acosta Chaparro joined the Mexican military in the 1960s and received training in counterinsurgency and psychological warfare from the US Army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He became part of the so-called “White Brigade,” formed to combat rebel groups, especially the Sept. 23 Communist League and the Party of the Poor, which operated in the southwestern state of Guerrero under the leadership of Lucio Cabañas Barrientos.
In 2000 Acosta Chaparro was convicted of protecting Juárez Cartel head Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of the Skies” for his use of jets to carry drugs. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison but later won acquittal on appeal. In 2002 Acosta Chaparro was charged, along with Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, with the murder of campesinos in Guerrero during the “dirty war” against the Army of the Poor in the 1970s. He was eventually cleared of these charges as well.
Activists have accused Acosta Chaparro of involvement in “death flights” to dispose of bodies of the military’s victims by dropping them into the sea from airplanes. There were also reports that Acosta Chaparro was present when security forces massacred 17 campesinos at Aguas Blancas, in Coyuca de Benítez municipality, Guerrero, on June 28, 1995 [see Updates #392, 661]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/21/12; AP 4/23/12 via El Paso (Texas) Times)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
Latin America Unravels the Populist Putdown
http://nacla.org/news/2012/4/20/latin-america-unravels-populist-putdown
Argentina's Critics Are Wrong Again About Renationalising Oil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3584-argentinas-critics-are-wrong-again-about-renationalising-oil
New Twist for TIPNIS Road: Bolivia Cancels Highway Contract
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/16/new-twist-tipnis-road-bolivia-cancels-highway-contract
Peru: new environmental review of Conga project submitted —as protests continue
http://ww4report.com/node/11005
Cajamarca Anti-Mining Movements Celebrate and Question Study Results For Peru Conga Gold Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3591-cajamarca-anti-mining-movements-celebrate-and-question-study-results-for-peru-conga-gold-mine
Peru: new report on Conga project fails to win social peace
http://ww4report.com/node/11019
La Oroya: "Peru's Chernobyl" to stay closed —for now
http://ww4report.com/node/11018
Peru: Sendero contests official story in Camisea hostage affair
http://ww4report.com/node/11006
Peru: Trade Deal Injustice for the Children of La Oroya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3581-peru-trade-deal-injustice-for-the-children-of-la-oroya
Contradictions in Power: Reflections on the Plurinational March for Water and Extractivism in Ecuador
http://nacla.org/news/2012/4/19/contradictions-power-reflections-plurinational-march-water-and-extractivism-ecuador
Ecuador: clergy question mineral model
http://ww4report.com/node/10930#comment-341928
Colombia: sex scandal overshadows ongoing war
http://ww4report.com/node/11003
Colombia: The Movement against the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project Deepens its Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3585-colombia-the-movement-against-the-quimbo-hydroelectric-project-deepens-its-resistance
Obama approves Colombia FTA —despite continued anti-labor violence
http://ww4report.com/node/11004
Progress or Promises? Free Trade and Labor Rights in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3579-progress-or-promises-free-trade-and-labor-rights-in-colombia
Venezuela: Complexities of the Socialist Alternative
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3586-venezuela-complexities-of-the-socialist-alternative
More than 1 Million Venezuelans Benefit from Land Reform Program
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6938
The History and Resurgence of Death Squads in Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3580-the-history-and-resurgence-of-death-squads-in-central-america
Drugs and Business: Central America Faces Another Round of Violence
http://nacla.org/news/2012/4/17/drugs-and-business-central-america-faces-another-round-violence
Uighur Gitmo detainees released to El Salvador
http://ww4report.com/node/11009
Mexico’s False Dilemma: Human Rights or Security
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6748
The Politics of the Drug War in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6743
FNS News: 1,700 Disappeare?d People (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april182012/disappeared-people.php
Mexican Seeds, the New Spoils for Food Corporations
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3583-mexican-seeds-the-new-spoils-for-food-corporations
A Colonial WikiLeaks? The Migrated Archives and the Caribbean Pt.2
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/19/colonial-wikileaks-migrated-archives-and-caribbean-pt2
Last Summit of the Americas Without Cuba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3578-last-summit-of-the-americas-without-cuba
Liquid Death (Haiti)
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2012/4/17/liquid-death.html
Haiti Using Funds from PetroCaribe to Finance Reconstruction
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-using-funds-from-petrocaribe-to-finance-reconstruction
Why Haiti Wasn’t “Built Back Better”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/3582--why-haiti-wasnt-built-back-better
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/
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, 23 April 2012
Monday, 16 April 2012
WNU #1125: Argentina Coup Aimed at Creating Market Economy
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1125, April 15, 2012
1. Argentina: 1976 Coup Aimed at Creating a Market Economy
2. Dominican Republic: Is a General Plotting Against Haiti’s President?
3. Mexico: Activist Stages Mock Crucifixion to Demand Child’s Return
4. Honduras: AFL-CIO Protests Labor Rights Violations
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. Argentina: 1976 Coup Aimed at Creating a Market Economy
Imprisoned former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the military disappeared—detained and killed--thousands of people and sometimes abducted the victims’ children during its 1976-1983 “dirty war” against leftists and others [see Update #1110]. The killings “were the price that regrettably Argentina had to pay to go on being a republic,” Videla said in one of several interviews journalist Ceferino Reato held with him from October 2011 to March 2012 in the Campo de Mayo prison. Now 86, the former dictator was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 for crimes against humanity. Human rights groups estimate that the military disappeared some 30,000 people in the violence and turned over several hundred of their children to foster parents.
The interviews appear in Reato’s book Final Disposition, which went on sale on Apr. 14; some interviews were also videotaped and are available on the internet.
“Our objective” in the Mar. 24, 1976 coup that started the seven years of bloody military rule “was to discipline an anarchized society,” Videla explained to Reato. The generals wanted “to get away from a populist, demagogic vision; in relation to the economy, to go to a liberal market economy. We wanted to discipline unionism and crony capitalism.” Argentine business owners were directly involved in the killings, Videla added, although “they washed their hands” of the actual violence. “They said, ‘Do what you have to do,’ and later they would add some on. How many times they told me, ‘You’ve come up short, you should have killed a thousand more, 10,000 more’!”
The coup leaders decided they needed to keep the extent of the killings secret. “[L]et’s say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die [so we could] win the war against subversion. We needed for it not to be obvious, so that society wouldn’t notice.” The remains had to be eliminated “so that there wouldn’t be protests inside or outside the country.” In the case of Mario Santucho of the Revolutionary Army of the People, for example, if the body appeared it would “provide an occasion for homages, for commemorations. It had to be made opaque.” The title of Reato’s book comes from the Argentine military term “disposición final” (final disposition or disposal), which is used for getting rid of worn-out clothes or equipment. The generals used the term for the process of eliminating the bodies of their victims. (InfoBAE (Argentina) 4/14/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/14/12 from correspondent; Reuters 4/14/12)
*2. Dominican Republic: Is a General Plotting Against Haiti’s President?
Retired Dominican general Pedro Julio (“Pepe”) Goico Guerrero has been heading a plot to destabilize the administration of Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”), Dominican president Leonel Fernández’s information secretary, Rafael Núñez, announced at a Santo Domingo press conference late on Apr. 12. The alleged plot also involves a Haitian citizen, Pierre Kanzki, according to Núñez, who was accompanied by Dominican foreign affairs minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Haitian justice minister Michel Brunache, Dominican attorney general Radhamés Jiménez, and ambassadors Fritz Cineas (Haiti) and Rubén Silie (Dominican Republic). Returning to Haiti on Apr. 13, Justice Minister Brunache announced that his department was investigating Kanzki; he didn’t mention any criminal charges against either of the two men named in the alleged plot. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/13/12, ___)
The accusation that Gen. Goico was plotting against Martelly came a little less than two weeks after Dominican reporter Nuria Piera charged that two of Dominican senator Félix Bautista’s construction firms, which have contracts for replacing buildings destroyed in Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, had paid some $2.5 million to President Martelly over the past two years [see Update #1124].
Some observers connect both of these accusations with the Dominican Republic’s general elections on May 20, in which Danilo Medina, the candidate of Fernández’s centrist Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), is in a tight race against former president Hipólito Mejía (2000-2004), the candidate of the social democratic Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Sen. Bautista belongs to the PLD and is close to Fernández; the suggestion that he might be bribing Haitian officials comes on top of accusations of illegal enrichment in the past when he headed the Public Works Supervisory Office. Gen. Goico was in charge of security for Mejía during his administration and remains close to the former president. On Apr. 13 Mejía dismissed the claim that Goico was plotting against Martelly as “a smokescreen to cover up Félix Bautista’s scandals.”
Meanwhile, Mejía was facing criticism for a reference he made to US president Barack Obama during a recent visit to New York. “If Obama, who came from Africa, was born there and is [US] president,” he told a group of PRD supporters, “why can’t one of you make it, you who are a more attractive mixture than Obama?” On Apr. 13 the Dominican Senate, which the PLD controls, made an official apology to the US that was probably meant to add to Mejía’s embarrassment over the incident. (EFE 4/12/12 via Univision; El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 4/13/12; AlterPresse 4/13/12)
Opinion polls are split on the presidential race. A survey that the JZ Analytics firm released on Apr. 3 gave Mejía a five-point advantage over Medina, while a poll the New Link Group published a few hours later showed Medina with 49.1% of the vote against 44% for Mejía. The day before, a poll by Asisa Research had Medina winning with 52.8% to 45%. (Prensa Latina 4/4/12) The uncertainty of the polls reflects widespread disaffection with both parties. Asked which candidate they’d vote for, respondents have given such answers as: “Elections don’t matter to me,” “The two parties are the same thing,” “I don’t vote,” “For the devil,” “For Jesus Christ,” and “I don’t believe in politicians.” (Listín Diario (Santo Domingo) 4/15/12)
*3. Mexico: Activist Stages Mock Crucifixion to Demand Child’s Return
After 15 days on hunger strike, on Apr. 10 Antonia López Cruz sewed her lips together and had herself tied to the fence outside the federal Senate building in Mexico City in a mock crucifixion to demand the return of her six-year-old daughter, Concepción (“Cuco”) Antonia Fernández López. Puebla state Public Ministry coordinator Leticia Villaraldo took the child from her parents on Mar. 21 and turned her over to the state Integral Family Development (DIF) service, claiming she was an abuse victim because of an injury to her arm.
The father, Antonio Fernández Sánchez, who was encamped with López Cruz and their two sons outside the Senate, told reporters that the girl’s arm was hurt while she was playing with her little brother. “They took our daughter Concepción Antonia as a reprisal because my wife and I defend indigenous people and campesinos against arbitrary acts by the Puebla government, which is headed by [Gov.] Rafael Moreno Valle,” he said. “Villaraldo told us we should abandon the defense of indigenous and campesino human rights and then she’ll return our daughter.” Fernández Sánchez said he and López Cruz are members of an organization called the Supreme Mexican Fraternal Alliance in Defense of Human Rights.
Sen. Rosario Ibarra de Piedra [see Update #946], a longtime activist who heads the Senate Human Rights Commission, came out to meet with López Cruz. Ibarra then sent a request to the Puebla state attorney general for a report on the case, and spoke with the state governance under secretary, asking him to meet with the family. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/12)
On Apr. 5 activist José Luis Castillo Carreón and his son were put in preventive detention in the northern state of Chihuahua on charges of armed robbery of a Ciudad Juárez massage parlor in August 2008. Castillo became politically active after his 14-year-old daughter Esmeralda Castillo Rincón disappeared in May 2009. He and his son participated in protests demanding government action to end the wave of violence that has left more than 500 women and girls dead in the Juárez area since 1993 [see Update #1121]. The police said the owner of the massage parlor identified the two men from photos in media coverage of the demonstrations. (Vanguardia (Mexico) 4/6/12; EFE 4/11/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune)
*4. Honduras: AFL-CIO Protests Labor Rights Violations
On Mar. 29 the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, joined with two Honduran union federations to file a petition with the US Department of Labor’s Public Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA) asking the US to push the Honduran government to address labor violations. Evangelina Argueta Chinchilla, representing Honduras’ General Workers Central (CGT), and Francisco Joel López Mejía, deputy general secretary of the smaller Independent Federation of Workers of Honduras (FITH), traveled to Washington to file the petition.
The federations’ complaint is based on provisions for labor rights in the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). Unions and grassroots movements in the affected countries strongly opposed the agreement when it was proposed [see Update #988] and had little confidence in the labor right provisions. Six years after the agreement went into effect, the labor provisions have not in fact been meaningfully enforced in Honduras, according to the union representatives.
“For many years our government has neglected workers and even has violated their own promises,” Argueta said. “They have ignored Honduras’ unions, while dealing openly with corporations. They have passed laws that undermine unions and reduce standards of living.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stressed “the long-term cooperation and commitment of the AFL-CIO and the Honduran labor movement to promote and protect worker rights.” (Honduras Weekly 3/30/12; People’s Weekly World 4/9/12)
In other news, on Apr. 13 the military detained two campesinos, Juan Galindo López and Oveniel (or Obeniel) Cáceres in the Marañones settlement in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of a long-running conflict between campesinos and large landowners over land rights [see Update #1123]. On Apr. 14 the Canadian-based organization Rights Action reported that Galindo had been released but Cáceres was apparently still in detention. (Adital (Brazil) 4/13/12 from Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH); Rights Action posting 4/13/12; Rights Action email 4/14/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
Obama in Cartagena: No Change, Dwindling Hope (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3576-obama-in-cartagena-no-change-dwindling-hope-
South American Fiber Optic Ring
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6734
Dismantling the monoculture mentality (Argentina)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6741
Argentina Thirty Years After the Malvinas War: Demanding Sovereignty and Healing the Wounds of War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3568-argentina-thirty-years-after-the-malvinas-war-demanding-sovereignty-and-healing-the-wounds-of-war-
Brazil: judge suspends Teles Pires dam, upholds indigenous rights
http://ww4report.com/node/10976
Brazil, U.S. Deepen Ties Ahead of Obama's Latin America Week
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3566-brazil-us-deepen-ties-ahead-of-obamas-latin-america-week
Bolivia: Evo Morales cancels contract for controversial Amazon highway
http://ww4report.com/node/10985
Shifting Alliances in Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/6/shifting-alliances-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict
Peru: Sendero Luminoso take Camisea workers hostage
http://ww4report.com/node/10974
Peru defies UN breakthrough on uncontacted tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/10975
Peru: trapped miners freed —and scapegoated
http://ww4report.com/node/10983
Peru: civil strike against mining project shuts down Cajamarca —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10994
Peru: state of emergency as Sendero demands ransom for Camisea workers
http://ww4report.com/node/10984
Peru: Sendero fires on police helicopter in Camisea hostage crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/10989
Peru: Sendero hostages freed —but how?
http://ww4report.com/node/10995
Peru's President Humala faces "dirty war" complaint before OAS rights commission
http://ww4report.com/node/10988
Ecuador: A Revolutionary March Versus a Counter-Revolutionary March
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3564-ecuador-a-revolutionary-march-versus-a-counter-revolutionary-march
More mining projects for Ecuador rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/10907#comment-341809
Colombians Commemorate First Official Day Honoring Conflict Victims (photo essay)
http://nacla.org/colombians-commemorate-first-official-day-honoring-conflict-victims-photo-essay
Small-Scale Miners in Nariño Face Crackdown as Foreign Companies Set Sights on Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3567-small-scale-miners-in-narino-face-crackdown-as-foreign-companies-set-sights-on-colombia
New Low for Obama on Colombia Worker Rights; Reportedly Plans to Throw Away Trade Leverage at Summit
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3570-new-low-for-obama-on-colombia-worker-rights-reportedly-plans-to-throw-away-trade-leverage-at-summit
Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/4/11/llaguno-bridge-keys-massacre-video
New Agreements Between Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba for Social and Economic Development
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6920
Canada Deepens Ties with Deadly Regime in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3575-canada-deepens-ties-with-deadly-regime-in-honduras
Honduran Campesinos in the Crosshairs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3565--honduran-campesinos-in-the-crosshairs-
Gathering in Bajo Aguán: Oligarchy and Human Rights Violations in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3574-gathering-in-bajo-aguan-oligarchy-and-human-rights-violations-in-honduras
Mexican Candidates Blast the Airwaves, Stir Up the Social Networks
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/04/mexican-candidates-blast-the-airwaves-stir-up-the-social-networks.php
A Colonial WikiLeaks? The Migrated Archives and the Caribbean Pt.1
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/12/colonial-wikileaks-migrated-archives-and-caribbean-pt1
Haiti Reconstruction Fund: Building Back …When?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-reconstruction-fund-building-back-when
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 #1125, April 15, 2012
1. Argentina: 1976 Coup Aimed at Creating a Market Economy
2. Dominican Republic: Is a General Plotting Against Haiti’s President?
3. Mexico: Activist Stages Mock Crucifixion to Demand Child’s Return
4. Honduras: AFL-CIO Protests Labor Rights Violations
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. Argentina: 1976 Coup Aimed at Creating a Market Economy
Imprisoned former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the military disappeared—detained and killed--thousands of people and sometimes abducted the victims’ children during its 1976-1983 “dirty war” against leftists and others [see Update #1110]. The killings “were the price that regrettably Argentina had to pay to go on being a republic,” Videla said in one of several interviews journalist Ceferino Reato held with him from October 2011 to March 2012 in the Campo de Mayo prison. Now 86, the former dictator was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 for crimes against humanity. Human rights groups estimate that the military disappeared some 30,000 people in the violence and turned over several hundred of their children to foster parents.
The interviews appear in Reato’s book Final Disposition, which went on sale on Apr. 14; some interviews were also videotaped and are available on the internet.
“Our objective” in the Mar. 24, 1976 coup that started the seven years of bloody military rule “was to discipline an anarchized society,” Videla explained to Reato. The generals wanted “to get away from a populist, demagogic vision; in relation to the economy, to go to a liberal market economy. We wanted to discipline unionism and crony capitalism.” Argentine business owners were directly involved in the killings, Videla added, although “they washed their hands” of the actual violence. “They said, ‘Do what you have to do,’ and later they would add some on. How many times they told me, ‘You’ve come up short, you should have killed a thousand more, 10,000 more’!”
The coup leaders decided they needed to keep the extent of the killings secret. “[L]et’s say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die [so we could] win the war against subversion. We needed for it not to be obvious, so that society wouldn’t notice.” The remains had to be eliminated “so that there wouldn’t be protests inside or outside the country.” In the case of Mario Santucho of the Revolutionary Army of the People, for example, if the body appeared it would “provide an occasion for homages, for commemorations. It had to be made opaque.” The title of Reato’s book comes from the Argentine military term “disposición final” (final disposition or disposal), which is used for getting rid of worn-out clothes or equipment. The generals used the term for the process of eliminating the bodies of their victims. (InfoBAE (Argentina) 4/14/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/14/12 from correspondent; Reuters 4/14/12)
*2. Dominican Republic: Is a General Plotting Against Haiti’s President?
Retired Dominican general Pedro Julio (“Pepe”) Goico Guerrero has been heading a plot to destabilize the administration of Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”), Dominican president Leonel Fernández’s information secretary, Rafael Núñez, announced at a Santo Domingo press conference late on Apr. 12. The alleged plot also involves a Haitian citizen, Pierre Kanzki, according to Núñez, who was accompanied by Dominican foreign affairs minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Haitian justice minister Michel Brunache, Dominican attorney general Radhamés Jiménez, and ambassadors Fritz Cineas (Haiti) and Rubén Silie (Dominican Republic). Returning to Haiti on Apr. 13, Justice Minister Brunache announced that his department was investigating Kanzki; he didn’t mention any criminal charges against either of the two men named in the alleged plot. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/13/12, ___)
The accusation that Gen. Goico was plotting against Martelly came a little less than two weeks after Dominican reporter Nuria Piera charged that two of Dominican senator Félix Bautista’s construction firms, which have contracts for replacing buildings destroyed in Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, had paid some $2.5 million to President Martelly over the past two years [see Update #1124].
Some observers connect both of these accusations with the Dominican Republic’s general elections on May 20, in which Danilo Medina, the candidate of Fernández’s centrist Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), is in a tight race against former president Hipólito Mejía (2000-2004), the candidate of the social democratic Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Sen. Bautista belongs to the PLD and is close to Fernández; the suggestion that he might be bribing Haitian officials comes on top of accusations of illegal enrichment in the past when he headed the Public Works Supervisory Office. Gen. Goico was in charge of security for Mejía during his administration and remains close to the former president. On Apr. 13 Mejía dismissed the claim that Goico was plotting against Martelly as “a smokescreen to cover up Félix Bautista’s scandals.”
Meanwhile, Mejía was facing criticism for a reference he made to US president Barack Obama during a recent visit to New York. “If Obama, who came from Africa, was born there and is [US] president,” he told a group of PRD supporters, “why can’t one of you make it, you who are a more attractive mixture than Obama?” On Apr. 13 the Dominican Senate, which the PLD controls, made an official apology to the US that was probably meant to add to Mejía’s embarrassment over the incident. (EFE 4/12/12 via Univision; El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 4/13/12; AlterPresse 4/13/12)
Opinion polls are split on the presidential race. A survey that the JZ Analytics firm released on Apr. 3 gave Mejía a five-point advantage over Medina, while a poll the New Link Group published a few hours later showed Medina with 49.1% of the vote against 44% for Mejía. The day before, a poll by Asisa Research had Medina winning with 52.8% to 45%. (Prensa Latina 4/4/12) The uncertainty of the polls reflects widespread disaffection with both parties. Asked which candidate they’d vote for, respondents have given such answers as: “Elections don’t matter to me,” “The two parties are the same thing,” “I don’t vote,” “For the devil,” “For Jesus Christ,” and “I don’t believe in politicians.” (Listín Diario (Santo Domingo) 4/15/12)
*3. Mexico: Activist Stages Mock Crucifixion to Demand Child’s Return
After 15 days on hunger strike, on Apr. 10 Antonia López Cruz sewed her lips together and had herself tied to the fence outside the federal Senate building in Mexico City in a mock crucifixion to demand the return of her six-year-old daughter, Concepción (“Cuco”) Antonia Fernández López. Puebla state Public Ministry coordinator Leticia Villaraldo took the child from her parents on Mar. 21 and turned her over to the state Integral Family Development (DIF) service, claiming she was an abuse victim because of an injury to her arm.
The father, Antonio Fernández Sánchez, who was encamped with López Cruz and their two sons outside the Senate, told reporters that the girl’s arm was hurt while she was playing with her little brother. “They took our daughter Concepción Antonia as a reprisal because my wife and I defend indigenous people and campesinos against arbitrary acts by the Puebla government, which is headed by [Gov.] Rafael Moreno Valle,” he said. “Villaraldo told us we should abandon the defense of indigenous and campesino human rights and then she’ll return our daughter.” Fernández Sánchez said he and López Cruz are members of an organization called the Supreme Mexican Fraternal Alliance in Defense of Human Rights.
Sen. Rosario Ibarra de Piedra [see Update #946], a longtime activist who heads the Senate Human Rights Commission, came out to meet with López Cruz. Ibarra then sent a request to the Puebla state attorney general for a report on the case, and spoke with the state governance under secretary, asking him to meet with the family. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/12)
On Apr. 5 activist José Luis Castillo Carreón and his son were put in preventive detention in the northern state of Chihuahua on charges of armed robbery of a Ciudad Juárez massage parlor in August 2008. Castillo became politically active after his 14-year-old daughter Esmeralda Castillo Rincón disappeared in May 2009. He and his son participated in protests demanding government action to end the wave of violence that has left more than 500 women and girls dead in the Juárez area since 1993 [see Update #1121]. The police said the owner of the massage parlor identified the two men from photos in media coverage of the demonstrations. (Vanguardia (Mexico) 4/6/12; EFE 4/11/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune)
*4. Honduras: AFL-CIO Protests Labor Rights Violations
On Mar. 29 the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, joined with two Honduran union federations to file a petition with the US Department of Labor’s Public Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA) asking the US to push the Honduran government to address labor violations. Evangelina Argueta Chinchilla, representing Honduras’ General Workers Central (CGT), and Francisco Joel López Mejía, deputy general secretary of the smaller Independent Federation of Workers of Honduras (FITH), traveled to Washington to file the petition.
The federations’ complaint is based on provisions for labor rights in the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). Unions and grassroots movements in the affected countries strongly opposed the agreement when it was proposed [see Update #988] and had little confidence in the labor right provisions. Six years after the agreement went into effect, the labor provisions have not in fact been meaningfully enforced in Honduras, according to the union representatives.
“For many years our government has neglected workers and even has violated their own promises,” Argueta said. “They have ignored Honduras’ unions, while dealing openly with corporations. They have passed laws that undermine unions and reduce standards of living.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stressed “the long-term cooperation and commitment of the AFL-CIO and the Honduran labor movement to promote and protect worker rights.” (Honduras Weekly 3/30/12; People’s Weekly World 4/9/12)
In other news, on Apr. 13 the military detained two campesinos, Juan Galindo López and Oveniel (or Obeniel) Cáceres in the Marañones settlement in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of a long-running conflict between campesinos and large landowners over land rights [see Update #1123]. On Apr. 14 the Canadian-based organization Rights Action reported that Galindo had been released but Cáceres was apparently still in detention. (Adital (Brazil) 4/13/12 from Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH); Rights Action posting 4/13/12; Rights Action email 4/14/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti
Obama in Cartagena: No Change, Dwindling Hope (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3576-obama-in-cartagena-no-change-dwindling-hope-
South American Fiber Optic Ring
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6734
Dismantling the monoculture mentality (Argentina)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6741
Argentina Thirty Years After the Malvinas War: Demanding Sovereignty and Healing the Wounds of War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3568-argentina-thirty-years-after-the-malvinas-war-demanding-sovereignty-and-healing-the-wounds-of-war-
Brazil: judge suspends Teles Pires dam, upholds indigenous rights
http://ww4report.com/node/10976
Brazil, U.S. Deepen Ties Ahead of Obama's Latin America Week
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3566-brazil-us-deepen-ties-ahead-of-obamas-latin-america-week
Bolivia: Evo Morales cancels contract for controversial Amazon highway
http://ww4report.com/node/10985
Shifting Alliances in Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/6/shifting-alliances-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict
Peru: Sendero Luminoso take Camisea workers hostage
http://ww4report.com/node/10974
Peru defies UN breakthrough on uncontacted tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/10975
Peru: trapped miners freed —and scapegoated
http://ww4report.com/node/10983
Peru: civil strike against mining project shuts down Cajamarca —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10994
Peru: state of emergency as Sendero demands ransom for Camisea workers
http://ww4report.com/node/10984
Peru: Sendero fires on police helicopter in Camisea hostage crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/10989
Peru: Sendero hostages freed —but how?
http://ww4report.com/node/10995
Peru's President Humala faces "dirty war" complaint before OAS rights commission
http://ww4report.com/node/10988
Ecuador: A Revolutionary March Versus a Counter-Revolutionary March
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3564-ecuador-a-revolutionary-march-versus-a-counter-revolutionary-march
More mining projects for Ecuador rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/10907#comment-341809
Colombians Commemorate First Official Day Honoring Conflict Victims (photo essay)
http://nacla.org/colombians-commemorate-first-official-day-honoring-conflict-victims-photo-essay
Small-Scale Miners in Nariño Face Crackdown as Foreign Companies Set Sights on Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3567-small-scale-miners-in-narino-face-crackdown-as-foreign-companies-set-sights-on-colombia
New Low for Obama on Colombia Worker Rights; Reportedly Plans to Throw Away Trade Leverage at Summit
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3570-new-low-for-obama-on-colombia-worker-rights-reportedly-plans-to-throw-away-trade-leverage-at-summit
Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2012/4/11/llaguno-bridge-keys-massacre-video
New Agreements Between Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba for Social and Economic Development
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6920
Canada Deepens Ties with Deadly Regime in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3575-canada-deepens-ties-with-deadly-regime-in-honduras
Honduran Campesinos in the Crosshairs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3565--honduran-campesinos-in-the-crosshairs-
Gathering in Bajo Aguán: Oligarchy and Human Rights Violations in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3574-gathering-in-bajo-aguan-oligarchy-and-human-rights-violations-in-honduras
Mexican Candidates Blast the Airwaves, Stir Up the Social Networks
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/04/mexican-candidates-blast-the-airwaves-stir-up-the-social-networks.php
A Colonial WikiLeaks? The Migrated Archives and the Caribbean Pt.1
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/12/colonial-wikileaks-migrated-archives-and-caribbean-pt1
Haiti Reconstruction Fund: Building Back …When?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-reconstruction-fund-building-back-when
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, 31 January 2012
WNU #1115: Chile and Mexico Lead OECD in Income Inequality
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1115, January 29, 2012
1. Latin America: Chile and Mexico Lead OECD in Income Inequality
2. Mexico: Fortuna Silver Mine Protester Killed
3. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Charged; Pérez Molina Denies Genocide
4. Honduras: Another Aguán Campesino Leader Murdered
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Latin America: Chile and Mexico Lead OECD in Income Inequality
Chile and Mexico have the highest level of income inequality among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the group announced on Jan. 23. The other OECD members with the widest gap between rich and poor are Israel, Turkey and the US, according to the OECD’s new report, Reducing Income Inequality While Boosting Economic Growth: Can It Be Done? Chile and Mexico are the only Latin American countries in the organization, which is mostly composed of higher-income nations. The US is the high-income nation with the worst record on income inequality.
“Rising inequality is one of the major risks to our future prosperity and security,” OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan warned in a statement. With the global downturn continuing more than three years after the September 2008 financial crisis, the OECD is pushing member countries to use tax reforms to reduce the level of inequality and to spur growth. Specifically, an OECD report released on Jan. 17 advised Chile to reduce poverty and create a tax system that does more to redistribute income. The report also called on Chile’s government “to make more of an effort to improve the quality of education and to guarantee a more equitable access to high-quality education”—the same reforms that a militant student movement has been pushing for since last spring [see Update #1110].
An OECD report in May 2011 noted that in Mexico the gap between those with the highest wages and those earning the minimum wage has been increasing since 1985. (AFP 1/17/12 via Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador); Huffington Post 1/23/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/12)
*2. Mexico: Fortuna Silver Mine Protester Killed
A dispute over a water pipeline in San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, turned deadly on Jan. 18 when supporters of Mayor Alberto Mauro Sánchez Muñoz reportedly opened fire on demonstrators. Protesters Bernardo Méndez Vásquez and Abigail Vásquez Sánchez were wounded; Méndez Vásquez died the next day in a hospital in Oaxaca city, the state capital. Both were members of the United Peoples of the Ocotlán Valley Coordinating Committee (COPUVO), which has been engaged in a three-year struggle against the Trinidad silver mine owned by Compañia Minera Cuzcatlán S.A. de C.V., a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.
Méndez Vásquez is the third person to be killed in San José del Progreso since the start of the dispute over the mine. Grassroots opposition to the mine is the subject of a half-hour documentary produced by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Oaxacan Center in Defense of the Territories [see Update #1104, which incorrectly described Fortuna Silver as “Toronto-based”].
The protesters charged that that work by the municipality on a pipeline was intended to divert community water to use by the mine; after the violence, COPUVO accused Mayor Sánchez Muñoz, who supports the mine, of giving the order to fire. But Fortuna Silver president Jorge Ganoza insisted that the confrontation was about “a long-standing political struggle for local power” and was “related to an infrastructure project that was being handled by the municipality of San José, and it's related to the interconnection of sewage and drinking water in the town of San José, and it has nothing to do” with the mine.
A number of Mexican organizations feel the Trinidad mine has exacerbated local tensions and so is the very at least partly responsible for the violence. Some 20 organizations, including COPUVO and the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), held a demonstration outside the Canadian embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 25 to protest Canadian mining in Mexico. In a communiqué the groups charged that 26% of the country “is already in the hands of mining companies, and of the 757 projects, 73% are Canadian.” While mining proponents say the operations create local jobs, the groups cited the violence at San José del Progreso as an example of “the benefits these companies are leaving us.”
Protesters at the embassy also cited mines in Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí [see Update #1081]; the Caballo Blanco mine in Veracruz; and mines in Michoacán, Chihuahua, Baja California, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Guerrero and Chiapas. Mining operations “are taking our water and putting community life at risk. They are looting the country,” the protesters said. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/19/12, 1/26/12; Vancouver Sun 1/25/12; Vancouver Observer 1/28/12)
In other news, one worker was killed and six others injured on Jan. 28 when company guards fired on former employees of a shuttered factory in Ciudad Sahagún in the central state of Hidalgo. Illinois-based Motor Coach Industries International, Inc. (MCI) closed the plant in February 2003, leaving 1,300 workers without severance pay and other benefits. The new owners, identified by the Mexican media as Pacific International Development (PID), promised to pay the workers a total of 170 million pesos (about $13.1 million), but the workers say the company has only paid 10 million pesos to date. The workers attempted to occupy the plant on Jan. 28 when they heard that PID was removing the machinery. Guards hired by PID responded by firing on the protesters, fatally wounding José Matilde Cotonieto Sánchez. State and municipal police later arrested 14 people, including guards and employees.
The plant originally belonged to Diesel Nacional S.A. de C.V. (DINA), a government-owned enterprise founded in 1951 to build buses. DINA was sold to Mexican industrialist and politician Raymundo Gómez Flores during a wave of privatizations under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994); Gómez Flores reportedly sold the factory to MCI in 1995. (LJ 1/29/12) [MCI filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in 2008.]
*3. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Charged; Pérez Molina Denies Genocide
Guatemalan judge Carol Patricia Flores ruled on Jan. 26 that there was sufficient evidence to try former military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Some of the worst atrocities in a 36-year counterinsurgent war occurred during the time that Ríos Montt headed the government, including killings in the Ixil Mayan region that amounted to genocide according to a 1999 report by a United Nations-backed truth commission [see Update #1114]. The specific charges against Ríos Montt are based on 72 incidents that caused 1,771 deaths under his military command. (The Jurist 1/27/12)
Nery Rodenas, the director of the Human Rights Office of the Guatemala Archdiocese, called Judge Flores’ decision “brave,” but he noted the victims’ long struggle to reach this point. “This is a story that didn’t begin yesterday,” Rodenas said. “The victims have spent more than 10 years waiting. This has involved overcoming intimidation, threats and obstacles in the justice system.” Newly inaugurated Guatemala president Otto Pérez Molina, who was a major in the army during Ríos Montt’s regime, said he was respectful of judicial decisions, but he added: “There was no genocide; it was an armed internal conflict. Now we should be seeking reconciliation.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 1/28/12; La Raza (Chicago) 1/28/12 from unidentified wire services)
*4. Honduras: Another Aguán Campesino Leader Murdered
Two men on a motorcycle gunned down Honduran campesino activist Matías Valle Cárdenas on Jan. 20 as he was leaving his home in Quebradas de Arena, Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Valle was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of several campesino groups fighting for land redistribution in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Hondruas. More than 50 campesinos and private security guards have been killed in Aguán land conflicts over the past two years. Valle’s murder came just three days after the killing of attorney José Ricardo Rosales in the northern city of Tela shortly after he reported abuses by local police [see Update #1114].
According to the French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Honduran journalists Gilda Silvestrucci and Itsmania Pineda Platero both received threatening phone calls in January. The two women were among a group of journalists that organized a Dec. 13 march to the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to protest free speech violations; the march was violently dispersed by the police. Silvestrucci edits the online newspaper El Patriota and produces a program on Radio Globo; both media opposed the June 2009 military coup that overthrew President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales. Silvestrucci received an anonymous call on her cell phone on Jan. 23. “We know that you have three children,” the caller said, “that the oldest is 15, that at this moment you are walking down the street with your seven-year-old son and that the oldest is at home looking after the one-year-old baby, and we are going to kill you.” (Notimex 1/20/12 via Univision; RSF 1/24/12)
While US media coverage has tended to attribute violence in Honduras and the country’s rising crime rate mostly to drug traffickers, a Jan. 22 article by Frances Robles in the Miami Herald focuses on the role of corruption in law enforcement, from low-ranking police agents to top officials. Honduran law enforcement is “rotten to the core,” Gustavo Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the government on drug trafficking, told Robles two weeks before his murder [see Update #1111]. “We are at the border of an abyss. These are criminal organizations inside and out.” (MH 1/22/12)
A Jan. 20 op-ed in the New York Times goes further, discussing the role of the 2009 coup in the growth of this corruption. “[T]he coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence,” University of California Santa Cruz history professor Dana Frank writes, “and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.” Frank notes that the US government was quick to recognize the questionable elections held by the de facto regime in November 2009. “This chain of events—a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted—has now allowed corruption to mushroom. The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns.” Honduras is descending into “a human rights and security abyss,” Frank says. “That abyss is in good part the [US] State Department’s making.” (NYT 1/20/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
The New Face behind Unionized (and Feminist) Bananas in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3422-the-new-face-behind-unionized-and-feminist-bananas-in-latin-america
Thousands Protest Canadian Mining Project in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3425-thousands-protest-canadian-mining-project-in-argentina
A New Chile is Possible
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6256
Chile's Government Wages War on Historical Memory and Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3423-chiles-government-wages-war-on-historical-memory-and-truth
Uruguay will pay $513,000 to Child of Disappeared
http://latindispatch.com/2012/01/25/uruguay-will-pay-513000-to-child-of-disappeared/
Mass Evictions at Pinheirinho: Favela Residents Confront Brazil’s Development Boom
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/27/mass-evictions-pinheirinho-favela-residents-confront-brazil%E2%80%99s-development-boom
Chevron officials to face charges in Brazil oil spill
http://ww4report.com/node/10773
Second Circuit allows Ecuador court's $18 billion judgment against Chevron
http://ww4report.com/node/10763
Foreign Direct Investment in Colombia: A Critical View
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/23/foreign-direct-investment-colombia-critical-view
Stop the Death Threats in Barrancabermeja, Colombia
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6205
El Salvador: President Funes Placates Washington with Cabinet Shuffle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3426-el-salvador-president-funes-placates-washington-with-cabinet-shuffle-
Threats and Violence Continue against Salvadoran Environmentalists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3428-threats-and-violence-continue-against-salvadoran-environmentalists
The War Against Peasant Farmers Heats Up in Honduras
http://climate-connections.org/2012/01/26/the-war-against-peasant-farmers-heats-up-in-honduras/
Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3427-reagans-hand-in-guatemalas-genocide
The Left(s) Select(s) its/their Candidate to Govern Mexico City
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/24/lefts-selects-itstheir-candidate-govern-mexico-city
The Rarámuri Crisis: Extreme Poverty (Briefly) to the Fore in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3424-the-raramuri-crisis-extreme-poverty-briefly-to-the-fore-in-mexico
Triqui Caravan Departs to San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3431-triqui-caravan-departs-to-san-juan-copala-oaxaca-mexico
Mexico: Zapotec Protesters Shot on Behalf of Canadian Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3420-mexico-zapotec-protesters-shot-on-behalf-of-canadian-mining-company
Guns, Drugs, and Money (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/25/guns-drugs-and-money
Discussing Domestic Violence in the Caribbean
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/26/discussing-domestic-violence-caribbean
New Allegations of UN Sexual Abuse in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3421-new-allegations-of-un-sexual-abuse-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1115, January 29, 2012
1. Latin America: Chile and Mexico Lead OECD in Income Inequality
2. Mexico: Fortuna Silver Mine Protester Killed
3. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Charged; Pérez Molina Denies Genocide
4. Honduras: Another Aguán Campesino Leader Murdered
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Latin America: Chile and Mexico Lead OECD in Income Inequality
Chile and Mexico have the highest level of income inequality among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the group announced on Jan. 23. The other OECD members with the widest gap between rich and poor are Israel, Turkey and the US, according to the OECD’s new report, Reducing Income Inequality While Boosting Economic Growth: Can It Be Done? Chile and Mexico are the only Latin American countries in the organization, which is mostly composed of higher-income nations. The US is the high-income nation with the worst record on income inequality.
“Rising inequality is one of the major risks to our future prosperity and security,” OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan warned in a statement. With the global downturn continuing more than three years after the September 2008 financial crisis, the OECD is pushing member countries to use tax reforms to reduce the level of inequality and to spur growth. Specifically, an OECD report released on Jan. 17 advised Chile to reduce poverty and create a tax system that does more to redistribute income. The report also called on Chile’s government “to make more of an effort to improve the quality of education and to guarantee a more equitable access to high-quality education”—the same reforms that a militant student movement has been pushing for since last spring [see Update #1110].
An OECD report in May 2011 noted that in Mexico the gap between those with the highest wages and those earning the minimum wage has been increasing since 1985. (AFP 1/17/12 via Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador); Huffington Post 1/23/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/12)
*2. Mexico: Fortuna Silver Mine Protester Killed
A dispute over a water pipeline in San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, turned deadly on Jan. 18 when supporters of Mayor Alberto Mauro Sánchez Muñoz reportedly opened fire on demonstrators. Protesters Bernardo Méndez Vásquez and Abigail Vásquez Sánchez were wounded; Méndez Vásquez died the next day in a hospital in Oaxaca city, the state capital. Both were members of the United Peoples of the Ocotlán Valley Coordinating Committee (COPUVO), which has been engaged in a three-year struggle against the Trinidad silver mine owned by Compañia Minera Cuzcatlán S.A. de C.V., a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.
Méndez Vásquez is the third person to be killed in San José del Progreso since the start of the dispute over the mine. Grassroots opposition to the mine is the subject of a half-hour documentary produced by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Oaxacan Center in Defense of the Territories [see Update #1104, which incorrectly described Fortuna Silver as “Toronto-based”].
The protesters charged that that work by the municipality on a pipeline was intended to divert community water to use by the mine; after the violence, COPUVO accused Mayor Sánchez Muñoz, who supports the mine, of giving the order to fire. But Fortuna Silver president Jorge Ganoza insisted that the confrontation was about “a long-standing political struggle for local power” and was “related to an infrastructure project that was being handled by the municipality of San José, and it's related to the interconnection of sewage and drinking water in the town of San José, and it has nothing to do” with the mine.
A number of Mexican organizations feel the Trinidad mine has exacerbated local tensions and so is the very at least partly responsible for the violence. Some 20 organizations, including COPUVO and the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), held a demonstration outside the Canadian embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 25 to protest Canadian mining in Mexico. In a communiqué the groups charged that 26% of the country “is already in the hands of mining companies, and of the 757 projects, 73% are Canadian.” While mining proponents say the operations create local jobs, the groups cited the violence at San José del Progreso as an example of “the benefits these companies are leaving us.”
Protesters at the embassy also cited mines in Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí [see Update #1081]; the Caballo Blanco mine in Veracruz; and mines in Michoacán, Chihuahua, Baja California, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Guerrero and Chiapas. Mining operations “are taking our water and putting community life at risk. They are looting the country,” the protesters said. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/19/12, 1/26/12; Vancouver Sun 1/25/12; Vancouver Observer 1/28/12)
In other news, one worker was killed and six others injured on Jan. 28 when company guards fired on former employees of a shuttered factory in Ciudad Sahagún in the central state of Hidalgo. Illinois-based Motor Coach Industries International, Inc. (MCI) closed the plant in February 2003, leaving 1,300 workers without severance pay and other benefits. The new owners, identified by the Mexican media as Pacific International Development (PID), promised to pay the workers a total of 170 million pesos (about $13.1 million), but the workers say the company has only paid 10 million pesos to date. The workers attempted to occupy the plant on Jan. 28 when they heard that PID was removing the machinery. Guards hired by PID responded by firing on the protesters, fatally wounding José Matilde Cotonieto Sánchez. State and municipal police later arrested 14 people, including guards and employees.
The plant originally belonged to Diesel Nacional S.A. de C.V. (DINA), a government-owned enterprise founded in 1951 to build buses. DINA was sold to Mexican industrialist and politician Raymundo Gómez Flores during a wave of privatizations under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994); Gómez Flores reportedly sold the factory to MCI in 1995. (LJ 1/29/12) [MCI filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in 2008.]
*3. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Charged; Pérez Molina Denies Genocide
Guatemalan judge Carol Patricia Flores ruled on Jan. 26 that there was sufficient evidence to try former military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Some of the worst atrocities in a 36-year counterinsurgent war occurred during the time that Ríos Montt headed the government, including killings in the Ixil Mayan region that amounted to genocide according to a 1999 report by a United Nations-backed truth commission [see Update #1114]. The specific charges against Ríos Montt are based on 72 incidents that caused 1,771 deaths under his military command. (The Jurist 1/27/12)
Nery Rodenas, the director of the Human Rights Office of the Guatemala Archdiocese, called Judge Flores’ decision “brave,” but he noted the victims’ long struggle to reach this point. “This is a story that didn’t begin yesterday,” Rodenas said. “The victims have spent more than 10 years waiting. This has involved overcoming intimidation, threats and obstacles in the justice system.” Newly inaugurated Guatemala president Otto Pérez Molina, who was a major in the army during Ríos Montt’s regime, said he was respectful of judicial decisions, but he added: “There was no genocide; it was an armed internal conflict. Now we should be seeking reconciliation.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 1/28/12; La Raza (Chicago) 1/28/12 from unidentified wire services)
*4. Honduras: Another Aguán Campesino Leader Murdered
Two men on a motorcycle gunned down Honduran campesino activist Matías Valle Cárdenas on Jan. 20 as he was leaving his home in Quebradas de Arena, Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Valle was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of several campesino groups fighting for land redistribution in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Hondruas. More than 50 campesinos and private security guards have been killed in Aguán land conflicts over the past two years. Valle’s murder came just three days after the killing of attorney José Ricardo Rosales in the northern city of Tela shortly after he reported abuses by local police [see Update #1114].
According to the French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Honduran journalists Gilda Silvestrucci and Itsmania Pineda Platero both received threatening phone calls in January. The two women were among a group of journalists that organized a Dec. 13 march to the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to protest free speech violations; the march was violently dispersed by the police. Silvestrucci edits the online newspaper El Patriota and produces a program on Radio Globo; both media opposed the June 2009 military coup that overthrew President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales. Silvestrucci received an anonymous call on her cell phone on Jan. 23. “We know that you have three children,” the caller said, “that the oldest is 15, that at this moment you are walking down the street with your seven-year-old son and that the oldest is at home looking after the one-year-old baby, and we are going to kill you.” (Notimex 1/20/12 via Univision; RSF 1/24/12)
While US media coverage has tended to attribute violence in Honduras and the country’s rising crime rate mostly to drug traffickers, a Jan. 22 article by Frances Robles in the Miami Herald focuses on the role of corruption in law enforcement, from low-ranking police agents to top officials. Honduran law enforcement is “rotten to the core,” Gustavo Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the government on drug trafficking, told Robles two weeks before his murder [see Update #1111]. “We are at the border of an abyss. These are criminal organizations inside and out.” (MH 1/22/12)
A Jan. 20 op-ed in the New York Times goes further, discussing the role of the 2009 coup in the growth of this corruption. “[T]he coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence,” University of California Santa Cruz history professor Dana Frank writes, “and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.” Frank notes that the US government was quick to recognize the questionable elections held by the de facto regime in November 2009. “This chain of events—a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted—has now allowed corruption to mushroom. The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns.” Honduras is descending into “a human rights and security abyss,” Frank says. “That abyss is in good part the [US] State Department’s making.” (NYT 1/20/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
The New Face behind Unionized (and Feminist) Bananas in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3422-the-new-face-behind-unionized-and-feminist-bananas-in-latin-america
Thousands Protest Canadian Mining Project in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3425-thousands-protest-canadian-mining-project-in-argentina
A New Chile is Possible
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6256
Chile's Government Wages War on Historical Memory and Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3423-chiles-government-wages-war-on-historical-memory-and-truth
Uruguay will pay $513,000 to Child of Disappeared
http://latindispatch.com/2012/01/25/uruguay-will-pay-513000-to-child-of-disappeared/
Mass Evictions at Pinheirinho: Favela Residents Confront Brazil’s Development Boom
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/27/mass-evictions-pinheirinho-favela-residents-confront-brazil%E2%80%99s-development-boom
Chevron officials to face charges in Brazil oil spill
http://ww4report.com/node/10773
Second Circuit allows Ecuador court's $18 billion judgment against Chevron
http://ww4report.com/node/10763
Foreign Direct Investment in Colombia: A Critical View
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/23/foreign-direct-investment-colombia-critical-view
Stop the Death Threats in Barrancabermeja, Colombia
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6205
El Salvador: President Funes Placates Washington with Cabinet Shuffle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3426-el-salvador-president-funes-placates-washington-with-cabinet-shuffle-
Threats and Violence Continue against Salvadoran Environmentalists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3428-threats-and-violence-continue-against-salvadoran-environmentalists
The War Against Peasant Farmers Heats Up in Honduras
http://climate-connections.org/2012/01/26/the-war-against-peasant-farmers-heats-up-in-honduras/
Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3427-reagans-hand-in-guatemalas-genocide
The Left(s) Select(s) its/their Candidate to Govern Mexico City
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/24/lefts-selects-itstheir-candidate-govern-mexico-city
The Rarámuri Crisis: Extreme Poverty (Briefly) to the Fore in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3424-the-raramuri-crisis-extreme-poverty-briefly-to-the-fore-in-mexico
Triqui Caravan Departs to San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3431-triqui-caravan-departs-to-san-juan-copala-oaxaca-mexico
Mexico: Zapotec Protesters Shot on Behalf of Canadian Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3420-mexico-zapotec-protesters-shot-on-behalf-of-canadian-mining-company
Guns, Drugs, and Money (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/25/guns-drugs-and-money
Discussing Domestic Violence in the Caribbean
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/26/discussing-domestic-violence-caribbean
New Allegations of UN Sexual Abuse in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3421-new-allegations-of-un-sexual-abuse-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
WNU #1108: Costa Rican Court Rules Against Gold Mine
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1108, December 4, 2011
1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com.
*1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
In a major victory for Costa Rica’s environmental movement, on Nov. 30 the First Chamber of the country’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s November 2010 decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos near the Nicaraguan border. The Supreme Court’s ruling also nullified Environment and Energy Ministry executive decree 34801, with which former president Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990 and 2006-2010) had declared the mine, owned by the Canadian company Infinito Gold Ltd., a matter of “national interest.” The court told the Public Ministry to “start an investigation to determine whether it is proper to pursue a criminal case against” Arias, former vice president Roberto Dobles Mora and six other former officials.
Infinito Gold, which is based in Calgary, Alberta province, indicated it might go to international bodies to try to get back the $127 million it had invested in the mine, which the company had expected to produce a million ounces of gold.
The court’s call for investigating former president Arias points to several irregularities in the case. Arias’ 2008 decree that the mine was in the national interest let Infinito Gold keep the concession for the project despite serious concerns about its environmental impact. More recently, a draft of the Supreme Court’s final decision in the case disappeared in the middle of November, leading to suspicions that the document was stolen and leaked to Infinito Gold’s legal team. Supreme Court alternate magistrate Moisés Fachler has resigned as a result, and the Public Ministry is investigating.
Activists celebrated the Nov. 30 decision with demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court building in San José. Some 90% of the population reportedly opposed the mine, which had inspired numerous demonstrations and a hunger strike [see Updates #1054, 1056, 1057]. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Costa Rica Contaminada blog 12/3/11)
*2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
The Montreal-based apparel firm Gildan Activewear Inc. has asked its Haitian subcontractor, Genesis S.A., to reinstate four unionized workers that the plant’s managers fired in the last week of September, Gildan senior vice president Peter Iliopoulos told the Montreal Gazette on Nov. 29. The company has “requested the reinstatement of the employees with full back pay dating back to the date of dismissal and also recognition of full seniority for these individuals as though they had never left the company or factory,” Iliopoulos said. Another major North American apparel firm, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has taken similar action with its subcontractor in Haiti, Multiwear SA, which fired Hilaire Jean-Jacques, a member of the same union, on Sept. 30.
The five unionists were all officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA). A sixth SOTA officer was fired in the same week at One World Apparel, which produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., a manufacturer based in Seminole, Florida.
Gildan and Hanesbrands’ call for the workers to be reinstated came in response to a Nov. 24 report by Better Work Haiti, a partnership of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) that was set up to monitor labor conditions in Haiti. “There is strong circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that the officers of the SOTA trade union were terminated based on their trade union affiliation,” the group concluded, saying the timing of the firings “strongly suggests an effort by employers to undermine the new union, and to curtail its growth before it had the opportunity to expand its membership.” The report recommended reinstating the workers with back pay.
SOTA was formally launched on Sept. 15 with the goal of organizing workers in Port-au-Prince’s garment assembly sector, which currently has no unions; only one of Haiti’s 23 assembly plants is unionized. Unionists and supporters, including the leftist workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), responded to the firings with an international campaign to pressure the plants for reinstatement [see Updates #1099, 1106]. (Montreal Gazette 11/30/11, 12/1/11; Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/30/11)
Better Work Haiti’s sharp criticism of labor relations at assembly plants came as the Haitian government and international donors pushed ahead with plans for more of the tax-exempt plants, which produce for export to the North American market. On Nov. 28 Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”), former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and other dignitaries attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC) near a small fishing village in Northeast department. The 246-hectare facility, formerly known the Parc Industriel du Nord (PIN) or Parc Industriel de Région Nord (PIRN), is expected to generate 20,000 jobs [see Update #1087]. “Haiti is open for business,” President Martelly announced at the ceremony. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 11/28/11)
The ceremony was followed by the second Invest in Haiti Forum, which the Haitian government, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Clinton Foundation hosted in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 29 and 30. Some 1,000 investors, business people and government officials attended the event, which highlighted plans for additional export-oriented projects. One was a partnership of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the Swiss-based multinational Nestlé S.A. and the National Federation of Coffee Producers of Colombia for developing coffee exports. Another was an agreement by the multinational cell phone company Digicel Group and the Marriott International hotel company to build and manage a $45 million, 168-room hotel in Port-au-Prince--where hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in tents or other temporary shelters nearly two years after a devastating earthquake. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/2/11)
On Nov. 29 Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW, Ayiti Kale Je, “Haiti Keep Your Eyes Open” in Creole), a project sponsored by several Haitian media organizations, released a seven-part assessment of these types of export-oriented development strategies. The series, “Haiti—Open for Business,” detailed low wages and anti-labor practices in the assembly plant sector and described the likely environment damage from the Caracol industrial park in the north. “Basing the country’s development on assembly industries is a big error; it will lead us into a hole, into dependency,” Haitian economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), told the investigators. “People need to know what FTZs [free trade zones] are, what has happened in Mexico, or Honduras, so they don’t think these things will ‘save’ us,” Chalmers said.
“Manufacturers do not offshore their jobs in order to ‘jumpstart’ industry or ‘improve the standard of living,’” the HGW reporters concluded. “They do it to make a profit. As Canadian company Gildan Activewear said in a recent newspaper article, the savings offered is ‘too good to pass up.’” (HGW 11/29/11)
Correction: Following our sources, we reported previously that Hanesbrands’ Haitian supplier was One World Apparel, which actually produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., according to the Montreal Gazette; also, the name of the unionist fired from Multiwear was given incorrectly as “Hilaire Jean-François.”
*3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment on Nov. 29 charging former US Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with involvement in the murders of two US citizens, journalist Charles Horman and graduate student Frank Teruggi, in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Gossens. Judge Zepeda asked the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize a request for Davis’ extradition from the US. The judge also indicted retired Chilean army Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who is already in prison for several other crimes.
Basing the indictment in part on declassified US documents, Zepeda charged that Capt. Davis, who headed the Military Group at the US embassy in Santiago at the time, could have prevented Horman’s execution by the Chilean military but failed to do so because he thought Horman’s work was “subversive” and “extremist.” The documents also indicate that Horman may have been killed because he had found out about US “collaboration during the military events unfolding,” the judge wrote. Horman and Teruggi were working together on a weekly news digest; both were being monitored by US agents, who passed information on to the Chilean military, according to Zepeda.
Capt. Davis’ wife told the Associated Press wire service on Dec. 1 that her husband has severe Alzheimer’s and is in a US nursing home. Patricia Davis, who lives in Florida, refused to name the nursing home. (AP 11/29/11 via Miami Herald, 12/2/11 via ABC News; New York Times 11/30/11)
*4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
Unknown assailants gunned down Mexican activist Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez on a street in Hermosillo, the capital of the northern state of Sonora, on Nov. 28. Moreno Núñez had been working with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia this year to oppose the militarized “war on drugs” that has killed as many as 50,000 Mexican since late 2006 [see Update #1079].
Moreno’s political activism began when one of his sons, Jorge Mario Moreno, disappeared in July 2010, apparently after being picked up in Ciudad Obregón by municipal or state police agents. Nepomuceno Moreno and other MPJD members met with President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa this past Oct. 14 at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City; during the meeting Moreno discussed his son’s disappearance and asked for protection for himself.
Sonora state authorities suggested that Moreno’s murder might be linked to his own criminal record. Moreno was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to sell in Arizona in the 1970s, when he was in his twenties. He was arrested again in Sonora in November 2005 for illegal weapons possession in connection with a shootout in the Los Lagos Golf Club in Hermosillo, but he was acquitted in 2009. At a press conference in Mexico City on Nov. 29, Javier Sicilia called for Sonora attorney general Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez to resign because of this attempt to criminalize the murdered activist. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Milenio (Mexico) 12/1/11)
In other “drug war” news, on Nov. 27 President Calderón’s office denounced “false and slanderous imputations” against the president and warned that it was analyzing the possibility of “taking legal action against those that make them in various international or national forums and tribunals.” The reference was to a complaint that Mexican human rights attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Nov. 25 charging Calderón and others with human rights violations in the fight against drug trafficking [see Update #1107].
Sandoval responded that it was “inadmissible” for the government to try to use lawsuits to silence its critics. “Calderón is betraying the ideology of his own party,” Sandoval said, referring to the center-right National Action Party (PAN). “One of the most persistent criticisms by the PAN and Calderón’s government against the Cuban regime, that of Fidel Castro, is its refusal to allow observation [of the human right situation] by international organizations.” The complaint that Sandoval filed could lead the ICC to place Mexico under observation, as has happened with Colombia. (LJ 11/28/11, 11/29/11)
*5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish) released a report on Nov. 29 showing that the poverty rate in Latin America had dropped from 48.4% to 31.4% between 1990 and 2010, while the indigence rate fell from 22.6% to 12.3%. Despite the progress, 174 million people continue to live in poverty, and their situation is likely to worsen because of rising food costs, according to the UN commission, which is based in Chile.
Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia were the countries that showed the most improvement, according to the report. Only Honduras and Mexico showed an increase in poverty rates, 1.7% for Honduras and 1.5% for Mexico. The Honduran and Mexican economies are both especially dependent on exports to the US, and the global economic crisis that started in 2008 hit Mexico harder than other countries in the region. (MercoPress (Montevideo) 11/29/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Latin America: new regional bloc includes Cuba —but not US
http://ww4report.com/node/10614
Latin America: Not Everyone on Board with Mesoamerica Development Plan
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3334-latin-america-not-everyone-on-board-with-mesoamerica-development-plan
Just Legalize It: ‘Ending the War on Drugs’ Conference in Washington
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/28/just-legalize-it-%E2%80%98ending-war-drugs%E2%80%99-conference-washington
Argentina: The Assassins of the Landowners
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3337-the-assassins-of-the-landowners
Argentina: Mapuche occupy US-owned gas plant
http://ww4report.com/node/10613
Homage to a Criminal in Chile
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/1/homage-criminal-chile
Chilean Student Protesters Vow to Continue Marches
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/30/chilean-student-protesters-vow-to-continue-marches/
Peruvian Government Expands Scope of Military Activity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3335-peruvian-government-expands-scope-of-military-activity
Peru: Humala declares state of emergency over Cajamarca protests
http://ww4report.com/node/10612
Hostage Deaths in Colombia Highlight the Need for More Cautious Policy
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/28/hostage-deaths-colombia-highlight-need-more-cautious-policy
Caracas, Venezuela Prepares for CELAC Founding Conference
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6662
Transnational Movement “Encachimbados” Brings Occupy Protests to El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3329-transnational-movement-encachimbados-brings-occupy-protests-to-el-salvador
New US Military Bases in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3331-new-us-military-bases-in-honduras-
Honduras: An Urgent Call
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3326-honduras-an-urgent-call
"This Land Is Ours!" Land Theft as Legacy of Genocide in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/10577
Canada Under Pressure to Try Alleged Guatemalan War Criminal
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/29/canada-under-pressure-to-try-alleged-guatemalan-war-criminal/
The Mexican Drug War Goes to The Hague
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/29/mexican-drug-war-goes-hague
REDD in the Lacandon Jungle: The Political Use of a Program Against Climate Change (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3332-redd-in-the-lacandon-jungle-the-political-use-of-a-program-against-climate-change
Request for Letters from Mexican Electrical Workers (SME)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1366
Electrical Workers Demand That Government Fulfill Promises (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1367
"Haiti--Open for Business"
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/29/haiti-open-for-business.html
Controversy over Haiti’s development
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/controversy-over-haiti%E2%80%99s-development-0021890
World Bank Allocates $255 million for Haiti Reconstruction
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/02/world-bank-allocates-255-million-for-haiti-reconstruction/
Blacklisted Contractor Continues Receiving Government Money Through Haiti Contracts
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/blacklisted-contractor-continues-receiving-government-money-through-haiti-contracts
Interview: Cuba's Health Care Miracle in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3330-interview-cubas-health-care-miracle-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1108, December 4, 2011
1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com.
*1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
In a major victory for Costa Rica’s environmental movement, on Nov. 30 the First Chamber of the country’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s November 2010 decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos near the Nicaraguan border. The Supreme Court’s ruling also nullified Environment and Energy Ministry executive decree 34801, with which former president Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990 and 2006-2010) had declared the mine, owned by the Canadian company Infinito Gold Ltd., a matter of “national interest.” The court told the Public Ministry to “start an investigation to determine whether it is proper to pursue a criminal case against” Arias, former vice president Roberto Dobles Mora and six other former officials.
Infinito Gold, which is based in Calgary, Alberta province, indicated it might go to international bodies to try to get back the $127 million it had invested in the mine, which the company had expected to produce a million ounces of gold.
The court’s call for investigating former president Arias points to several irregularities in the case. Arias’ 2008 decree that the mine was in the national interest let Infinito Gold keep the concession for the project despite serious concerns about its environmental impact. More recently, a draft of the Supreme Court’s final decision in the case disappeared in the middle of November, leading to suspicions that the document was stolen and leaked to Infinito Gold’s legal team. Supreme Court alternate magistrate Moisés Fachler has resigned as a result, and the Public Ministry is investigating.
Activists celebrated the Nov. 30 decision with demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court building in San José. Some 90% of the population reportedly opposed the mine, which had inspired numerous demonstrations and a hunger strike [see Updates #1054, 1056, 1057]. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Costa Rica Contaminada blog 12/3/11)
*2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
The Montreal-based apparel firm Gildan Activewear Inc. has asked its Haitian subcontractor, Genesis S.A., to reinstate four unionized workers that the plant’s managers fired in the last week of September, Gildan senior vice president Peter Iliopoulos told the Montreal Gazette on Nov. 29. The company has “requested the reinstatement of the employees with full back pay dating back to the date of dismissal and also recognition of full seniority for these individuals as though they had never left the company or factory,” Iliopoulos said. Another major North American apparel firm, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has taken similar action with its subcontractor in Haiti, Multiwear SA, which fired Hilaire Jean-Jacques, a member of the same union, on Sept. 30.
The five unionists were all officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA). A sixth SOTA officer was fired in the same week at One World Apparel, which produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., a manufacturer based in Seminole, Florida.
Gildan and Hanesbrands’ call for the workers to be reinstated came in response to a Nov. 24 report by Better Work Haiti, a partnership of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) that was set up to monitor labor conditions in Haiti. “There is strong circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that the officers of the SOTA trade union were terminated based on their trade union affiliation,” the group concluded, saying the timing of the firings “strongly suggests an effort by employers to undermine the new union, and to curtail its growth before it had the opportunity to expand its membership.” The report recommended reinstating the workers with back pay.
SOTA was formally launched on Sept. 15 with the goal of organizing workers in Port-au-Prince’s garment assembly sector, which currently has no unions; only one of Haiti’s 23 assembly plants is unionized. Unionists and supporters, including the leftist workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), responded to the firings with an international campaign to pressure the plants for reinstatement [see Updates #1099, 1106]. (Montreal Gazette 11/30/11, 12/1/11; Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/30/11)
Better Work Haiti’s sharp criticism of labor relations at assembly plants came as the Haitian government and international donors pushed ahead with plans for more of the tax-exempt plants, which produce for export to the North American market. On Nov. 28 Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”), former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and other dignitaries attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC) near a small fishing village in Northeast department. The 246-hectare facility, formerly known the Parc Industriel du Nord (PIN) or Parc Industriel de Région Nord (PIRN), is expected to generate 20,000 jobs [see Update #1087]. “Haiti is open for business,” President Martelly announced at the ceremony. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 11/28/11)
The ceremony was followed by the second Invest in Haiti Forum, which the Haitian government, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Clinton Foundation hosted in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 29 and 30. Some 1,000 investors, business people and government officials attended the event, which highlighted plans for additional export-oriented projects. One was a partnership of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the Swiss-based multinational Nestlé S.A. and the National Federation of Coffee Producers of Colombia for developing coffee exports. Another was an agreement by the multinational cell phone company Digicel Group and the Marriott International hotel company to build and manage a $45 million, 168-room hotel in Port-au-Prince--where hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in tents or other temporary shelters nearly two years after a devastating earthquake. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/2/11)
On Nov. 29 Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW, Ayiti Kale Je, “Haiti Keep Your Eyes Open” in Creole), a project sponsored by several Haitian media organizations, released a seven-part assessment of these types of export-oriented development strategies. The series, “Haiti—Open for Business,” detailed low wages and anti-labor practices in the assembly plant sector and described the likely environment damage from the Caracol industrial park in the north. “Basing the country’s development on assembly industries is a big error; it will lead us into a hole, into dependency,” Haitian economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), told the investigators. “People need to know what FTZs [free trade zones] are, what has happened in Mexico, or Honduras, so they don’t think these things will ‘save’ us,” Chalmers said.
“Manufacturers do not offshore their jobs in order to ‘jumpstart’ industry or ‘improve the standard of living,’” the HGW reporters concluded. “They do it to make a profit. As Canadian company Gildan Activewear said in a recent newspaper article, the savings offered is ‘too good to pass up.’” (HGW 11/29/11)
Correction: Following our sources, we reported previously that Hanesbrands’ Haitian supplier was One World Apparel, which actually produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., according to the Montreal Gazette; also, the name of the unionist fired from Multiwear was given incorrectly as “Hilaire Jean-François.”
*3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment on Nov. 29 charging former US Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with involvement in the murders of two US citizens, journalist Charles Horman and graduate student Frank Teruggi, in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Gossens. Judge Zepeda asked the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize a request for Davis’ extradition from the US. The judge also indicted retired Chilean army Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who is already in prison for several other crimes.
Basing the indictment in part on declassified US documents, Zepeda charged that Capt. Davis, who headed the Military Group at the US embassy in Santiago at the time, could have prevented Horman’s execution by the Chilean military but failed to do so because he thought Horman’s work was “subversive” and “extremist.” The documents also indicate that Horman may have been killed because he had found out about US “collaboration during the military events unfolding,” the judge wrote. Horman and Teruggi were working together on a weekly news digest; both were being monitored by US agents, who passed information on to the Chilean military, according to Zepeda.
Capt. Davis’ wife told the Associated Press wire service on Dec. 1 that her husband has severe Alzheimer’s and is in a US nursing home. Patricia Davis, who lives in Florida, refused to name the nursing home. (AP 11/29/11 via Miami Herald, 12/2/11 via ABC News; New York Times 11/30/11)
*4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
Unknown assailants gunned down Mexican activist Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez on a street in Hermosillo, the capital of the northern state of Sonora, on Nov. 28. Moreno Núñez had been working with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia this year to oppose the militarized “war on drugs” that has killed as many as 50,000 Mexican since late 2006 [see Update #1079].
Moreno’s political activism began when one of his sons, Jorge Mario Moreno, disappeared in July 2010, apparently after being picked up in Ciudad Obregón by municipal or state police agents. Nepomuceno Moreno and other MPJD members met with President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa this past Oct. 14 at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City; during the meeting Moreno discussed his son’s disappearance and asked for protection for himself.
Sonora state authorities suggested that Moreno’s murder might be linked to his own criminal record. Moreno was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to sell in Arizona in the 1970s, when he was in his twenties. He was arrested again in Sonora in November 2005 for illegal weapons possession in connection with a shootout in the Los Lagos Golf Club in Hermosillo, but he was acquitted in 2009. At a press conference in Mexico City on Nov. 29, Javier Sicilia called for Sonora attorney general Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez to resign because of this attempt to criminalize the murdered activist. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Milenio (Mexico) 12/1/11)
In other “drug war” news, on Nov. 27 President Calderón’s office denounced “false and slanderous imputations” against the president and warned that it was analyzing the possibility of “taking legal action against those that make them in various international or national forums and tribunals.” The reference was to a complaint that Mexican human rights attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Nov. 25 charging Calderón and others with human rights violations in the fight against drug trafficking [see Update #1107].
Sandoval responded that it was “inadmissible” for the government to try to use lawsuits to silence its critics. “Calderón is betraying the ideology of his own party,” Sandoval said, referring to the center-right National Action Party (PAN). “One of the most persistent criticisms by the PAN and Calderón’s government against the Cuban regime, that of Fidel Castro, is its refusal to allow observation [of the human right situation] by international organizations.” The complaint that Sandoval filed could lead the ICC to place Mexico under observation, as has happened with Colombia. (LJ 11/28/11, 11/29/11)
*5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish) released a report on Nov. 29 showing that the poverty rate in Latin America had dropped from 48.4% to 31.4% between 1990 and 2010, while the indigence rate fell from 22.6% to 12.3%. Despite the progress, 174 million people continue to live in poverty, and their situation is likely to worsen because of rising food costs, according to the UN commission, which is based in Chile.
Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia were the countries that showed the most improvement, according to the report. Only Honduras and Mexico showed an increase in poverty rates, 1.7% for Honduras and 1.5% for Mexico. The Honduran and Mexican economies are both especially dependent on exports to the US, and the global economic crisis that started in 2008 hit Mexico harder than other countries in the region. (MercoPress (Montevideo) 11/29/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Latin America: new regional bloc includes Cuba —but not US
http://ww4report.com/node/10614
Latin America: Not Everyone on Board with Mesoamerica Development Plan
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3334-latin-america-not-everyone-on-board-with-mesoamerica-development-plan
Just Legalize It: ‘Ending the War on Drugs’ Conference in Washington
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/28/just-legalize-it-%E2%80%98ending-war-drugs%E2%80%99-conference-washington
Argentina: The Assassins of the Landowners
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3337-the-assassins-of-the-landowners
Argentina: Mapuche occupy US-owned gas plant
http://ww4report.com/node/10613
Homage to a Criminal in Chile
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/1/homage-criminal-chile
Chilean Student Protesters Vow to Continue Marches
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/30/chilean-student-protesters-vow-to-continue-marches/
Peruvian Government Expands Scope of Military Activity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3335-peruvian-government-expands-scope-of-military-activity
Peru: Humala declares state of emergency over Cajamarca protests
http://ww4report.com/node/10612
Hostage Deaths in Colombia Highlight the Need for More Cautious Policy
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/28/hostage-deaths-colombia-highlight-need-more-cautious-policy
Caracas, Venezuela Prepares for CELAC Founding Conference
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6662
Transnational Movement “Encachimbados” Brings Occupy Protests to El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3329-transnational-movement-encachimbados-brings-occupy-protests-to-el-salvador
New US Military Bases in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3331-new-us-military-bases-in-honduras-
Honduras: An Urgent Call
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3326-honduras-an-urgent-call
"This Land Is Ours!" Land Theft as Legacy of Genocide in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/10577
Canada Under Pressure to Try Alleged Guatemalan War Criminal
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/29/canada-under-pressure-to-try-alleged-guatemalan-war-criminal/
The Mexican Drug War Goes to The Hague
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/29/mexican-drug-war-goes-hague
REDD in the Lacandon Jungle: The Political Use of a Program Against Climate Change (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3332-redd-in-the-lacandon-jungle-the-political-use-of-a-program-against-climate-change
Request for Letters from Mexican Electrical Workers (SME)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1366
Electrical Workers Demand That Government Fulfill Promises (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1367
"Haiti--Open for Business"
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/29/haiti-open-for-business.html
Controversy over Haiti’s development
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/controversy-over-haiti%E2%80%99s-development-0021890
World Bank Allocates $255 million for Haiti Reconstruction
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/02/world-bank-allocates-255-million-for-haiti-reconstruction/
Blacklisted Contractor Continues Receiving Government Money Through Haiti Contracts
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/blacklisted-contractor-continues-receiving-government-money-through-haiti-contracts
Interview: Cuba's Health Care Miracle in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3330-interview-cubas-health-care-miracle-in-haiti
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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