Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #979, February 15, 2009
1. Guadeloupe: Negotiations Break Off
2. Honduras: Teachers Strike for Back Pay
3. Chile: Mapuche Activist a Terrorist?
4. Haiti: Electoral Dispute Continues
5. Venezuela: Term Limits Voted Down
6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
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. Guadeloupe: Negotiations Break Off
On Feb. 12 the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP) abruptly broke off negotiations aimed at ending a general strike that has paralyzed the French overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean since Jan. 20. The LKP, a coalition including political parties, grassroots organizations and 47 unions, insisted that the French government should sign on to a preliminary accord the strikers worked out with management on Feb. 8 [see Update #978] giving the poorest workers a raise of 200 euros (about $259) a month. The government refused. "The state has done all it should," Raymond Soubie, an aide to French president Nicholas Sarkozy, told the media. "The rest, negotiations on wages, is a matter between management and the unions."
The stalled negotiations raised fears of a violent confrontation. On Feb. 11 unnamed sources in the French Interior and Overseas ministries said the government had four squadrons of mobile police on Guadeloupe and no plans to send more, although two squadrons were being sent to the nearby French department of Martinique, also experiencing a general strike; there are 65 agents in a squadron. Elie Domota--who heads the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), the leading force in the LKP--told the AFP wire service on Feb. 14 that "given the number of police who have arrived in Guadeloupe armed to the teeth, the French state has chosen its natural path: killing the Guadeloupeans, as usual." He was leading thousands of people in a peaceful protest at the little town of Moule to mark the 57th anniversary of the killing of four sugar cane workers there by French security forces. (Caribbean Net News 2/13/09 from AFP; Le Monde (France) 2/15/09, some from AFP; Le Figaro (France) 2/15/09 from AFP; L'Express (France) 2/14/09)
The immediate issues are low wages and the high cost of living, but the mostly African-descended population of 450,000 also resents the control over the economy by less than a dozen "béké" families--the descendants of French slave-owners. Another is discontent with the local authorities, many of them from the French opposition Socialist Party (PS). The UGTG is openly in favor of independence from France, but it has been careful to avoid this issue, which is considered divisive.
Support for the strike remains broad, and French journalists report a festive atmosphere--"a joyful, peaceful revolution, for now," according to the left-leaning Libération. "Guadeloupe is ours, Guadeloupe isn't theirs," crowds chant at the massive demonstrations. "There's been an earthquake in people's consciousness," teacher Gladys Democrite told French overseas official Yves Jégo during a round-table discussion. A union leader, Rozan Mounien, called the strike "the second abolition of slavery." (L'Express 2/14/09; Libération 2/14/09)
The strike movement spread to Martinique on Feb. 5, when unions held what was to be a one-day general strike [see Update #978]. But the strike continued, and on Feb. 14 the Feb. 5 Collective, the coalition leading the strike, broke off negotiations, calling for a huge demonstration on Feb. 16. (AFP 2/15/09) Agitation has also spread to other overseas departments, including French Guyana in South America. An alliance of unions is calling for a general strike on Mar. 5 in La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. (Le Monde 2/15/09, some from AFP; Reuters 2/13/09)
"I am fearful that the feeling of exasperation of the people of Guadeloupe and Martinique could spread here too," PS national first secretary Martine Aubry told the French daily Le Parisien. "Everything must be done to avoid that." An opinion poll that the Ifop (Institut Français d'Opinion Publique) company took by telephone in France on Feb. 12-13 found that 63% of the 800 people questioned felt a similar movement could "develop in the mother country"--"certainly," according to 25%; "probably," according to 38%. (Reuters 2/13/09; AFP 2/14/09)
*2. Honduras: Teachers Strike for Back Pay
Honduran teachers started an open-ended strike on Feb. 9, when students were to begin registering for a new semester. The strike continued a campaign that unions representing the nation's 48,000 teachers started in January before schools reopened; the earlier actions included "informational assemblies" and sit-ins to protest the government's delays in paying salaries for some 2,600 teachers and its failure to pay full year-end bonuses [see Update #975]. On the morning of Feb. 12, after a meeting with Education Minister Marlon Brevé Reyes and aides to President Manuel Zelaya, union leaders agreed to suspend the strike while the government sought a solution. The unions also dropped their demand for Brevé's resignation.
The Honduran daily La Prensa reported that the strike was only 10% effective, while another daily, La Tribuna, said teachers shut down many of the schools and held informational assemblies in them. There was also disagreement about the number of teachers owed back pay. National Human Rights Commissioner Ramón Custodio said only 113 teachers were in this category. Custodio insisted that he was "defending the human rights of the children and youths" against the teachers. "We have the right, in a real democracy, to live free from fear," he said. "Before, from the soldiers, and now, from you teachers." However, officials from the Finance Secretariat said that while only 300 teachers were owed back pay, about 2,400 were owed vacation pay, bonuses and other benefits. (Latin American Herald Tribune 2/10/09 from EFE; La Prensa 2/12/09: La Tribuna 2/13/09)
*3. Chile: Mapuche Activist a Terrorist?
On Feb. 14 a court in Temuco in the southern Chilean region of La Araucanía formally charged indigenous Mapuche activist Miguel Angel Tapia Huenulef with six counts of possession of firearms and explosives under the Antiterrorism Law. Police agents said they had found the weapons and explosives during raids the night of Feb. 11 at Tapia Huenulef's home in Lo Prado community in Santiago and in a house in the Huallalín sector of Padre las Casas in Novena region. The court ordered Tapia Huenulef held in prison during the investigation, which it said should be completed in four months. He also faces drug possession charges in Santiago and charges of arson and assault from a Jan. 12 attack on the San Leandro estate in Lautaro in La Araucanía.
Relatives who lived with Tapia Huenulef in Santiago said agents burst into their home before midnight on Feb. 11, using violence against men, women and children, and refusing to show a warrant. A total of 50-55 agents were involved in the operation, including the ones that surrounded the building, according to the family. The relatives considered the discovery of the weapons a "staged event" and noted that the agents had brought backpacks and two valises with them. Senator Alejandro Navarro, the presidential candidate of the Broad Social Movement (MAS), said on Feb. 14 that "to apply the Antiterrorism Law to a Mapuche is to return to the [military] dictatorship" of 1973-1990. According to Navarro, President Michelle Bachelet had promised--in response to criticism by international human rights groups--not to apply this law in such cases. (El Mercurio (Chile) 2/14/09; Radio Universidad de Chile 2/12/09; Enlace Mapuche Internacional communiqué 2/14/08; La Nación (Chile) 2/15/09 from UPI)
*4. Haiti: Electoral Dispute Continues
On Feb. 13 Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) granted a three-day extension for candidates to appeal its decision to bar them from running in an Apr. 19 election for 12 of the 30 seats in the Senate [see Update #978]. The 40 excluded candidates, including all 16 candidates on two rival slates from the Lavalas Family (FL) party, have until Feb. 16 to file their appeals.
Despite an earlier denial from CEP president Frantz-Gérard Verret, on Feb. 9 the CEP acknowledged that the dispute in the party was the reason for the CEP's exclusion of the FL candidates. The CEP is insisting on evidence that the list of FL candidates is authorized by former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has been living in South Africa since he was removed from office in February 2004. According to Radio Kiskeya in Port-au-Prince, Aristide is the party's "permanent leader" ("leader inamovible"). On Feb. 11 the CEP said Maryse Narcisse of the FL Executive Committee had turned in an authorization signed by Aristide on Apr. 24, 2004 (presumably giving powers to the Executive Committee). However, a group of FL members headed by former prime minister Yvon Neptune and former legislative deputy Yves Cristallin has challenged the document's authenticity. (AlterPresse 2/13/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 2/9/09, 2/11/09; Radio Kiskeya 2/13/09)
Swiss authorities announced on Feb. 12 that they will return assets of former "president for life" Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") to Haiti for use in "social or humanitarian projects to benefit the Haitian population." Duvalier's funds in Swiss banks, which the Haitian government has sought since his overthrow in 1986, are worth about 7 million Swiss francs ($6 million); many believe he stole more than $100 million from Haiti while in office. The Duvalier family has 30 days to challenge the decision. (AFP (English) 2/12/09; AlterPresse 2/12/09)
*5. Venezuela: Term Limits Voted Down
Late on the evening of Feb. 15, Venezuela's National Electoral Council announced that a proposal to end term limits had won with 54% of the vote in a referendum held that day. The government of President Hugo Chávez Frías, whose second six-year term ends in 2012, had pushed hard for the measure. "The doors of the future are wide open," Chávez, a former lieutenant colonel, shouted from the balcony of the Miraflores presidential palace after the results were announced. "In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate."
More than 11 million of almost 17 million eligible voters turned out for the balloting. International observers said the ballot was free and fair, and opposition leaders were quoted as saying they would not contest the vote. A similar proposal was included in a package 69 constitutional amendment that voters narrowly rejected in December 2007 [see Update #925]. (BBC 2/16/09)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
Brazil: drug crackdown widens
http://ww4report.com/node/6844
Is Brazil Creating Its Own "Backyard"?
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5836
Migration and Mechanization in Brazil's Biofuel Cane Fields http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1713/68/
Declaration of the Coordinator of the Amazon Basin Indigenous Peoples Organization (COICA) http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1707/68/
Social Housing in Bolivia: Challenges and Contradictions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1709/1/
Bolivia: Morales Enacts New Constitution in El Alto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1706/1/
Bolivia schmoozes Moscow on energy projects; scandal rocks state gas company http://ww4report.com/node/6856
Peru seeks contract to extend Camisea pipeline
http://ww4report.com/node/6857
Anti-labor violence rises in Colombia: House testimony
http://ww4report.com/node/6848
Colombia: FARC accused in massacre of indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/6847
Venezuela: charges and counter-charges in synagogue attack
http://ww4report.com/node/6849
Francisco Toro and Venezuela's "Savage" Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1712/68/
El Salvador Elections Set Stage for Tense Presidential Race
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5831
Mexico: 24 dead in Chihuahua kidnapping episode
http://ww4report.com/node/6846
Mexico: ex-soldier busted in Zeta hit on army general
http://ww4report.com/node/6845
Mexico: narcos wipe out family in Tabasco
http://ww4report.com/node/6858
Paths of Struggle in a Raging Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1708/68/
U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in 2009 and Beyond
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5859
Latin American Leaders Say 'No' to U.S. Drug War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1715/68/
The World Bank and Climate Change: Sustainability or Exploitation? http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1710/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 16 February 2009
Monday, 9 February 2009
WNU #978: Guadeloupe General Strike Spreads
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #978, February 8, 2009
1. Guadeloupe: General Strike Spreads
2. Colombia: 2 FARC Hostages Free--and Talking
3. Argentina: Menem Attends Smuggling Trial
4. Haiti: Lavalas Barred From Senate Race
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Guadeloupe: General Strike Spreads
After 22 hours of negotiations, on the morning of Feb. 8 management and strikers in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe reached a preliminary agreement that could form the basis for ending a general strike that has paralyzed the island since Jan. 20. Under the agreement, the 45,000 Guadeloupean workers who earn up to 1.6 times the minimum wage (SMIC, for Minimum Interprofessional Growth Salary in French) would get an increase of 200 euros (about $259) a month, while workers with higher salaries could negotiate with management for raises of 2.5% to 3%. Of the strikers' 146 demands, the government and business owners have already met about 50, including measures to bring down the cost of fuel. (Nouvel Observateur (France) 2/8/09; Le Parisien (France) 2/8/08)
The strike has been led by the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP, Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon in Guadeloupean Creole), which includes 47 unions, along with political parties and grassroots organizations. The movement has received broad support from Guadeloupe's 450,000 residents. Some 25,000 people demonstrated in Pointe à Pitre, the capital, at the beginning of the strike, and a demonstration held as negotiators met on Feb. 7 drew about 50,000 protesters.
Guadeloupe has an unemployment rate of more than 20% and a large disparity in wages between workers in the public and private sectors. The cost of living is a central issue: many goods have to be imported, and prices are sometimes twice as high as in France. Conditions are similar on the nearby island of Martinique and in French Guiana, also French overseas departments. On Feb. 5 a dozen unions held a one-day general strike in Martinique, shutting down transportation and businesses. Some 15,000-20,000 protesters marched through Fort-de-France, the capital. "Sarko, Fillon, we want work!" they chanted, referring to French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon. Encouraged by the strike's success, the unions extended the job action to Feb. 6.
The General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), considered the leading force in Guadeloupe's strike committee, is distrustful of Sarkozy's conservative government. On Jan. 26 UGTG secretary general Elie Domota charged that employers were "gearing up for a lockout, thinking that they can thus starve people, provoke confrontations and ask the colonial authority to suppress us. For that purpose, several hundred forces of repression arrived in Guadeloupe a few days ago, armed to the teeth." Noting that in May 1967 the French government killed more than 100 Guadeloupeans following a construction workers' strike, Domota appealed for international solidarity; emails can be sent to ugtg@wanadoo.fr . (Le Parisien 2/8/08, ___; UGTG Emergency Solidarity Appeal 1/26/09; Libération (France) 2/6/09, some from AFP)
*2. Colombia: 2 FARC Hostages Free--and Talking
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released former Meta governor Alan Jara to a humanitarian mission on Feb. 3 in Guaviare department; the rebels had held him as a hostage for more than seven and a half years. On Feb. 5 the group released former legislative deputy Sigifredo López in Cauca department; López, who had spent almost seven years in captivity, is the only surviving member of a group of 12 deputies from Valle del Cauca department captured by the FARC in April 2002.
The two hostages' release was part of a complicated arrangement involving the Brazilian government, the Colombian military, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the activist group Colombians for Peace; three police agents and one soldier were freed through the same arrangement on Feb. 1 [see Update #977]. A dispute between Colombians for Peace and the government over military operations delayed the release of Jara and López by one day.
In a press conference held in Villavicencio hours after his release on Feb. 3, former governor Jara had harsh words both for the FARC and for President Alvaro Uribe. "It would seem," he said, "that the situation of war that the country is experiencing suits president Uribe--and the FARC too, it would seem--and this is what's perverse." "I'm sorry with all my heart that Uribe didn't do anything for our freedom," he added. Although the rebels had treated him well enough, Jara said: "I don't know what they think, I don't understand them." President Uribe met with Jara later that evening but didn't comment on the former governor's remarks. On Feb. 4 government officials suggested that Jara was suffering from "Stockholm Sindrome," an identification captives supposedly feel with their captors.
López held his own press conference soon after he arrived in Cali on Feb. 5. He charged that the FARC was entirely to blame for the deaths of the other 11 Valle del Cauca deputies on June 18, 2007 [see Update #905]. The FARC command had given an order for the deputies to be killed in the event of a rescue attempt, he said. When six rebels from the FARC's 19th front arrived without warning, "El Grillo," commander of the 60th Front 60, mistook them for the military and had the hostages killed, according to López. It was "because of pure paranoia and because the FARC is a killing machine," he said. "They killed them from cowardice." López himself had been separated from the other deputies for disciplinary reasons and so was spared. He told the reporters that for days after the incident he wouldn't say anything to his captors except: "Murdering bastards."
Both Jara and López said that they would work for the rebels and the government to agree on an exchange of 22 soldiers and police agents still held by the FARC for a number of imprisoned rebels. (Univision 2/4/09 from AFP; AFP 2/5/09; El Financiero (Mexico) 2/5/09 from Notimex/GCE; La Jornada (Mexico) 2/6/09 from correspondent)
*3. Argentina: Menem Attends Smuggling Trial
On Feb. 6, former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), now a senator from La Rioja province, made his first appearance at an arms smuggling trial that began in Buenos Aires on Oct. 16 [see Update #964]. Menem and 17 other defendants are charged with involvement in the government's clandestine sale of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995 in violation of international agreements. He declined to attend previously, claiming health problems. In his Feb. 6 appearance--before federal judges Luis Imas, Horacio Artabe and Gustavo Losada--Menem failed to make any declaration on the smuggling charges, citing "pending questions, including appeals." He could face 12 years in prison if convicted, although the Senate would have to vote to lift the immunity he enjoys as a legislator.
In a separate case Menem is charged with obstructing the initial investigation into the July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. The attack, generally considered the worst anti-semitic violence since World War 2, killed at least 85 people and injured 300; the Argentine government blames it on the Iranian government and the Lebanese organization Hezbollah [see Update #708]. In May 2008 prosecutor Alberto Nisman asked federal judge Ariel Lijo for an arrest warrant for Menem and others. "We have determined the existence of a plan that was put together at the highest political level in the 1990s...to cover up and give [immunity] to one of the people who appeared as a main suspect in the local connection," he told Argentine television. The coverup included the suspension of searches and a sudden end to any activity on the case, Nisman charged.
In October 2008 Judge Lijo ordered Menem and his brother Munir--along with former judge Juan José Galeano, former State Intelligence Service (SIDE) head Hugo Anzorregui and others--to make declarations on the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. Menem, who was a strong US ally during his years in office, has declined to make a declaration. In this case too he has claimed health problems. (Clarín (Argentina) 2/7/09; Télam (Argentina) 2/6/09; Haaretz (Israel) 5/22/08 from Reuters; BBC 11/13/08)
*4. Haiti: Lavalas Barred From Senate Race
Hundreds of supporters of Haiti's Lavalas Family (FL) party demonstrated in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 7 to protest the decision of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to reject all 16 candidates from two different slates that the party's rival factions had tried to run in a partial senatorial election slated for Apr. 19. The CEP rejected a total of 40 of the 105 candidates who had filed to run for the 12 Senate seats at stake. Another candidate barred from the race was former military officer Guy Philippe, who led a February 2004 insurgency against the FL's founder, former president Jean Bertrand Aristide; Philippe is suspected of narco trafficking [see Update #912]. (AlterPresse 2/8/09)
The Haitian Constitution provides for one third of Haiti's 30-member Senate to be renewed every two years. The Apr. 19 election will also elect replacements for Senator Noël Emmanuel Limage (Artibonite/Nord department), who died in office, and Rudolph Henry Boulos (Nord-Est), who was removed because of his dual nationality [see Update #971]. The CEP gave no detailed explanation of its decision, made public the night of Feb. 5-6. CEP Frantz Gérard Verret told a radio program that the conflict in the FL had no bearing on the exclusion of the FL candidates; the reason was simply that they hadn't met the requirements under electoral law, he said. Currently there are two FL senators: Rudy Hériveaux (Ouest department) and Yvon Buissereth (Sud department). (AlterPresse 2/6/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 2/6/09) [It is unclear how the FL selects its candidates; there were also disputes about the FL candidates in the 2006 legislative elections.]
On Feb. 6 the US embassy issued a communiqué expressing concern over a decision "that bars all the candidates of a political party from participating in the next electoral contests." Elections "based on exclusion...will inevitably put their credibility in question," the embassy said. Canada also deplored the CEP's decision on the FL candidates. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 2/6/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Politics in Paraguay: Twenty Years of Transition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1695/68/
The World Social Forum Returns to Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1701/1/
Brazil: uncontacted tribes flee loggers' bulldozers
http://ww4report.com/node/6790
Ecuador: president condemned for policy on uncontacted tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/6789
Ask the Ecuadorian Government to Protect the Rights of Environmental and Human Rights Defenders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1698/68/
Survival International: Colombian guerillas threaten indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/6791
Ruta Pacifica: Colombian Women Against Violence
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1699/1/
FAIR Finds News Editors Downplaying Colombia's Abuses, Amplifying Venezuela's http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1696/68/
Critics Respond to Human Rights Watch's Defense of Venezuela Report http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1697/68/
Venezuela: Chávez accuses rivals of exploiting synagogue attack
http://ww4report.com/node/6792
Venezuela: arrests made in synagogue attack, conspiracy vultures descend
http://ww4report.com/node/6808
El Salvador: Pressure from Pacific Rim Mining Company Intensifies. Anti-Mining Activist Home Robbed http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1700/68/
El Salvador 2009: A "Change" Year?
http://nacla.org/node/5473
Mexico: Sinaloa Cartel's Colombia broker busted
http://ww4report.com/node/6788
Mexico: army general found tortured to death
http://ww4report.com/node/6801
Mexico: more protests on northern border
http://ww4report.com/node/6787
Physicians for Human Rights: Mexico presents flawed theory in Brad Will slaying
http://ww4report.com/node/6802
Mexico bails out Detroit
http://ww4report.com/node/6803
Latin America: Obama is Expected to Listen
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1702/68/
Latin America Breaks Free: Washington No Longer Calls the Shots http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1694/1/
Hillary Clinton and James Steinberg "Talk Tough" on Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1693/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #978, February 8, 2009
1. Guadeloupe: General Strike Spreads
2. Colombia: 2 FARC Hostages Free--and Talking
3. Argentina: Menem Attends Smuggling Trial
4. Haiti: Lavalas Barred From Senate Race
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Guadeloupe: General Strike Spreads
After 22 hours of negotiations, on the morning of Feb. 8 management and strikers in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe reached a preliminary agreement that could form the basis for ending a general strike that has paralyzed the island since Jan. 20. Under the agreement, the 45,000 Guadeloupean workers who earn up to 1.6 times the minimum wage (SMIC, for Minimum Interprofessional Growth Salary in French) would get an increase of 200 euros (about $259) a month, while workers with higher salaries could negotiate with management for raises of 2.5% to 3%. Of the strikers' 146 demands, the government and business owners have already met about 50, including measures to bring down the cost of fuel. (Nouvel Observateur (France) 2/8/09; Le Parisien (France) 2/8/08)
The strike has been led by the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP, Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon in Guadeloupean Creole), which includes 47 unions, along with political parties and grassroots organizations. The movement has received broad support from Guadeloupe's 450,000 residents. Some 25,000 people demonstrated in Pointe à Pitre, the capital, at the beginning of the strike, and a demonstration held as negotiators met on Feb. 7 drew about 50,000 protesters.
Guadeloupe has an unemployment rate of more than 20% and a large disparity in wages between workers in the public and private sectors. The cost of living is a central issue: many goods have to be imported, and prices are sometimes twice as high as in France. Conditions are similar on the nearby island of Martinique and in French Guiana, also French overseas departments. On Feb. 5 a dozen unions held a one-day general strike in Martinique, shutting down transportation and businesses. Some 15,000-20,000 protesters marched through Fort-de-France, the capital. "Sarko, Fillon, we want work!" they chanted, referring to French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon. Encouraged by the strike's success, the unions extended the job action to Feb. 6.
The General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), considered the leading force in Guadeloupe's strike committee, is distrustful of Sarkozy's conservative government. On Jan. 26 UGTG secretary general Elie Domota charged that employers were "gearing up for a lockout, thinking that they can thus starve people, provoke confrontations and ask the colonial authority to suppress us. For that purpose, several hundred forces of repression arrived in Guadeloupe a few days ago, armed to the teeth." Noting that in May 1967 the French government killed more than 100 Guadeloupeans following a construction workers' strike, Domota appealed for international solidarity; emails can be sent to ugtg@wanadoo.fr . (Le Parisien 2/8/08, ___; UGTG Emergency Solidarity Appeal 1/26/09; Libération (France) 2/6/09, some from AFP)
*2. Colombia: 2 FARC Hostages Free--and Talking
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released former Meta governor Alan Jara to a humanitarian mission on Feb. 3 in Guaviare department; the rebels had held him as a hostage for more than seven and a half years. On Feb. 5 the group released former legislative deputy Sigifredo López in Cauca department; López, who had spent almost seven years in captivity, is the only surviving member of a group of 12 deputies from Valle del Cauca department captured by the FARC in April 2002.
The two hostages' release was part of a complicated arrangement involving the Brazilian government, the Colombian military, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the activist group Colombians for Peace; three police agents and one soldier were freed through the same arrangement on Feb. 1 [see Update #977]. A dispute between Colombians for Peace and the government over military operations delayed the release of Jara and López by one day.
In a press conference held in Villavicencio hours after his release on Feb. 3, former governor Jara had harsh words both for the FARC and for President Alvaro Uribe. "It would seem," he said, "that the situation of war that the country is experiencing suits president Uribe--and the FARC too, it would seem--and this is what's perverse." "I'm sorry with all my heart that Uribe didn't do anything for our freedom," he added. Although the rebels had treated him well enough, Jara said: "I don't know what they think, I don't understand them." President Uribe met with Jara later that evening but didn't comment on the former governor's remarks. On Feb. 4 government officials suggested that Jara was suffering from "Stockholm Sindrome," an identification captives supposedly feel with their captors.
López held his own press conference soon after he arrived in Cali on Feb. 5. He charged that the FARC was entirely to blame for the deaths of the other 11 Valle del Cauca deputies on June 18, 2007 [see Update #905]. The FARC command had given an order for the deputies to be killed in the event of a rescue attempt, he said. When six rebels from the FARC's 19th front arrived without warning, "El Grillo," commander of the 60th Front 60, mistook them for the military and had the hostages killed, according to López. It was "because of pure paranoia and because the FARC is a killing machine," he said. "They killed them from cowardice." López himself had been separated from the other deputies for disciplinary reasons and so was spared. He told the reporters that for days after the incident he wouldn't say anything to his captors except: "Murdering bastards."
Both Jara and López said that they would work for the rebels and the government to agree on an exchange of 22 soldiers and police agents still held by the FARC for a number of imprisoned rebels. (Univision 2/4/09 from AFP; AFP 2/5/09; El Financiero (Mexico) 2/5/09 from Notimex/GCE; La Jornada (Mexico) 2/6/09 from correspondent)
*3. Argentina: Menem Attends Smuggling Trial
On Feb. 6, former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), now a senator from La Rioja province, made his first appearance at an arms smuggling trial that began in Buenos Aires on Oct. 16 [see Update #964]. Menem and 17 other defendants are charged with involvement in the government's clandestine sale of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995 in violation of international agreements. He declined to attend previously, claiming health problems. In his Feb. 6 appearance--before federal judges Luis Imas, Horacio Artabe and Gustavo Losada--Menem failed to make any declaration on the smuggling charges, citing "pending questions, including appeals." He could face 12 years in prison if convicted, although the Senate would have to vote to lift the immunity he enjoys as a legislator.
In a separate case Menem is charged with obstructing the initial investigation into the July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. The attack, generally considered the worst anti-semitic violence since World War 2, killed at least 85 people and injured 300; the Argentine government blames it on the Iranian government and the Lebanese organization Hezbollah [see Update #708]. In May 2008 prosecutor Alberto Nisman asked federal judge Ariel Lijo for an arrest warrant for Menem and others. "We have determined the existence of a plan that was put together at the highest political level in the 1990s...to cover up and give [immunity] to one of the people who appeared as a main suspect in the local connection," he told Argentine television. The coverup included the suspension of searches and a sudden end to any activity on the case, Nisman charged.
In October 2008 Judge Lijo ordered Menem and his brother Munir--along with former judge Juan José Galeano, former State Intelligence Service (SIDE) head Hugo Anzorregui and others--to make declarations on the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. Menem, who was a strong US ally during his years in office, has declined to make a declaration. In this case too he has claimed health problems. (Clarín (Argentina) 2/7/09; Télam (Argentina) 2/6/09; Haaretz (Israel) 5/22/08 from Reuters; BBC 11/13/08)
*4. Haiti: Lavalas Barred From Senate Race
Hundreds of supporters of Haiti's Lavalas Family (FL) party demonstrated in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 7 to protest the decision of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to reject all 16 candidates from two different slates that the party's rival factions had tried to run in a partial senatorial election slated for Apr. 19. The CEP rejected a total of 40 of the 105 candidates who had filed to run for the 12 Senate seats at stake. Another candidate barred from the race was former military officer Guy Philippe, who led a February 2004 insurgency against the FL's founder, former president Jean Bertrand Aristide; Philippe is suspected of narco trafficking [see Update #912]. (AlterPresse 2/8/09)
The Haitian Constitution provides for one third of Haiti's 30-member Senate to be renewed every two years. The Apr. 19 election will also elect replacements for Senator Noël Emmanuel Limage (Artibonite/Nord department), who died in office, and Rudolph Henry Boulos (Nord-Est), who was removed because of his dual nationality [see Update #971]. The CEP gave no detailed explanation of its decision, made public the night of Feb. 5-6. CEP Frantz Gérard Verret told a radio program that the conflict in the FL had no bearing on the exclusion of the FL candidates; the reason was simply that they hadn't met the requirements under electoral law, he said. Currently there are two FL senators: Rudy Hériveaux (Ouest department) and Yvon Buissereth (Sud department). (AlterPresse 2/6/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 2/6/09) [It is unclear how the FL selects its candidates; there were also disputes about the FL candidates in the 2006 legislative elections.]
On Feb. 6 the US embassy issued a communiqué expressing concern over a decision "that bars all the candidates of a political party from participating in the next electoral contests." Elections "based on exclusion...will inevitably put their credibility in question," the embassy said. Canada also deplored the CEP's decision on the FL candidates. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 2/6/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Politics in Paraguay: Twenty Years of Transition
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1695/68/
The World Social Forum Returns to Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1701/1/
Brazil: uncontacted tribes flee loggers' bulldozers
http://ww4report.com/node/6790
Ecuador: president condemned for policy on uncontacted tribes
http://ww4report.com/node/6789
Ask the Ecuadorian Government to Protect the Rights of Environmental and Human Rights Defenders http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1698/68/
Survival International: Colombian guerillas threaten indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/6791
Ruta Pacifica: Colombian Women Against Violence
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1699/1/
FAIR Finds News Editors Downplaying Colombia's Abuses, Amplifying Venezuela's http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1696/68/
Critics Respond to Human Rights Watch's Defense of Venezuela Report http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1697/68/
Venezuela: Chávez accuses rivals of exploiting synagogue attack
http://ww4report.com/node/6792
Venezuela: arrests made in synagogue attack, conspiracy vultures descend
http://ww4report.com/node/6808
El Salvador: Pressure from Pacific Rim Mining Company Intensifies. Anti-Mining Activist Home Robbed http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1700/68/
El Salvador 2009: A "Change" Year?
http://nacla.org/node/5473
Mexico: Sinaloa Cartel's Colombia broker busted
http://ww4report.com/node/6788
Mexico: army general found tortured to death
http://ww4report.com/node/6801
Mexico: more protests on northern border
http://ww4report.com/node/6787
Physicians for Human Rights: Mexico presents flawed theory in Brad Will slaying
http://ww4report.com/node/6802
Mexico bails out Detroit
http://ww4report.com/node/6803
Latin America: Obama is Expected to Listen
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1702/68/
Latin America Breaks Free: Washington No Longer Calls the Shots http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1694/1/
Hillary Clinton and James Steinberg "Talk Tough" on Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1693/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 2 February 2009
WNU #977: 2 Workers Shot in Venezuelan Plant Sit-In
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #977, February 1, 2009
1. Venezuela: 2 Workers Shot in Plant Sit-In
2. Colombia: FARC Releases 4 Prisoners
3. US: 6 SOA Protesters Sentenced
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
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. Venezuela: 2 Workers Shot in Plant Sit-In
Two striking workers were shot dead on Jan. 29 during a confrontation with the authorities at the Mitsubishi Motors Corp (MMC) Automotriz auto factory in the Los Montones de Barcelona industrial park outside Barcelona in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui. Strikers said state police agents fired the shots that killed Pedro Jesús Suárez Poito, an MMC employee, and Javier Marcano, who worked at the nearby Macusa auto parts factory and was present in an act of solidarity. (According to some reports Marcano was the MMC employee and Suárez worked at Macusa.) Members of the New Generation Union (Singetram) took over the factory on Jan. 12 to protest management's decision to lay off 135 contract workers. Workers had voted 863-21 at a mass assembly in favor of the occupation.
The confrontation started in the afternoon of Jan. 29 after administrative employees, state police and two judges arrived at the plant; according to some witnesses the National Guard was backing up the state police. Workers said they threw rocks and bottles at the police in response to an attempt to end the sit-in and that the police fired tear gas canisters and then shot at them. Company executives charged that the workers were armed. Anzoátegui governor Tarek William Saab quickly ordered the suspension of all police agents involved in the incident. In the evening of Jan. 29 investigators took statements from 27 police agents and detectives, along with the two judges and five MMC executives. Gov. Saab, an ally of President Hugo Chávez Frías, had issued an order in 2005 banning police from using firearms in protests.
According to the Marxist Revolutionary Current (CMR) group, the MMC occupation is linked to struggles at the Vivez, Franelas Gotcha, INAF and Acerven factories, where workers are reportedly demanding nationalization and workers control. The CMR is asking for activists to send letters of solidarity to Singetram (sindicatonuevageneracion@gmail.com) and demands for an end to police violence to Gov. Saab (dalia.vega@tarekrindecuentas.com). (Campaign for Labor Rights alert 1/30/09; Venezuelanalysis.com 1/30/09; International Herald Tribune 1/30/09 from AP; El Tiempo (Venezuela) 1/31/09)
*2. Colombia: FARC Releases 4 Prisoners
On the morning of Feb. 1 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released three captured police agents and one soldier to a humanitarian mission in the jungles of the southern Colombian department of Caquetá. The prisoners, all captured in 2007, were the first of six FARC detainees scheduled to be released over a period of four days. The rebel group said it would free former governor Alan Jara on Feb. 2 and former legislator Sigifredo López on Feb. 4. Jara was kidnapped on June 5, 2001; López has been held since Apr. 11, 2002.
The handover of the prisoners required a complicated arrangement involving the Brazilian government, the Colombian military, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the activist group Colombians for Peace, which includes Iván Cepeda, president of the National Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State (MOVICE); Gloria Cuartas, a former mayor in the Apartadó region; and Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist weekly Voz. The mission that received the prisoners was to go first to San Gabriel de Cachoeira in Brazil and then fly into Colombia in a Cugar helicopter provided by Brazil for the meeting with the FARC. After receiving the prisoners, the mission, headed by opposition senator Piedad Córdoba, flew them to Villavicencio in Meta department.
The Feb. 1 handover went relatively smoothly, although the FARC and Colombians for Peace charged that the Colombian military hadn't honored its commitment to suspend operations in the area. Originally President Alvaro Uribe had objected to any involvement by Senator Córdoba, who worked with leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez for a hostage release in January 2008 [see Updates #930, 972, 974]. (Adital 1/30/09 from PL; Semana (Colombia) 2/1/09; Clarín (Argentina) 2/2/09)
*3. US: 6 SOA Protesters Sentenced
On Jan. 26, US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Georgia, sentenced five activists to two-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base on Nov. 23 as part of an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Faircloth sentenced an additional protester, Louis Wolf, to six months of house arrest and imposed a $1,000 fine; Wolf, a cofounder of the magazine CovertAction Quarterly, requires special medical care, according to his lawyer, Bill Quigley. The other activists sentenced were Rev. Luis Barrios, an Episcopal priest in New York City; public interest advocate Theresa Cusimano; seminary student Kristin Holm; Sr. Diane Pinchot, a Catholic nun and art professor; and retired teacher Al Simmons.
Tens of thousands of people have taken part in the demonstrations at Fort Benning since they began in 1990, and hundreds have served prison sentences for civil disobedience at the base [see Update #838]. The school trains Latin American soldiers, and many of its graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. In her statement to the court, Pinchot referred to the rape and murder of fellow Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and three other religious workers by a rightwing death squad in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980. "These images don't go away from me," she said. "I'm hoping that people will listen and the School of the Americas will be closed." (SOA Watch press release 1/26/09; Univision 1/27/09 from AFP; Columbus (Georgia) Ledger-Enquirer 1/27/09)
Correction: This item originally gave "Jan. 36" as the date of the sentencing.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US Policy
Argentina: Women Keep Disappearing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1690/1/
Brazil: illegal miners murder Amazon indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/6754
World Social Forum protests Amazon destruction
http://ww4report.com/node/6749
Brazil's Landless Movement Turns 25, Opens "New Phase" of Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1688/1/
Bolivia: new constitution approved
http://ww4report.com/node/6742
Bolivia: constitutional vote passes without violence --close call?
http://ww4report.com/node/6743
Peru reconsiders controversial Amazon oil project
http://ww4report.com/node/6744
Peru: Furnaces Used to Remove Evidence of Dirty War Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1684/68/
Venezuela: gunmen ransack Caracas synagogue
http://ww4report.com/node/6759
Venezuela: Local Reactions to the Re- Election Reform
http://nacla.org/node/5452
Venezuela: Local Reactions to the Re-Election Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1692/68/
Venezuela: Students and Security Forces Clash as Referendum Debate Intensifies
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1689/68/
El Salvador: Legislative and Municipal Elections Conducted with Flaws
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1691/68/
Econo-protests paralyze Mexico City, Juárez-El Paso bridge
http://ww4report.com/node/6755
Mexico: farmers blockade government offices in Chihuahua
http://ww4report.com/node/6748
Ciudad Juárez vigilantes threaten deadly vengeance campaign
http://ww4report.com/node/6745
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5813
Global Crisis is Good News for IFIs in Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5817
Dirty Business, Dirty Wars: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1687/1/
Lessons Learned: Latin American Left Has Much to Teach Obama Supporters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1685/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #977, February 1, 2009
1. Venezuela: 2 Workers Shot in Plant Sit-In
2. Colombia: FARC Releases 4 Prisoners
3. US: 6 SOA Protesters Sentenced
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
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. Venezuela: 2 Workers Shot in Plant Sit-In
Two striking workers were shot dead on Jan. 29 during a confrontation with the authorities at the Mitsubishi Motors Corp (MMC) Automotriz auto factory in the Los Montones de Barcelona industrial park outside Barcelona in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui. Strikers said state police agents fired the shots that killed Pedro Jesús Suárez Poito, an MMC employee, and Javier Marcano, who worked at the nearby Macusa auto parts factory and was present in an act of solidarity. (According to some reports Marcano was the MMC employee and Suárez worked at Macusa.) Members of the New Generation Union (Singetram) took over the factory on Jan. 12 to protest management's decision to lay off 135 contract workers. Workers had voted 863-21 at a mass assembly in favor of the occupation.
The confrontation started in the afternoon of Jan. 29 after administrative employees, state police and two judges arrived at the plant; according to some witnesses the National Guard was backing up the state police. Workers said they threw rocks and bottles at the police in response to an attempt to end the sit-in and that the police fired tear gas canisters and then shot at them. Company executives charged that the workers were armed. Anzoátegui governor Tarek William Saab quickly ordered the suspension of all police agents involved in the incident. In the evening of Jan. 29 investigators took statements from 27 police agents and detectives, along with the two judges and five MMC executives. Gov. Saab, an ally of President Hugo Chávez Frías, had issued an order in 2005 banning police from using firearms in protests.
According to the Marxist Revolutionary Current (CMR) group, the MMC occupation is linked to struggles at the Vivez, Franelas Gotcha, INAF and Acerven factories, where workers are reportedly demanding nationalization and workers control. The CMR is asking for activists to send letters of solidarity to Singetram (sindicatonuevageneracion@gmail.com) and demands for an end to police violence to Gov. Saab (dalia.vega@tarekrindecuentas.com). (Campaign for Labor Rights alert 1/30/09; Venezuelanalysis.com 1/30/09; International Herald Tribune 1/30/09 from AP; El Tiempo (Venezuela) 1/31/09)
*2. Colombia: FARC Releases 4 Prisoners
On the morning of Feb. 1 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released three captured police agents and one soldier to a humanitarian mission in the jungles of the southern Colombian department of Caquetá. The prisoners, all captured in 2007, were the first of six FARC detainees scheduled to be released over a period of four days. The rebel group said it would free former governor Alan Jara on Feb. 2 and former legislator Sigifredo López on Feb. 4. Jara was kidnapped on June 5, 2001; López has been held since Apr. 11, 2002.
The handover of the prisoners required a complicated arrangement involving the Brazilian government, the Colombian military, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the activist group Colombians for Peace, which includes Iván Cepeda, president of the National Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State (MOVICE); Gloria Cuartas, a former mayor in the Apartadó region; and Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist weekly Voz. The mission that received the prisoners was to go first to San Gabriel de Cachoeira in Brazil and then fly into Colombia in a Cugar helicopter provided by Brazil for the meeting with the FARC. After receiving the prisoners, the mission, headed by opposition senator Piedad Córdoba, flew them to Villavicencio in Meta department.
The Feb. 1 handover went relatively smoothly, although the FARC and Colombians for Peace charged that the Colombian military hadn't honored its commitment to suspend operations in the area. Originally President Alvaro Uribe had objected to any involvement by Senator Córdoba, who worked with leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez for a hostage release in January 2008 [see Updates #930, 972, 974]. (Adital 1/30/09 from PL; Semana (Colombia) 2/1/09; Clarín (Argentina) 2/2/09)
*3. US: 6 SOA Protesters Sentenced
On Jan. 26, US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Georgia, sentenced five activists to two-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base on Nov. 23 as part of an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Faircloth sentenced an additional protester, Louis Wolf, to six months of house arrest and imposed a $1,000 fine; Wolf, a cofounder of the magazine CovertAction Quarterly, requires special medical care, according to his lawyer, Bill Quigley. The other activists sentenced were Rev. Luis Barrios, an Episcopal priest in New York City; public interest advocate Theresa Cusimano; seminary student Kristin Holm; Sr. Diane Pinchot, a Catholic nun and art professor; and retired teacher Al Simmons.
Tens of thousands of people have taken part in the demonstrations at Fort Benning since they began in 1990, and hundreds have served prison sentences for civil disobedience at the base [see Update #838]. The school trains Latin American soldiers, and many of its graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. In her statement to the court, Pinchot referred to the rape and murder of fellow Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and three other religious workers by a rightwing death squad in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980. "These images don't go away from me," she said. "I'm hoping that people will listen and the School of the Americas will be closed." (SOA Watch press release 1/26/09; Univision 1/27/09 from AFP; Columbus (Georgia) Ledger-Enquirer 1/27/09)
Correction: This item originally gave "Jan. 36" as the date of the sentencing.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US Policy
Argentina: Women Keep Disappearing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1690/1/
Brazil: illegal miners murder Amazon indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/6754
World Social Forum protests Amazon destruction
http://ww4report.com/node/6749
Brazil's Landless Movement Turns 25, Opens "New Phase" of Struggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1688/1/
Bolivia: new constitution approved
http://ww4report.com/node/6742
Bolivia: constitutional vote passes without violence --close call?
http://ww4report.com/node/6743
Peru reconsiders controversial Amazon oil project
http://ww4report.com/node/6744
Peru: Furnaces Used to Remove Evidence of Dirty War Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1684/68/
Venezuela: gunmen ransack Caracas synagogue
http://ww4report.com/node/6759
Venezuela: Local Reactions to the Re- Election Reform
http://nacla.org/node/5452
Venezuela: Local Reactions to the Re-Election Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1692/68/
Venezuela: Students and Security Forces Clash as Referendum Debate Intensifies
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1689/68/
El Salvador: Legislative and Municipal Elections Conducted with Flaws
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1691/68/
Econo-protests paralyze Mexico City, Juárez-El Paso bridge
http://ww4report.com/node/6755
Mexico: farmers blockade government offices in Chihuahua
http://ww4report.com/node/6748
Ciudad Juárez vigilantes threaten deadly vengeance campaign
http://ww4report.com/node/6745
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5813
Global Crisis is Good News for IFIs in Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5817
Dirty Business, Dirty Wars: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1687/1/
Lessons Learned: Latin American Left Has Much to Teach Obama Supporters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1685/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 26 January 2009
WNU #976: Colombia and Venezuela Plan Stimulus
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #976, January 25, 2009
1. Colombia: Uribe, Chavez Plan Stimulus
2. Colombia: Ex-Mayor Guilty in 2003 Murder
3. Latin America: Reactions as Obama Takes Office
4. Cuba: Fidel Castro Reappears
5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Haiti, Latin America
ISSN#: 1084. Weekly News on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Uribe, Chávez Plan Stimulus
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez met in Cartagena in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar on Jan. 24 to discuss economic cooperation in response to the global crisis. They set up an economic commission which started working immediately "to design a package of new tools, to review the ones that exist and to strengthen them," Chávez said during a press conference after the meeting. The two presidents also agreed to create a $200 million joint fund to extend credits to small and medium businesses and to stimulate trade between the two countries; in addition, they plan a fund for infrastructure work in the areas along the Colombia-Venezuela border.
Trade between the two countries reached a record $7.2 billion in 2008, with Colombian sales to Venezuela totaling about $6 billion; Venezuela is second only to the US as a trading partner for Colombia. At the Jan. 24 press conference Chávez projected that trade between Colombia and Venezuela could be increased by 43% within one year. He stressed the importance of this sort of economic activity to fight a crisis that he called "a threat to the world" which "is starting to strike the five continents harshly." The presidents plan to sign the accords at their next meeting, in April in Venezuela. (El Nacional (Caracas) 1/24/09 from AFP; UnionRadio.net (Caracas) 1/25/09; CadenaGlobal.com (Caracas) 1/25/09)
This was Chávez's first official visit to Colombia since Aug. 31, 2007, although the two presidents held meetings at border towns in October 2007 and July 2008. Relations have been tense between Uribe's rightwing government and the leftist Chávez over the past year and a half, with Colombian defense minister Juan Manuel Santos accusing Chávez of "supporting" the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). [In March 2008 Chávez called Uribe a "lackey," "liar" and "criminal"; see Update #937.] "[I]f I were supporting any subversive, terrorist or violent movement in Colombia, I wouldn't be here," Chávez told reporters when he arrived in Cartagena for the Jan. 24 meeting. He said he was "making a plea to the Colombians and the Venezuelans: let's not do damage [to our relations], let's not be masochists." (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/09 from AFP, Notimex, DPA)
*2. Colombia: Ex-Mayor Guilty in 2003 Murder
On Jan. 21 the Colombian Attorney General's Office reported that Julio César Ardila Torres, the former mayor of Barrancabermeja, Santander department, had been found guilty of ordering the Apr. 6, 2003 murder of local journalist José Emeterio Rivas [see Updates #689, 727]. Judge Nelly Vallejo Aranda sentenced Ardila to 28 years and eight months in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of 1.192 billion pesos (about $530,000). The court also convicted two former municipal employees, Fabio Pajón Lizcano and Abelardo Rueda Tobón, and sentenced them to 26 years and eight months.
Rivas was the host of a radio program that exposed links between the Barrancabermeja city government and the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). According to testimony by former paramilitary Reiner Enrique Brocate, Ardila planned the murder with paramilitary leader Pablo Emilio Quintero ("Bedoya"), who confessed in June 2007 to carrying out the actual killing. Ardila surrendered to authorities on Apr. 30, 2008, after several years as a fugitive. "Here everybody knew that [Ardila] had ordered José Emeterio killed," a co-worker of Rivas' said after the sentencing. "What surprised us was that they convicted him." (Semana (Colombia) 1/22/09, some information from Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (Flip); Latin American Herald Tribune 1/22/09)
*3. Latin America: Reactions as Obama Takes Office
Latin American leaders were generally cautious in their assessment of Barack Obama, a former Democratic senator who was sworn in on Jan. 20 as US president, succeeding conservative Republican George W. Bush.
On Jan. 19, during his weekly radio show, "Breakfast with the President," Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said: "I think if he wants to, Obama can improve the bilateral relations" between Brazil and the US. He urged the new president to end the US trade embargo against Cuba since "there is no scientific and political explanation for the embargo to continue." (Xinhua 1/20/09)
In an opinion piece posted on Juventud Rebelde's website on Jan. 22, former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote: "I personally harbor no doubt of the honesty with which Obama expressed his ideas" in his inauguration address. But Castro added that "despite his noble intentions, some questions remain unanswered. Like, how can a wasteful, consumerist system protect the environment?" (Bloomberg 1/22/09) Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was visiting Cuba when Obama was inaugurated, remarked that it was good to have a president with "intelligence and rationality." (World Politics Review 1/22/09)
The harshest words came from Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. During the week of Jan. 11 the US Spanish-language network Univision broadcast an interview in which Obama accused Chávez of blocking progress in the region and "exporting terrorist activities." On Jan. 18 Chávez said he thought "the same stench is coming" as with Bush. "This is the US Empire we're talking about," he added. (World Politics Review 1/22/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/09 from AFP, Notimex, DPA)
*4. Cuba: Fidel Castro Reappears
On Jan. 21 Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Castro met with former Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz during a brief visit to Havana. In a column published the same day, Castro said his discussion with Fernández was "intense and interesting, as I expected." Fernández told reporters afterwards that Castro seemed to be "very well." This was apparently Castro's first meeting with a visiting leader since Nov. 18, when he was photographed with Chinese president Hu Jintao; the article was his first statement in 20 days. There had been speculation that Castro was seriously ill [see Update #973].
In an opinion piece published on Jan. 22, Castro said he was "well" but had cut back on his columns in 2009 "in order not to interfere with or impede the compañeros of the [Communist] party or the government in the constant decisions they must make in response to the objective difficulties arising from the world financial crisis." Castro, who is 82, was formally replaced as president by his brother Raúl Castro in February 2008 [see Update #936]. Fidel Castro remarked in his Jan. 22 column that he doesn't expect to have the "privilege" of observing and meditating on political events in four years when US president Barack Obama's first term ends. (La Jornada 1/22/09, 1/24/09 from correspondent, 1/23/09 from Reuters, AFP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Haiti, Latin America
Bolivia Looking Forward: New Constitution Passed, Celebrations Hit the Streets
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1683/1/
Bolivia: Evo nationalizes foreign gas company on eve of constitutional vote
http://ww4report.com/node/6731
Spilling Ink Instead of Blood: Bolivia Poised to Vote on New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1677/1/
¿Sí o No? Bolivians Mobilize for National Vote on New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1670/1/
Bolivia's New Constitution
http://nacla.org/node/5437
Peru seeks investment for gas pipeline, energy projects
http://ww4report.com/node/6730
Peru: two police killed evicting squatters from nature reserve
http://ww4report.com/node/6706
Peru: indigenous community takes mineral company workers hostage
http://ww4report.com/node/6701
Ask the Ecuadorian Government to Protect Human Rights During Upcoming Anti-Mining Demonstration http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1672/68/
Ecuador: Mining Protests Marginalized, But Growing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1673/1/
Chávez hot and cold on Obama
http://ww4report.com/node/6729
Why Obama Should Meet With Hugo Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1671/1/
2009 Salvadoran Elections Blog Launch
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1669/68/
El Salvador: elections marred by violence, irregularities
http://ww4report.com/node/6707
New Report on El Salvador Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1679/1/
El Salvador: Spanish Judge to Investigate Murders of Jesuit Priests http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1675/68/
Deported Mexican activist to Obama: stop immigration raids
http://ww4report.com/node/6710
NAFTA boosted Mexican immigration: study
http://ww4report.com/node/6728
Mexico: farmers block roads to protest fuel prices
http://ww4report.com/node/6727
Mexico: human "stew-maker" busted, more severed heads appear
http://ww4report.com/node/6726
After Four Years, No Justice for Murdered Haitian Journalist http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1676/68/
After Bahia: Toward a New Latin America of the 21st Century http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1674/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request.Update subscribers also receive, as asupplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and DavidWilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #976, January 25, 2009
1. Colombia: Uribe, Chavez Plan Stimulus
2. Colombia: Ex-Mayor Guilty in 2003 Murder
3. Latin America: Reactions as Obama Takes Office
4. Cuba: Fidel Castro Reappears
5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Haiti, Latin America
ISSN#: 1084. Weekly News on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Uribe, Chávez Plan Stimulus
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez met in Cartagena in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar on Jan. 24 to discuss economic cooperation in response to the global crisis. They set up an economic commission which started working immediately "to design a package of new tools, to review the ones that exist and to strengthen them," Chávez said during a press conference after the meeting. The two presidents also agreed to create a $200 million joint fund to extend credits to small and medium businesses and to stimulate trade between the two countries; in addition, they plan a fund for infrastructure work in the areas along the Colombia-Venezuela border.
Trade between the two countries reached a record $7.2 billion in 2008, with Colombian sales to Venezuela totaling about $6 billion; Venezuela is second only to the US as a trading partner for Colombia. At the Jan. 24 press conference Chávez projected that trade between Colombia and Venezuela could be increased by 43% within one year. He stressed the importance of this sort of economic activity to fight a crisis that he called "a threat to the world" which "is starting to strike the five continents harshly." The presidents plan to sign the accords at their next meeting, in April in Venezuela. (El Nacional (Caracas) 1/24/09 from AFP; UnionRadio.net (Caracas) 1/25/09; CadenaGlobal.com (Caracas) 1/25/09)
This was Chávez's first official visit to Colombia since Aug. 31, 2007, although the two presidents held meetings at border towns in October 2007 and July 2008. Relations have been tense between Uribe's rightwing government and the leftist Chávez over the past year and a half, with Colombian defense minister Juan Manuel Santos accusing Chávez of "supporting" the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). [In March 2008 Chávez called Uribe a "lackey," "liar" and "criminal"; see Update #937.] "[I]f I were supporting any subversive, terrorist or violent movement in Colombia, I wouldn't be here," Chávez told reporters when he arrived in Cartagena for the Jan. 24 meeting. He said he was "making a plea to the Colombians and the Venezuelans: let's not do damage [to our relations], let's not be masochists." (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/09 from AFP, Notimex, DPA)
*2. Colombia: Ex-Mayor Guilty in 2003 Murder
On Jan. 21 the Colombian Attorney General's Office reported that Julio César Ardila Torres, the former mayor of Barrancabermeja, Santander department, had been found guilty of ordering the Apr. 6, 2003 murder of local journalist José Emeterio Rivas [see Updates #689, 727]. Judge Nelly Vallejo Aranda sentenced Ardila to 28 years and eight months in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of 1.192 billion pesos (about $530,000). The court also convicted two former municipal employees, Fabio Pajón Lizcano and Abelardo Rueda Tobón, and sentenced them to 26 years and eight months.
Rivas was the host of a radio program that exposed links between the Barrancabermeja city government and the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). According to testimony by former paramilitary Reiner Enrique Brocate, Ardila planned the murder with paramilitary leader Pablo Emilio Quintero ("Bedoya"), who confessed in June 2007 to carrying out the actual killing. Ardila surrendered to authorities on Apr. 30, 2008, after several years as a fugitive. "Here everybody knew that [Ardila] had ordered José Emeterio killed," a co-worker of Rivas' said after the sentencing. "What surprised us was that they convicted him." (Semana (Colombia) 1/22/09, some information from Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (Flip); Latin American Herald Tribune 1/22/09)
*3. Latin America: Reactions as Obama Takes Office
Latin American leaders were generally cautious in their assessment of Barack Obama, a former Democratic senator who was sworn in on Jan. 20 as US president, succeeding conservative Republican George W. Bush.
On Jan. 19, during his weekly radio show, "Breakfast with the President," Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said: "I think if he wants to, Obama can improve the bilateral relations" between Brazil and the US. He urged the new president to end the US trade embargo against Cuba since "there is no scientific and political explanation for the embargo to continue." (Xinhua 1/20/09)
In an opinion piece posted on Juventud Rebelde's website on Jan. 22, former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote: "I personally harbor no doubt of the honesty with which Obama expressed his ideas" in his inauguration address. But Castro added that "despite his noble intentions, some questions remain unanswered. Like, how can a wasteful, consumerist system protect the environment?" (Bloomberg 1/22/09) Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was visiting Cuba when Obama was inaugurated, remarked that it was good to have a president with "intelligence and rationality." (World Politics Review 1/22/09)
The harshest words came from Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. During the week of Jan. 11 the US Spanish-language network Univision broadcast an interview in which Obama accused Chávez of blocking progress in the region and "exporting terrorist activities." On Jan. 18 Chávez said he thought "the same stench is coming" as with Bush. "This is the US Empire we're talking about," he added. (World Politics Review 1/22/09; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/25/09 from AFP, Notimex, DPA)
*4. Cuba: Fidel Castro Reappears
On Jan. 21 Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Castro met with former Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz during a brief visit to Havana. In a column published the same day, Castro said his discussion with Fernández was "intense and interesting, as I expected." Fernández told reporters afterwards that Castro seemed to be "very well." This was apparently Castro's first meeting with a visiting leader since Nov. 18, when he was photographed with Chinese president Hu Jintao; the article was his first statement in 20 days. There had been speculation that Castro was seriously ill [see Update #973].
In an opinion piece published on Jan. 22, Castro said he was "well" but had cut back on his columns in 2009 "in order not to interfere with or impede the compañeros of the [Communist] party or the government in the constant decisions they must make in response to the objective difficulties arising from the world financial crisis." Castro, who is 82, was formally replaced as president by his brother Raúl Castro in February 2008 [see Update #936]. Fidel Castro remarked in his Jan. 22 column that he doesn't expect to have the "privilege" of observing and meditating on political events in four years when US president Barack Obama's first term ends. (La Jornada 1/22/09, 1/24/09 from correspondent, 1/23/09 from Reuters, AFP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Haiti, Latin America
Bolivia Looking Forward: New Constitution Passed, Celebrations Hit the Streets
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1683/1/
Bolivia: Evo nationalizes foreign gas company on eve of constitutional vote
http://ww4report.com/node/6731
Spilling Ink Instead of Blood: Bolivia Poised to Vote on New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1677/1/
¿Sí o No? Bolivians Mobilize for National Vote on New Constitution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1670/1/
Bolivia's New Constitution
http://nacla.org/node/5437
Peru seeks investment for gas pipeline, energy projects
http://ww4report.com/node/6730
Peru: two police killed evicting squatters from nature reserve
http://ww4report.com/node/6706
Peru: indigenous community takes mineral company workers hostage
http://ww4report.com/node/6701
Ask the Ecuadorian Government to Protect Human Rights During Upcoming Anti-Mining Demonstration http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1672/68/
Ecuador: Mining Protests Marginalized, But Growing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1673/1/
Chávez hot and cold on Obama
http://ww4report.com/node/6729
Why Obama Should Meet With Hugo Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1671/1/
2009 Salvadoran Elections Blog Launch
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1669/68/
El Salvador: elections marred by violence, irregularities
http://ww4report.com/node/6707
New Report on El Salvador Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1679/1/
El Salvador: Spanish Judge to Investigate Murders of Jesuit Priests http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1675/68/
Deported Mexican activist to Obama: stop immigration raids
http://ww4report.com/node/6710
NAFTA boosted Mexican immigration: study
http://ww4report.com/node/6728
Mexico: farmers block roads to protest fuel prices
http://ww4report.com/node/6727
Mexico: human "stew-maker" busted, more severed heads appear
http://ww4report.com/node/6726
After Four Years, No Justice for Murdered Haitian Journalist http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1676/68/
After Bahia: Toward a New Latin America of the 21st Century http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1674/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request.Update subscribers also receive, as asupplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and DavidWilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 19 January 2009
WNU #975: Peruvian Farmers Strike Over Water
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #975, January 18, 2009
1. Peru: Farmers Strike Over Water
2. Honduras: Teachers Sit In for Back Pay
3. Dominican Republic: Cops Kill Unionists
4. Cuba: Embargo to Remain for Now
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
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. Peru: Farmers Strike Over Water
Peruvian agricultural producers ended three days of mobilizations on Jan. 17 after Enrique Málaga, president of the National Users Council of the Irrigation Districts of Peru (JNUDRP), met with Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Agriculture Minister Carlos Leyton. "The strike has been suspended in consideration of our having reached an agreement for approval of the General Law of Water, which we were demanding," Málaga told the media. "This law is going to be promulgated next week." Málaga indicated that the agreement also included the formation of a commission for the solution of small agricultural producers' debt problems. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 1/17/09; Univision 1/17/09 from AFP)
JNUDRP, with a membership of 1.6 million, had begun an open-ended strike on Jan. 15, with campesinos using tree trunks, boulders and truck tires to block highways and railroads. In Zarumilla in the northern department of Tumbes, protesters held a sit-in at the international bridge between Peru and Ecuador, paralyzing commerce between the two countries. Picketers clashed with police at the Sullana-Talara highway in nearby Piura department; one protester, Alejandro Yarlequé, was injured. In Chiclayo in Lambayeque department, about 500 producers marched peacefully near the Pan American highway.
In the south, a group of campesinos blocked the railroad to the Machu Picchu archeological site, in Cusco department, as well as the highway to Abancay in neighboring Apurímac department, reportedly leaving some 400 tourists stranded. In the coastal department of Ica, producers blocked the Pan American highway at km 329. Further south, about 10,000 producers observed the strike in Arequipa department. Some 1,000 protesters kept trucks from transporting food, although they let passenger vehicles and trucks carrying other cargos drive through.
In addition to passage of the General Law of Water, JNUDRP was demanding the repeal of legislative decrees 1081 (which creates a National Water Resources System) and 1083; JNUDRP members say these decrees, passed last year, promote privatization of water and are part of the package of laws required for the Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC in Spanish) with the US. [Producers and others mounted major protests against the TLC in June 2006, June 2007 and February 2008; see Updates #859, 905 and 936, where JNUDRP is referred to as the "National Council of Irrigation Users (JNUDR)"]. The government of President Alan García strenuously denied that the decrees would lead to privatization.
Water is a major issue in Peru because of its scarcity. Much of the country depends on glacial runoff for energy, and scientists predict that global warming will deplete this resource in 25 years. (Adital 1/15/09; 24 Horas Libre 1/15/09; Reuters 1/15/09; Correo (Peru) 1/16/09; Coordinadora Nacional de Radio 1/16/09)
Miners are planning to vote on Jan. 31 on a possible strike to protest the firing of 5,500 workers at units run by Gerdau SA, Renco Group Inc. and Volcan Compañía Minera SAA; they also want to press for passage of legislation on pensions and profit-sharing. (Bloomberg 1/13/09)
*2. Honduras: Teachers Sit In for Back Pay
On Jan. 13 Honduran teachers began a series of protests against the government's delays in paying salaries for some 2,600 teachers and its failure to pay full year-end bonuses. For the first phase of the mobilization, the unions representing the nation's 48,000 teachers called for "informational assemblies" throughout the country. The assembly held in the Hibueras de Comayagüela Institute in Tegucigalpa quickly turned into a demonstration. At 11 am the participants marched to the Education Secretariat. Entering the building, they chanted: "Out with [Education Minister Marlon] Brevé!" and "We want to be paid, we're hungry!" Ministry employees left their offices, and the teachers shut the doors to the building. Brevé accused the teachers of sedition and sent for the police. About 30 agents of the National Police with shields and nightsticks blocked the doors to keep more teachers from entering. After an all-night standoff, the agents removed the protesters at about 4 am on Jan. 14.
The teachers went on strike in August in 2006 and 2007 over pay issues [see Updates #863, 910], but this was the first protest they held during a vacation; classes are scheduled to resume on Feb. 2. Union leaders said they would continue with mobilizations during the vacation period, including takeovers of buildings, bridges and highways. (La Tribuna (Honduras) 1/14/09, __; El Heraldo (Honduras) 1/15/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Cops Kill Unionists
Nine Dominican police agents, including two officers, should be tried for the Dec. 30 shooting deaths of five men in Santo Domingo's Mirador Sur section, according to a report that a special commission presented to National District attorney general Alejandro Moscoso Segarra on Jan. 15. The police had claimed that the five men died during an exchange of gunfire, but an autopsy report from the Forensic Pathology Institute found that four of the victims had been shot in the back. One of the four was shot in the back of the neck at close range, according to forensic physician Sergio Sarita, and the fifth victim was shot "in front while seated, lying down or on his knees." Attorney General Moscoso Segarra said he would decide in 48 hours whether to proceed with the case.
At least 500 people were killed by the Dominican police in 2008, according to a complaint filed with the Interamerican Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) by a Dominican group, the Human Rights Commisison (CNDH). The group's president, Dr. Manuel Maria Mercedes, estimates that 75% of the victims were executed. (Soitu (Spain) 1/15/09 from EFE; Primicias (Dominican Republic) 1/17/09) On Jan. 17 journalists and community leaders in the northern city of Santiago de los Caballeros called on President Leonel Fernández to order the police to explain the deaths of some 40 people killed by police and criminals in the city. Some groups in Santiago have brought court cases against the national police chief, Maj. Gen. Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín, for the large number of crimes committed since he has been in command. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 1/17/09)
Three of the victims of the Dec. 30 Mirador Sur incident were members of a leading union, the New Option National Transport Federation (FENATRANO). On Jan. 2 the union's secretary general, Juan Hubieres, charged that the National Police had a "criminal plan" to "exterminate" FENATRANO members; the next day Maj. Gen. Guzmán Fermín denied that there was a plot against either the union or Hubieres. (Latin American Herald Tribune 1/4/09; Listin Diario (San Domingo) 1/3/09; El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 1/3/09 from correspondent; 7 Días 1/4/09) In December more than 40 FENATRANO members staged a hunger strike to demand that the Office for Reordering Transport (Opret) not eliminate routes feeding the Metro system; on Dec. 15 the agency agreed to the union's demands. (Diario a Diario (Dominican Republic) 12/16/08)
*4. Cuba: Embargo to Remain for Now
The administration of Barack Obama, who is to be sworn in as US president on Jan. 20, will eliminate some current US sanctions against Cuba but "it is not time to lift" the 47-year-old US economic embargo, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC on Jan. 13. Her appearance before the committee was part of a process that is expected to win her a quick confirmation as the new administration's secretary of state. Clinton answered a number of questions orally and in writing about US relations with Latin America. The Obama administration "will return to a policy of vigorous involvement" in the region, she said.
"President-Elect Obama believes the Cuban-Americans especially can be important ambassadors for change in Cuba," Clinton wrote in answer to a written question from Richard Lugar (R-IN). "As such, [Obama] believes that it makes both moral and strategic sense to lift the restrictions on family visits and family cash remittances to Cuba. We do not currently have a timeline for the announcement of such a new policy..." Lugar also asked about a number of other issues, including the possibility of taking Cuba off the State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list; of increasing cooperation with Cuba in fighting drug trafficking; and of developing cooperation around "energy security and environmentally sustainable resource management." Clinton didn't go beyond indicating that the new administration "anticipate[s] a review of US policy regarding Cuba." (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/14/09 from correspondent; Steve Clemons, Huffington Post 1/16/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
Paraguay: New Insurgent Group or Framing of Rural Activists?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1664/68/
Bolivia's Economy: Strong 2008 Performance, Uneasy Start to 2009 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1661/68/
Bolivia turns to Brazil for drug war aid
http://ww4report.com/node/6680
Bolivia breaks ties with Israel over Gaza aggression
http://ww4report.com/node/6677
Water in Bolivia: Defeating the Multinationals Is Just the Start of the Problem
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1663/1/
Ecuador: New Mining Law Approved Amidst Rising Tension
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1666/68/
Ecuador Anti-Mining Blockades Met With Repression, National Mobilization Called for January 20
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1659/1/
Colombia: Secret Documents Show US Aware of Army Killings in 1990s
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1665/68/
Palestinian Government Open Letter to Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1662/68/
Did Venezuela's Opposition Meet with US Officials in Puerto Rico?
http://nacla.org/node/5415
Critics Respond to Human Rights Watch's Defense of Venezuela Report
http://nacla.org/node/5414
Youth Demand Transparency as El Salvador Prepares Municipal and Legislative Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1660/1/
Plan Mexico and Central American Migration
http://nacla.org/node/5406
Autonomy Under Siege
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5742
Oaxaca: activist survives stabbing attack
http://ww4report.com/node/6685
Mexico: indigenous communities battle mega-tourism
http://ww4report.com/node/6684
Mexico reacts to ominous Pentagon report ùas pundits plug military aid
http://ww4report.com/node/6679
Obama Reaffirms Promise to Renegotiate NAFTA
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5784
Firing The Boss: An Interview with Chicago Factory Occupation Organizer
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1667/1/
WTO: Staying the Course in the Face of Mistakes
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5777
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #975, January 18, 2009
1. Peru: Farmers Strike Over Water
2. Honduras: Teachers Sit In for Back Pay
3. Dominican Republic: Cops Kill Unionists
4. Cuba: Embargo to Remain for Now
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
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. Peru: Farmers Strike Over Water
Peruvian agricultural producers ended three days of mobilizations on Jan. 17 after Enrique Málaga, president of the National Users Council of the Irrigation Districts of Peru (JNUDRP), met with Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Agriculture Minister Carlos Leyton. "The strike has been suspended in consideration of our having reached an agreement for approval of the General Law of Water, which we were demanding," Málaga told the media. "This law is going to be promulgated next week." Málaga indicated that the agreement also included the formation of a commission for the solution of small agricultural producers' debt problems. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 1/17/09; Univision 1/17/09 from AFP)
JNUDRP, with a membership of 1.6 million, had begun an open-ended strike on Jan. 15, with campesinos using tree trunks, boulders and truck tires to block highways and railroads. In Zarumilla in the northern department of Tumbes, protesters held a sit-in at the international bridge between Peru and Ecuador, paralyzing commerce between the two countries. Picketers clashed with police at the Sullana-Talara highway in nearby Piura department; one protester, Alejandro Yarlequé, was injured. In Chiclayo in Lambayeque department, about 500 producers marched peacefully near the Pan American highway.
In the south, a group of campesinos blocked the railroad to the Machu Picchu archeological site, in Cusco department, as well as the highway to Abancay in neighboring Apurímac department, reportedly leaving some 400 tourists stranded. In the coastal department of Ica, producers blocked the Pan American highway at km 329. Further south, about 10,000 producers observed the strike in Arequipa department. Some 1,000 protesters kept trucks from transporting food, although they let passenger vehicles and trucks carrying other cargos drive through.
In addition to passage of the General Law of Water, JNUDRP was demanding the repeal of legislative decrees 1081 (which creates a National Water Resources System) and 1083; JNUDRP members say these decrees, passed last year, promote privatization of water and are part of the package of laws required for the Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC in Spanish) with the US. [Producers and others mounted major protests against the TLC in June 2006, June 2007 and February 2008; see Updates #859, 905 and 936, where JNUDRP is referred to as the "National Council of Irrigation Users (JNUDR)"]. The government of President Alan García strenuously denied that the decrees would lead to privatization.
Water is a major issue in Peru because of its scarcity. Much of the country depends on glacial runoff for energy, and scientists predict that global warming will deplete this resource in 25 years. (Adital 1/15/09; 24 Horas Libre 1/15/09; Reuters 1/15/09; Correo (Peru) 1/16/09; Coordinadora Nacional de Radio 1/16/09)
Miners are planning to vote on Jan. 31 on a possible strike to protest the firing of 5,500 workers at units run by Gerdau SA, Renco Group Inc. and Volcan Compañía Minera SAA; they also want to press for passage of legislation on pensions and profit-sharing. (Bloomberg 1/13/09)
*2. Honduras: Teachers Sit In for Back Pay
On Jan. 13 Honduran teachers began a series of protests against the government's delays in paying salaries for some 2,600 teachers and its failure to pay full year-end bonuses. For the first phase of the mobilization, the unions representing the nation's 48,000 teachers called for "informational assemblies" throughout the country. The assembly held in the Hibueras de Comayagüela Institute in Tegucigalpa quickly turned into a demonstration. At 11 am the participants marched to the Education Secretariat. Entering the building, they chanted: "Out with [Education Minister Marlon] Brevé!" and "We want to be paid, we're hungry!" Ministry employees left their offices, and the teachers shut the doors to the building. Brevé accused the teachers of sedition and sent for the police. About 30 agents of the National Police with shields and nightsticks blocked the doors to keep more teachers from entering. After an all-night standoff, the agents removed the protesters at about 4 am on Jan. 14.
The teachers went on strike in August in 2006 and 2007 over pay issues [see Updates #863, 910], but this was the first protest they held during a vacation; classes are scheduled to resume on Feb. 2. Union leaders said they would continue with mobilizations during the vacation period, including takeovers of buildings, bridges and highways. (La Tribuna (Honduras) 1/14/09, __; El Heraldo (Honduras) 1/15/09)
*3. Dominican Republic: Cops Kill Unionists
Nine Dominican police agents, including two officers, should be tried for the Dec. 30 shooting deaths of five men in Santo Domingo's Mirador Sur section, according to a report that a special commission presented to National District attorney general Alejandro Moscoso Segarra on Jan. 15. The police had claimed that the five men died during an exchange of gunfire, but an autopsy report from the Forensic Pathology Institute found that four of the victims had been shot in the back. One of the four was shot in the back of the neck at close range, according to forensic physician Sergio Sarita, and the fifth victim was shot "in front while seated, lying down or on his knees." Attorney General Moscoso Segarra said he would decide in 48 hours whether to proceed with the case.
At least 500 people were killed by the Dominican police in 2008, according to a complaint filed with the Interamerican Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) by a Dominican group, the Human Rights Commisison (CNDH). The group's president, Dr. Manuel Maria Mercedes, estimates that 75% of the victims were executed. (Soitu (Spain) 1/15/09 from EFE; Primicias (Dominican Republic) 1/17/09) On Jan. 17 journalists and community leaders in the northern city of Santiago de los Caballeros called on President Leonel Fernández to order the police to explain the deaths of some 40 people killed by police and criminals in the city. Some groups in Santiago have brought court cases against the national police chief, Maj. Gen. Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín, for the large number of crimes committed since he has been in command. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 1/17/09)
Three of the victims of the Dec. 30 Mirador Sur incident were members of a leading union, the New Option National Transport Federation (FENATRANO). On Jan. 2 the union's secretary general, Juan Hubieres, charged that the National Police had a "criminal plan" to "exterminate" FENATRANO members; the next day Maj. Gen. Guzmán Fermín denied that there was a plot against either the union or Hubieres. (Latin American Herald Tribune 1/4/09; Listin Diario (San Domingo) 1/3/09; El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 1/3/09 from correspondent; 7 Días 1/4/09) In December more than 40 FENATRANO members staged a hunger strike to demand that the Office for Reordering Transport (Opret) not eliminate routes feeding the Metro system; on Dec. 15 the agency agreed to the union's demands. (Diario a Diario (Dominican Republic) 12/16/08)
*4. Cuba: Embargo to Remain for Now
The administration of Barack Obama, who is to be sworn in as US president on Jan. 20, will eliminate some current US sanctions against Cuba but "it is not time to lift" the 47-year-old US economic embargo, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC on Jan. 13. Her appearance before the committee was part of a process that is expected to win her a quick confirmation as the new administration's secretary of state. Clinton answered a number of questions orally and in writing about US relations with Latin America. The Obama administration "will return to a policy of vigorous involvement" in the region, she said.
"President-Elect Obama believes the Cuban-Americans especially can be important ambassadors for change in Cuba," Clinton wrote in answer to a written question from Richard Lugar (R-IN). "As such, [Obama] believes that it makes both moral and strategic sense to lift the restrictions on family visits and family cash remittances to Cuba. We do not currently have a timeline for the announcement of such a new policy..." Lugar also asked about a number of other issues, including the possibility of taking Cuba off the State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list; of increasing cooperation with Cuba in fighting drug trafficking; and of developing cooperation around "energy security and environmentally sustainable resource management." Clinton didn't go beyond indicating that the new administration "anticipate[s] a review of US policy regarding Cuba." (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/14/09 from correspondent; Steve Clemons, Huffington Post 1/16/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, US policy
Paraguay: New Insurgent Group or Framing of Rural Activists?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1664/68/
Bolivia's Economy: Strong 2008 Performance, Uneasy Start to 2009 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1661/68/
Bolivia turns to Brazil for drug war aid
http://ww4report.com/node/6680
Bolivia breaks ties with Israel over Gaza aggression
http://ww4report.com/node/6677
Water in Bolivia: Defeating the Multinationals Is Just the Start of the Problem
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1663/1/
Ecuador: New Mining Law Approved Amidst Rising Tension
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1666/68/
Ecuador Anti-Mining Blockades Met With Repression, National Mobilization Called for January 20
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1659/1/
Colombia: Secret Documents Show US Aware of Army Killings in 1990s
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1665/68/
Palestinian Government Open Letter to Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1662/68/
Did Venezuela's Opposition Meet with US Officials in Puerto Rico?
http://nacla.org/node/5415
Critics Respond to Human Rights Watch's Defense of Venezuela Report
http://nacla.org/node/5414
Youth Demand Transparency as El Salvador Prepares Municipal and Legislative Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1660/1/
Plan Mexico and Central American Migration
http://nacla.org/node/5406
Autonomy Under Siege
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5742
Oaxaca: activist survives stabbing attack
http://ww4report.com/node/6685
Mexico: indigenous communities battle mega-tourism
http://ww4report.com/node/6684
Mexico reacts to ominous Pentagon report ùas pundits plug military aid
http://ww4report.com/node/6679
Obama Reaffirms Promise to Renegotiate NAFTA
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5784
Firing The Boss: An Interview with Chicago Factory Occupation Organizer
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1667/1/
WTO: Staying the Course in the Face of Mistakes
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5777
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, 12 January 2009
WNU #974: 600 Haitians Occupy Dominican Church
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #974, January 11, 2009
1. Dominican Republic: 600 Haitians Occupy Church
2. Haiti: US Rejects TPS Plea
3. Latin America: Gaza Protests Continue
4. Mexico: Cops Kill, Pentagon Frets
5. Colombia: CIA Knew About Army Para Ties
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Latin America
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. Dominican Republic: 600 Haitians Occupy Church
On Jan. 6 Dominican soldiers removed some 600 Haitian immigrants without incident from the Nuestra Señora del Rosario church in the city of Dajabón, on the northwestern border with Haiti. The immigrants had occupied the church the day before after Dominican authorities denied them permission to return from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, where they had been living and working. Following lengthy negotiations with Father Regino Martínez, the Jesuit head of the Dominican human rights group Border Solidarity, the authorities allowed 75-80 of the Haitians to stay in the Dominican Republic. Escorted by soldiers, the other immigrants--including whole families carrying their belongings on their shoulders--walked to the neighboring Haitian city of Ouanaminthe.
Father Martínez and other human rights activists had met with immigration service director Gen. José Aníbal Sanz Jiminián on Dec. 18 to tell him that 1,696 Haitian workers planned to travel home for Christmas and return in January. But Dominican authorities denied reentry to about 600 of the workers and their family members on Jan. 4 on the grounds that they lacked documents. The immigrants spent the night in the church in Ouanaminthe and entered Dajabón the next day, Monday, Jan. 5; the border is open for Dajabón's market days on Mondays and Fridays. The immigrants then took over the Dajabón church, where they were welcomed by Martínez, who celebrated a mass with them.
Martínez said the northwestern area was now suffering a shortage of workers; undocumented Haitian immigrant are a large of the workforce in agriculture and construction. An official of the Immigration Directorate said Martínez could be charged with illegal trafficking of immigrants, but two bishops, Diómedes Espinal of the Mao-Monte Cristi diocese and auxiliary Santiago bishop Plinio Valentín Reynoso, backed the priest. (Univisión 1/7/09 from AP; Listin Diario (San Domingo) 1/6/2009, 1/8/2009; Prensa Latina 1/7/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 1/6/08 from EFE, 1/7/08 from AP; Latin America Herald Tribune 1/7/08, 1/8/09)
Dominican authorities said on Jan. 7 that they had deported 1,120 Haitians in the previous three days and had allowed at least 950 others with permits to enter the country. (LAHT 1/8/09)
*2. Haiti: US Rejects TPS Plea
On Dec. 19 US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff wrote Haitian president René Préval that "[a]fter very careful consideration" he was rejecting the Haitian government's request for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for undocumented Haitians in the US. This would have allowed the immigrants to remain in the US until Haiti recovered from the two hurricanes and two tropical storms that hit in one month during the summer; the US granted TPS to many Central Americans after hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, and the designation has been renewed ever since. The US briefly suspended deportations to Haiti after the storms but resumed in December [see Update #970]. Homeland Security spokesperson Michael Keegan said 28 Haitians had been repatriated since the resumption.
The storms reportedly destroyed 15% of Haiti's gross domestic product (GDP). "That's the equivalent of eight to 10 hurricane Katrinas hitting the US in a month's period of time," Randy McGrorty, executive director Catholic Legal Services, told the Miami Herald. He said that "after eight years of dealing with this administration and their policy toward Haiti," he had to think one reason for the rejection was racism. (Miami Herald 1/6/09; South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/7/09)
*3. Latin America: Gaza Protests Continue
On Jan. 6 the Venezuelan foreign ministry announced that it was expelling the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Cohen, to express solidarity with the "heroic Palestinian people" after Israeli's Dec. 27 military assault on the Palestinian territory of Gaza [see Update #973]. Before the announcement, President Hugo Chávez Frías had described the Israeli military as "cowardly" and had called for Israeli president Shimon Peres and US president George W. Bush to be tried by the International Criminal Court for genocide.
Abraham Levy Benshimol, president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations, said Chávez's remarks were unjust, fundamentally unreal and "worrisome" for the nearly 15,000 people in Venezuela's Jewish community. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/7/09 from DPA, AFP, Reuters, PL; Adital 1/7/09; New York Times 1/8/09 from AP; Miami Herald 1/8/09 from McClatchy News Service) In Israel, the Communist Party sent Chávez a letter on Jan. 8 thanking him for his position. "We believe that yours is an example to imitate, not only for other Latin American governments," the letter said. "It must be the position of all the states in our region, the Middle East." (Press release 1/8/09 via MRzine.org)
On Jan. 8 Ecuadoran foreign minister Fander Falconi called Israeli military actions "flagrant violations" of international law and urged the United Nations (UN) to issue "a condemnation of Israel for crimes against humanity." The government saluted all demonstrations showing solidarity with the Palestinian people, Falconi said. (Xinhua 1/8/09)
As of Jan. 11, the largest Latin American demonstration against the assault was a march of some 20,000 people in Argentina on Jan. 6. "Zionist state, you're the terrorist," the crowd chanted as it moved from the Obelisk in downtown Buenos Aires to the Israeli embassy. The organizers included the Land and Housing Federation (FTV), the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), the Workers Party, the Communist Party, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Argentine Islamic Association. Alejandro Salomón, head of the Federation of Argentine Arab Entities (Fearab), called for the government to break relations with Israel. "We don't want any dealings with a state that has always voted against Argentina in its claim for the Malvinas," he said; the islands, known in English as the Falkland Islands, are also claimed by the United Kingdom. There were also smaller demonstrations in other cities on Jan. 6; about 100 people protested in the Plaza Independencia in Tucumán. (Miami Herald 1/8/09 from McClatchy News Service; La Gaceta Tucumán (Argentina) 1/7/09)
On Jan. 9 Fearab and the FTV launched a national solidarity campaign for humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The campaign will extend to Jan. 23, Fearab's Roberto Ahuad said at a press conference held at the office of the Federation of Popular Movements, which is headed by Luis D'Elía. (Télam (Argentina) 1/9/09) [D'Elia is a leader of the leftist Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) and the FTV--a part of the piquetero (picketer) unemployed movement. He was also an official in the government of former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).]
Hundreds of people marched from the Hemiciclo a Juárez to the US embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 10 to protest Israel's actions. "Palestine lives, the struggle continues," they chanted, throwing shoes at the building. The protest was organized by the Mexican Movement of Solidarity with Palestine and other organizations. (LJ 1/11/09)
*4. Mexico: Cops Kill, Pentagon Frets
Three undocumented immigrants were killed and eight others injured when state preventive police fired on a truck near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on the morning of Jan. 9. Police agents opened fire after the driver refused to stop the truck, which was carrying some 30 Chinese, Ecuadoran and Guatemalan immigrants entering from Guatemala in transit to the US. The agents continued to shoot during a 20-minute chase that ended with the truck crashing. All the injured and at least one of the dead had received bullet wounds; the driver and an immigrant smuggler escaped. Two of the agents were reportedly detained. (La Jornada 1/10/09)
Also on Jan. 9, some 4,000 people marched in Ocotlán in the western state of Jalisco to protest the killing of 21-year-old Fernando López Alejandre by municipal police on Jan. 1 and to demand the removal of Mayor Absalón García Ochoa, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Police chief Filiberto Ortiz Amador had been dismissed two days earlier. The agents shot López Alejandre, a bass player with the Arcadia Libre rock band, as he was driving with a friend. Residents say the police regularly harass youths. Both Mayor García Ochoa and former police chief Ortiz Amador are reportedly close to Jalisco governor Francisco Ramírez Acuña, a PAN leader. García Ochoa and Ortiz Amador were state security officials in May 2004 when state police violently repressed a demonstration in Guadalajara against a summit held there [see Updates #748, 749, 751]. (LJ 1/10/09)
In a Jan. 9 meeting with ambassadors and consuls in Mexico City, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, also of the PAN, denied that there was chaos in Mexico and that "the civilian population was being massacred in the streets." He was apparently referring to fighting among drug cartels and between drug traffickers and the government. (LJ 1/10/09) More than 8,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars over the past two years. A study by the US Joint Forces Command, a US military planning group, warns that the Mexican state may "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse" because of "sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels... Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." (International Herald Tribune 1/9/09 from Reuters)
*5. Colombia: CIA Knew About Army Para Ties
On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating leftwing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune 1/9/09)
In other news, Diego Tobón, Colombia's ambassador to Moscow, has told the Italian press agency ANSA that Russia will extradite Yair Klein, a former Israeli colonel, to Colombia in March. Klein has been charged with aiding the Medellín drug cartel; he is also accused of training rightwing paramilitary groups [see Update #895]. (Colombia Reports 1/6/09)... On Jan. 7, the Colombian government authorized Senator Piedad Córdoba to participate in the release of six hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The mission will be headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). [President Uribe indicated previously that he didn't want Córdoba involved; see Update #972].
(LAHT 1/8/09)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Latin America
Argentina: GM Soy Wreaks Cultural and Economic Havoc in Jujuy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1656/1/
Between Law and Politics: The Continuing Struggle Against Impunity in Uruguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1654/1/
Peru: oil company poised to enter uncontacted tribes' territory
http://ww4report.com/node/6633
Peru: A Mining Town's Woes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1658/68/
Indigenous anti-mining protests hit Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1653/68/
Colombian drug lord shot dead in Spanish hospital
http://ww4report.com/node/6645
Venezuela breaks ties with Israel:
US Congress signs off on Gaza aggression as global outrage grows
http://ww4report.com/node/6650
Human Rights Watch Responds to Criticism of Venezuela Report
http://nacla.org/node/5369
El Salvador: Community Fights Private Waste Dump Construction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1651/1/
Honduras: Stormy Economic Outlook for 2009
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1652/68/
Mexico: fishermen strike over fuel prices
http://ww4report.com/node/6644
Mexican cabinet report: US arms drug cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/6643
Mexico: narcos wage terror campaign against media
http://ww4report.com/node/6642
Video Interview with Eduardo Galeano: Latin American History and Politics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1650/68/
Invasion of Gaza Met With Protests Throughout Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1657/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #974, January 11, 2009
1. Dominican Republic: 600 Haitians Occupy Church
2. Haiti: US Rejects TPS Plea
3. Latin America: Gaza Protests Continue
4. Mexico: Cops Kill, Pentagon Frets
5. Colombia: CIA Knew About Army Para Ties
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Latin America
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. Dominican Republic: 600 Haitians Occupy Church
On Jan. 6 Dominican soldiers removed some 600 Haitian immigrants without incident from the Nuestra Señora del Rosario church in the city of Dajabón, on the northwestern border with Haiti. The immigrants had occupied the church the day before after Dominican authorities denied them permission to return from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, where they had been living and working. Following lengthy negotiations with Father Regino Martínez, the Jesuit head of the Dominican human rights group Border Solidarity, the authorities allowed 75-80 of the Haitians to stay in the Dominican Republic. Escorted by soldiers, the other immigrants--including whole families carrying their belongings on their shoulders--walked to the neighboring Haitian city of Ouanaminthe.
Father Martínez and other human rights activists had met with immigration service director Gen. José Aníbal Sanz Jiminián on Dec. 18 to tell him that 1,696 Haitian workers planned to travel home for Christmas and return in January. But Dominican authorities denied reentry to about 600 of the workers and their family members on Jan. 4 on the grounds that they lacked documents. The immigrants spent the night in the church in Ouanaminthe and entered Dajabón the next day, Monday, Jan. 5; the border is open for Dajabón's market days on Mondays and Fridays. The immigrants then took over the Dajabón church, where they were welcomed by Martínez, who celebrated a mass with them.
Martínez said the northwestern area was now suffering a shortage of workers; undocumented Haitian immigrant are a large of the workforce in agriculture and construction. An official of the Immigration Directorate said Martínez could be charged with illegal trafficking of immigrants, but two bishops, Diómedes Espinal of the Mao-Monte Cristi diocese and auxiliary Santiago bishop Plinio Valentín Reynoso, backed the priest. (Univisión 1/7/09 from AP; Listin Diario (San Domingo) 1/6/2009, 1/8/2009; Prensa Latina 1/7/09; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 1/6/08 from EFE, 1/7/08 from AP; Latin America Herald Tribune 1/7/08, 1/8/09)
Dominican authorities said on Jan. 7 that they had deported 1,120 Haitians in the previous three days and had allowed at least 950 others with permits to enter the country. (LAHT 1/8/09)
*2. Haiti: US Rejects TPS Plea
On Dec. 19 US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff wrote Haitian president René Préval that "[a]fter very careful consideration" he was rejecting the Haitian government's request for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for undocumented Haitians in the US. This would have allowed the immigrants to remain in the US until Haiti recovered from the two hurricanes and two tropical storms that hit in one month during the summer; the US granted TPS to many Central Americans after hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, and the designation has been renewed ever since. The US briefly suspended deportations to Haiti after the storms but resumed in December [see Update #970]. Homeland Security spokesperson Michael Keegan said 28 Haitians had been repatriated since the resumption.
The storms reportedly destroyed 15% of Haiti's gross domestic product (GDP). "That's the equivalent of eight to 10 hurricane Katrinas hitting the US in a month's period of time," Randy McGrorty, executive director Catholic Legal Services, told the Miami Herald. He said that "after eight years of dealing with this administration and their policy toward Haiti," he had to think one reason for the rejection was racism. (Miami Herald 1/6/09; South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/7/09)
*3. Latin America: Gaza Protests Continue
On Jan. 6 the Venezuelan foreign ministry announced that it was expelling the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Cohen, to express solidarity with the "heroic Palestinian people" after Israeli's Dec. 27 military assault on the Palestinian territory of Gaza [see Update #973]. Before the announcement, President Hugo Chávez Frías had described the Israeli military as "cowardly" and had called for Israeli president Shimon Peres and US president George W. Bush to be tried by the International Criminal Court for genocide.
Abraham Levy Benshimol, president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations, said Chávez's remarks were unjust, fundamentally unreal and "worrisome" for the nearly 15,000 people in Venezuela's Jewish community. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/7/09 from DPA, AFP, Reuters, PL; Adital 1/7/09; New York Times 1/8/09 from AP; Miami Herald 1/8/09 from McClatchy News Service) In Israel, the Communist Party sent Chávez a letter on Jan. 8 thanking him for his position. "We believe that yours is an example to imitate, not only for other Latin American governments," the letter said. "It must be the position of all the states in our region, the Middle East." (Press release 1/8/09 via MRzine.org)
On Jan. 8 Ecuadoran foreign minister Fander Falconi called Israeli military actions "flagrant violations" of international law and urged the United Nations (UN) to issue "a condemnation of Israel for crimes against humanity." The government saluted all demonstrations showing solidarity with the Palestinian people, Falconi said. (Xinhua 1/8/09)
As of Jan. 11, the largest Latin American demonstration against the assault was a march of some 20,000 people in Argentina on Jan. 6. "Zionist state, you're the terrorist," the crowd chanted as it moved from the Obelisk in downtown Buenos Aires to the Israeli embassy. The organizers included the Land and Housing Federation (FTV), the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), the Workers Party, the Communist Party, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Argentine Islamic Association. Alejandro Salomón, head of the Federation of Argentine Arab Entities (Fearab), called for the government to break relations with Israel. "We don't want any dealings with a state that has always voted against Argentina in its claim for the Malvinas," he said; the islands, known in English as the Falkland Islands, are also claimed by the United Kingdom. There were also smaller demonstrations in other cities on Jan. 6; about 100 people protested in the Plaza Independencia in Tucumán. (Miami Herald 1/8/09 from McClatchy News Service; La Gaceta Tucumán (Argentina) 1/7/09)
On Jan. 9 Fearab and the FTV launched a national solidarity campaign for humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The campaign will extend to Jan. 23, Fearab's Roberto Ahuad said at a press conference held at the office of the Federation of Popular Movements, which is headed by Luis D'Elía. (Télam (Argentina) 1/9/09) [D'Elia is a leader of the leftist Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) and the FTV--a part of the piquetero (picketer) unemployed movement. He was also an official in the government of former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).]
Hundreds of people marched from the Hemiciclo a Juárez to the US embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 10 to protest Israel's actions. "Palestine lives, the struggle continues," they chanted, throwing shoes at the building. The protest was organized by the Mexican Movement of Solidarity with Palestine and other organizations. (LJ 1/11/09)
*4. Mexico: Cops Kill, Pentagon Frets
Three undocumented immigrants were killed and eight others injured when state preventive police fired on a truck near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on the morning of Jan. 9. Police agents opened fire after the driver refused to stop the truck, which was carrying some 30 Chinese, Ecuadoran and Guatemalan immigrants entering from Guatemala in transit to the US. The agents continued to shoot during a 20-minute chase that ended with the truck crashing. All the injured and at least one of the dead had received bullet wounds; the driver and an immigrant smuggler escaped. Two of the agents were reportedly detained. (La Jornada 1/10/09)
Also on Jan. 9, some 4,000 people marched in Ocotlán in the western state of Jalisco to protest the killing of 21-year-old Fernando López Alejandre by municipal police on Jan. 1 and to demand the removal of Mayor Absalón García Ochoa, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Police chief Filiberto Ortiz Amador had been dismissed two days earlier. The agents shot López Alejandre, a bass player with the Arcadia Libre rock band, as he was driving with a friend. Residents say the police regularly harass youths. Both Mayor García Ochoa and former police chief Ortiz Amador are reportedly close to Jalisco governor Francisco Ramírez Acuña, a PAN leader. García Ochoa and Ortiz Amador were state security officials in May 2004 when state police violently repressed a demonstration in Guadalajara against a summit held there [see Updates #748, 749, 751]. (LJ 1/10/09)
In a Jan. 9 meeting with ambassadors and consuls in Mexico City, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, also of the PAN, denied that there was chaos in Mexico and that "the civilian population was being massacred in the streets." He was apparently referring to fighting among drug cartels and between drug traffickers and the government. (LJ 1/10/09) More than 8,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars over the past two years. A study by the US Joint Forces Command, a US military planning group, warns that the Mexican state may "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse" because of "sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels... Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." (International Herald Tribune 1/9/09 from Reuters)
*5. Colombia: CIA Knew About Army Para Ties
On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating leftwing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune 1/9/09)
In other news, Diego Tobón, Colombia's ambassador to Moscow, has told the Italian press agency ANSA that Russia will extradite Yair Klein, a former Israeli colonel, to Colombia in March. Klein has been charged with aiding the Medellín drug cartel; he is also accused of training rightwing paramilitary groups [see Update #895]. (Colombia Reports 1/6/09)... On Jan. 7, the Colombian government authorized Senator Piedad Córdoba to participate in the release of six hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The mission will be headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). [President Uribe indicated previously that he didn't want Córdoba involved; see Update #972].
(LAHT 1/8/09)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Latin America
Argentina: GM Soy Wreaks Cultural and Economic Havoc in Jujuy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1656/1/
Between Law and Politics: The Continuing Struggle Against Impunity in Uruguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1654/1/
Peru: oil company poised to enter uncontacted tribes' territory
http://ww4report.com/node/6633
Peru: A Mining Town's Woes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1658/68/
Indigenous anti-mining protests hit Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1653/68/
Colombian drug lord shot dead in Spanish hospital
http://ww4report.com/node/6645
Venezuela breaks ties with Israel:
US Congress signs off on Gaza aggression as global outrage grows
http://ww4report.com/node/6650
Human Rights Watch Responds to Criticism of Venezuela Report
http://nacla.org/node/5369
El Salvador: Community Fights Private Waste Dump Construction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1651/1/
Honduras: Stormy Economic Outlook for 2009
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1652/68/
Mexico: fishermen strike over fuel prices
http://ww4report.com/node/6644
Mexican cabinet report: US arms drug cartels
http://ww4report.com/node/6643
Mexico: narcos wage terror campaign against media
http://ww4report.com/node/6642
Video Interview with Eduardo Galeano: Latin American History and Politics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1650/68/
Invasion of Gaza Met With Protests Throughout Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1657/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Sunday, 4 January 2009
WNU #973: Latin America Reacts to Attack on Gaza
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #973, January 4, 2009
1. Latin America: Reactions to Attack on Gaza
2. Cuba: The Revolution Turns 50
3. Mexico: EZLN Celebrates 15 Years
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, US Policy
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: Reactions to Attack on Gaza
Latin American governments and organizations generally condemned a major assault on the Palestinian territory of Gaza by Israeli military forces that began with an air offensive on Dec. 27 and escalated into a ground attack on Jan. 3. There were also a number of street protests, which the media reported were mostly small.
The strongest condemnations came from leftist governments. Cuba's Communist government issued a statement on Dec. 27, at the beginning of the air campaign, calling the offensive an "act of genocide" and a "criminal military operation, the bloodiest one executed by Israel against the Palestinian people." It "takes place in the midst of an illegal blockade imposed by the Israeli government in the last 18 months against the Gaza Strip, directed at annihilating and subduing the Palestinian population--including children, women and the elderly--by hunger and disease." Cuba expressed its "unyielding solidarity with and support for this long-suffering and heroic people." (Declaración del Gobierno Revolucionario 12/27/08; Prensa Latina 12/28/08) [Israel is the only country that consistently votes with the US each year when the United Nations General Assembly condemns the US economic embargo of Cuba; see Update #966 for the 2008 vote.]
On Dec. 30 the Bolivian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the air strikes "crimes" that "represent a severe and massive violation of the International Humanitarian Law." The strikes "killed civilians under the excuse of responding to some militia attacks, and also they have as a military target civilian infrastructure like universities." (Xinhua 12/30/08) On Dec. 27 Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez called the Israeli assault "criminal." (El País (Spain) 12/30/08 from unidentified wire services)
Latin American countries with center-left governments seemed less inclined to place all the blame on the Israeli government. Israel says the assault is intended to stop rocket attacks by the rightwing Islamic group Hamas, which governs Gaza. Mercosur--a trade bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela in the process of admission--expressed its rejection of "the escalation of violence and intimidation occurring in the Gaza Strip" and "urged the parties to put an end to hostilities" and called for them to "return immediately to dialogue."
However, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used stronger terms on Dec. 30 to criticize the United Nations (UN) and the US for failing to pass a resolution to stop the air campaign. "What is proven is that the UN doesn't have the courage to make a decision and to make peace in this place," he said. "And it doesn't have the courage because the US has the power of the veto [in the UN Security Council], so things don't happen." The Israel military actions were "disproportionate," he said.
The governments of Chile, Nicaragua and Peru officially condemned the bombardments.
Dec. 29 brought out protesters throughout the region. Some 50 people, mostly Venezuelans of Arab descent, demonstrated in front of the Israeli embassy in Caracas, chanting in Arabic, spitting on a star of David and burning the Israeli and US flags. A little girl held up a drawing of bleeding children with the words: "No more massacre in Gaza." The protesters left Palestinian and Venezuelan flags hanging at the embassy door, along with a number of shoes--a reference to an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US president George W. Bush at a Dec. 14 press conference.
In Argentina, organizations of people of Arabic origin, along with leftist parties and social movements, protested in front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. "Israel out of Palestine," "Free Palestine" and "Peace for the Palestinians," they chanted, waving Palestinian flags and shoes. Brazilians of Arab descent protested near the Sao Paulo Art Museum; socialists protested in Chile; and the local Palestinian community protested in Colombia. (El País 12/30/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/31/08 from DPA, AFP, PL, Reuters; La Prensa (Panama) 12/29/08; Univisión 12/29/08 from AFP)
In Panama, some 200 people from social movements and unions protested in front of the Israeli embassy. Panama resident Khaled Salama, who is a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), called Israel a "terrorist state"; he urged "the world to judge these terrorists as war criminals," and demanded that the Israeli and US governments pay for "all the damage they've done" in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. In Panama, he added, there are 50 religions, and Muslims and Jews live and work together without major problems. Genaro López, director of the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (SUNTRACS), said Israel acts as it does "because it has the support of the US" and "an important economic power that backs it." (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 12/30/08 from AFP)
After the Israeli military began its ground offensive on Jan. 3, Mexico's center-right government called for a ceasefire by both sides. Mexico is currently a member of the UN Security Council, and the government pledged to participate "actively and constructively" to end the military escalation. (LJ 1/4/09) The government statement contrasted sharply with a Dec. 29 declaration by participants in the World Festival of Dignified Rage, a 10-day celebration by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). "This crime [the Israeli assault] represents a dangerous increase in the permanent holocaust against the Palestinian people," they said, condemning the "complicit, hypocritical and unworthy silence of the world.... We declare our dignified rage against this genocide." (LJ 12/31/08)
On Dec. 29 an unnamed Israeli official indicated that his government wasn't worried about world reactions to the assault. "[T]he tone of the criticism is moderate, tempered and balanced," he said, "at least in the countries that count." (El País 12/30/08)
*2. Cuba: The Revolution Turns 50
Cuban president Raúl Castro Ruz led a subdued celebration on Jan. 1 for the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The ceremony took place in the eastern city of Santiago, where Castro's brother, former president Fidel Castro, declared victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. Raúl Castro reminded his listeners of his brother's warning on Nov. 19, 2005 that the US could never destroy Cuba's political system but Cubans themselves could. Raúl Castro said that to avoid this, future leaders must not "become soft with the siren songs of the enemy" and must "remain conscious that, in its essence, [the enemy] will never cease to be aggressive, domineering and treacherous."
Fidel Castro, who stepped down from the presidency for reasons of health in July 2006, published a brief message on Jan. 1: "On the occasion within a few hours of the 50th anniversary of the triumph, I congratulate our heroic people." Although he had been writing articles frequently in his retirement, this was his first public comment in two weeks. (La Jornada 1/2/09 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: EZLN Celebrates 15 Years
On Dec. 26 supporters of Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) began the "World Festival of Dignified Rage" in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City). The series of events marks 15 years since the mostly indigenous group took the world by surprise on Jan. 1, 1994 with the military occupation of four cities in the southeastern state of Chiapas. Some 2,500 people reportedly were participating in the festival, which moved to Oventic in Chiapas on Dec. 31 and then to the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, which the rebels occupied at the beginning of 1994. The festival is to run through Jan. 5. Speakers include representatives of the New York-based Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Unemployed Workers Movement of Argentina and the Greek Alana Magazine; Argentine-born Mexican writer Adolfo Gilly; former Nicaraguan rebel leader Mónica Baltodano, now a leader of the opposition Movement for the Rescue of Sandinism; Uruguayan writer Raúl Zibechi; and Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera.
Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos, the EZLN spokesperson, made his first appearance at the event on Jan. 2 with a speech denouncing President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's militarized "war on drugs." He charged that Calderón "decided that instead of bread and circuses for the people, you had to give them violence...since the professional politicians are already providing the circuses, and bread is very expensive." He also criticized the violence of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which governs the DF. [A June 20 police operation in a DF discotheque resulted in 12 deaths, many of underage patrons; see Update #954] (La Jornada 12/31/08; LJ 1/3/09; Narco News 1/3/09)
Correction: This paragraph originally said that Marcos made his speech on Jan. 3 and that the source was LJ 1/4/08.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, US Policy
Rancher to face charges in 2005 slaying of activist nun in Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/6589
Peru: coca economy destroys rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/6590
Inter-American court finds Colombia guilty in assassination
http://ww4report.com/node/6597
Financing Venezuela's Communal Councils
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1643/68/
Venezuela's ALBA in the face of the Global Economic Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1642/1/
Costa Rica: From 'Green' to Gold?
http://nacla.org/node/5357
Operation Disrupt Democracy in El Salvador
http://nacla.org/node/5363
United for Change in El Salvador: Video on 2009 Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1646/1/
Mexico: bloody New Year despite arrest of kingpin
http://ww4report.com/node/6620
End the Embargo Against Cuba
http://nacla.org/node/5360
Video Interview: Edward S. Herman on Latin America and the US
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1648/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #973, January 4, 2009
1. Latin America: Reactions to Attack on Gaza
2. Cuba: The Revolution Turns 50
3. Mexico: EZLN Celebrates 15 Years
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, US Policy
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: Reactions to Attack on Gaza
Latin American governments and organizations generally condemned a major assault on the Palestinian territory of Gaza by Israeli military forces that began with an air offensive on Dec. 27 and escalated into a ground attack on Jan. 3. There were also a number of street protests, which the media reported were mostly small.
The strongest condemnations came from leftist governments. Cuba's Communist government issued a statement on Dec. 27, at the beginning of the air campaign, calling the offensive an "act of genocide" and a "criminal military operation, the bloodiest one executed by Israel against the Palestinian people." It "takes place in the midst of an illegal blockade imposed by the Israeli government in the last 18 months against the Gaza Strip, directed at annihilating and subduing the Palestinian population--including children, women and the elderly--by hunger and disease." Cuba expressed its "unyielding solidarity with and support for this long-suffering and heroic people." (Declaración del Gobierno Revolucionario 12/27/08; Prensa Latina 12/28/08) [Israel is the only country that consistently votes with the US each year when the United Nations General Assembly condemns the US economic embargo of Cuba; see Update #966 for the 2008 vote.]
On Dec. 30 the Bolivian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the air strikes "crimes" that "represent a severe and massive violation of the International Humanitarian Law." The strikes "killed civilians under the excuse of responding to some militia attacks, and also they have as a military target civilian infrastructure like universities." (Xinhua 12/30/08) On Dec. 27 Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez called the Israeli assault "criminal." (El País (Spain) 12/30/08 from unidentified wire services)
Latin American countries with center-left governments seemed less inclined to place all the blame on the Israeli government. Israel says the assault is intended to stop rocket attacks by the rightwing Islamic group Hamas, which governs Gaza. Mercosur--a trade bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela in the process of admission--expressed its rejection of "the escalation of violence and intimidation occurring in the Gaza Strip" and "urged the parties to put an end to hostilities" and called for them to "return immediately to dialogue."
However, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used stronger terms on Dec. 30 to criticize the United Nations (UN) and the US for failing to pass a resolution to stop the air campaign. "What is proven is that the UN doesn't have the courage to make a decision and to make peace in this place," he said. "And it doesn't have the courage because the US has the power of the veto [in the UN Security Council], so things don't happen." The Israel military actions were "disproportionate," he said.
The governments of Chile, Nicaragua and Peru officially condemned the bombardments.
Dec. 29 brought out protesters throughout the region. Some 50 people, mostly Venezuelans of Arab descent, demonstrated in front of the Israeli embassy in Caracas, chanting in Arabic, spitting on a star of David and burning the Israeli and US flags. A little girl held up a drawing of bleeding children with the words: "No more massacre in Gaza." The protesters left Palestinian and Venezuelan flags hanging at the embassy door, along with a number of shoes--a reference to an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US president George W. Bush at a Dec. 14 press conference.
In Argentina, organizations of people of Arabic origin, along with leftist parties and social movements, protested in front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. "Israel out of Palestine," "Free Palestine" and "Peace for the Palestinians," they chanted, waving Palestinian flags and shoes. Brazilians of Arab descent protested near the Sao Paulo Art Museum; socialists protested in Chile; and the local Palestinian community protested in Colombia. (El País 12/30/08; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/31/08 from DPA, AFP, PL, Reuters; La Prensa (Panama) 12/29/08; Univisión 12/29/08 from AFP)
In Panama, some 200 people from social movements and unions protested in front of the Israeli embassy. Panama resident Khaled Salama, who is a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), called Israel a "terrorist state"; he urged "the world to judge these terrorists as war criminals," and demanded that the Israeli and US governments pay for "all the damage they've done" in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. In Panama, he added, there are 50 religions, and Muslims and Jews live and work together without major problems. Genaro López, director of the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (SUNTRACS), said Israel acts as it does "because it has the support of the US" and "an important economic power that backs it." (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 12/30/08 from AFP)
After the Israeli military began its ground offensive on Jan. 3, Mexico's center-right government called for a ceasefire by both sides. Mexico is currently a member of the UN Security Council, and the government pledged to participate "actively and constructively" to end the military escalation. (LJ 1/4/09) The government statement contrasted sharply with a Dec. 29 declaration by participants in the World Festival of Dignified Rage, a 10-day celebration by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). "This crime [the Israeli assault] represents a dangerous increase in the permanent holocaust against the Palestinian people," they said, condemning the "complicit, hypocritical and unworthy silence of the world.... We declare our dignified rage against this genocide." (LJ 12/31/08)
On Dec. 29 an unnamed Israeli official indicated that his government wasn't worried about world reactions to the assault. "[T]he tone of the criticism is moderate, tempered and balanced," he said, "at least in the countries that count." (El País 12/30/08)
*2. Cuba: The Revolution Turns 50
Cuban president Raúl Castro Ruz led a subdued celebration on Jan. 1 for the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The ceremony took place in the eastern city of Santiago, where Castro's brother, former president Fidel Castro, declared victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. Raúl Castro reminded his listeners of his brother's warning on Nov. 19, 2005 that the US could never destroy Cuba's political system but Cubans themselves could. Raúl Castro said that to avoid this, future leaders must not "become soft with the siren songs of the enemy" and must "remain conscious that, in its essence, [the enemy] will never cease to be aggressive, domineering and treacherous."
Fidel Castro, who stepped down from the presidency for reasons of health in July 2006, published a brief message on Jan. 1: "On the occasion within a few hours of the 50th anniversary of the triumph, I congratulate our heroic people." Although he had been writing articles frequently in his retirement, this was his first public comment in two weeks. (La Jornada 1/2/09 from correspondent)
*3. Mexico: EZLN Celebrates 15 Years
On Dec. 26 supporters of Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) began the "World Festival of Dignified Rage" in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City). The series of events marks 15 years since the mostly indigenous group took the world by surprise on Jan. 1, 1994 with the military occupation of four cities in the southeastern state of Chiapas. Some 2,500 people reportedly were participating in the festival, which moved to Oventic in Chiapas on Dec. 31 and then to the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, which the rebels occupied at the beginning of 1994. The festival is to run through Jan. 5. Speakers include representatives of the New York-based Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Unemployed Workers Movement of Argentina and the Greek Alana Magazine; Argentine-born Mexican writer Adolfo Gilly; former Nicaraguan rebel leader Mónica Baltodano, now a leader of the opposition Movement for the Rescue of Sandinism; Uruguayan writer Raúl Zibechi; and Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera.
Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos, the EZLN spokesperson, made his first appearance at the event on Jan. 2 with a speech denouncing President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's militarized "war on drugs." He charged that Calderón "decided that instead of bread and circuses for the people, you had to give them violence...since the professional politicians are already providing the circuses, and bread is very expensive." He also criticized the violence of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which governs the DF. [A June 20 police operation in a DF discotheque resulted in 12 deaths, many of underage patrons; see Update #954] (La Jornada 12/31/08; LJ 1/3/09; Narco News 1/3/09)
Correction: This paragraph originally said that Marcos made his speech on Jan. 3 and that the source was LJ 1/4/08.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, US Policy
Rancher to face charges in 2005 slaying of activist nun in Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/6589
Peru: coca economy destroys rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/6590
Inter-American court finds Colombia guilty in assassination
http://ww4report.com/node/6597
Financing Venezuela's Communal Councils
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1643/68/
Venezuela's ALBA in the face of the Global Economic Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1642/1/
Costa Rica: From 'Green' to Gold?
http://nacla.org/node/5357
Operation Disrupt Democracy in El Salvador
http://nacla.org/node/5363
United for Change in El Salvador: Video on 2009 Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1646/1/
Mexico: bloody New Year despite arrest of kingpin
http://ww4report.com/node/6620
End the Embargo Against Cuba
http://nacla.org/node/5360
Video Interview: Edward S. Herman on Latin America and the US
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1648/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and
alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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