Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1077, April 24, 2011
1. Chile: Mapuche Prisoners Start New Hunger Strike
2. Honduras: Rights Abuses May Catch Up With Aguán Landowner
3. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Chile: Mapuche Prisoners Start New Hunger Strike
A group of activists for the rights of indigenous Mapuche Chileans interrupted the Easter mass at Santiago’s Metropolitan Cathedral on Apr. 24 to call for the release of four Mapuche prisoners who have been on hunger strike since Mar. 15. The activists, led by the prisoners’ spokesperson, Natividad Llanquileo, waited until a few minutes after the homily to begin their protest; they shouted slogans and unfurled a banner that read: “Freedom for the Mapuche political prisoners.” Carabinero police agents arrived and dispersed the demonstrators; two were detained but were released later.
The protest was “an expression of human sorrow more than an interruption,” said Santiago archbishop Ricardo Ezzati, who was presiding over the service, “and it asks us to experience Easter by extending a hand to those who suffer.” Ezzati was a mediator in negotiations that ended a lengthy hunger strike by 34 Mapuche prisoners in the fall of 2010 [see Update #1052]. (La Nación (Chile) 4/24/11)
The four prisoners--Héctor Llaitul, Ramón Llenaquileo, José Huenuche and Jonathan Huillical—were among 17 indigenous Mapuche activists tried this year on “terrorism” charges relating to a fire and an attack on a prosecutor, Mario Elgueta, in October 2008. All the defendants were acquitted of the “terrorism” charges on Feb. 22, but these four prisoners were convicted of attempted homicide, a common crime, in the attack on Elgueta [see Update #1069]. Their sentences were expected to be up to 15 years in prison, but on Mar. 22 the judges handed down prison terms of 20 to 25 years. The four activists started their hunger strike before the sentencing to protest the prosecutors’ use of an unidentified witness in the case and the use of charges based on a harsh “antiterrorism” law that dates back to the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
The four prisoners took part in last year’s hunger strike, and they started the new fast in a weakened state of health. As of Apr. 20 Guatemalan indigenous activist and 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum had joined Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, French musician Manu Chao, US sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, Mexican sociologist Pablo González Casanova, Brazilian philosopher Emir Sader and many others in signing a letter of solidarity with the prisoners. Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine winner of the 1980 Nobel peace prize, had sent a letter earlier to Chilean Supreme Court president Milton Juica Arancibia condemning the convictions and the sentences. (Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11 from Radio Universidad de Chile; Prensa Latina 4/20/11)
In other news, Mapuche leaders made a complaint to the military prosecutor for Valdivia province the week of Apr. 18 concerning alleged abuses by Carabineros in the communities of Juan Painepe and Vicente Reinahuel in Panguipulli in the Los Ríos region of southern Chile. “At 6 pm they entered the community and began to harass the people, who now have to stay in the mountains,” charged Jorge Hueque, a member of the Mapuche parliament in Koz Koz valley. “They even harass the children. The children have to stay in the mountains, go to school in the morning and then return.” The police agents were sent to the area at the beginning of April in response to a complaint by a company, Las Vertientes, which claims land also claimed by the Mapuche communities. Community members have occupied some of the disputed area. (Adital 4/20/11)
*2. Honduras: Rights Abuses May Catch Up With Aguán Landowner
On Apr. 8 a German development bank, DEG Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, cancelled a previously approved loan to Grupo Dinant, a large Honduran company that produces snacks, other food products and cooking oil; the loan was reportedly worth $20 million. Shortly afterwards, EDF Trading, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French energy firm Electricité de France SA, cancelled a contract to buy carbon credits from a Dinant subsidiary, Exportadora del Atlántico, under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for carbon trading.
Although the two European companies didn’t explain why they were backing out of their Honduran deals, the moves appeared to result from an international campaign around allegations of human rights abuses in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley by Dinant’s founder, wealthy landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum.
Along with other big landowners, Facussé has been engaged in a longstanding, often bloody dispute over land in the Lower Aguán region claimed by campesino families living in the area. In a recent incident, five private guards killed five members of the Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MCA) on Nov. 15 at Facussé’s El Tumbador African palm plantation, in Trujillo, Colón. In addition to raising African palms on Lower Aguán land for cooking oil, Facussé and Dinant have been trying to use African palms to get a foothold in the international biofuel market. Dinant has secured a $7 million loan from the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) and a $30 million loan from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) in part to expand the company’s African palm cultivation [see Updates #1027, 1058].
A number of environmental and human rights organizations--including two German-based groups, the environmental watchdog CDM Watch and the human rights group FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN)--have been working to publicize Honduran activists’ charges of human rights violations by Facussé and Dinant. On Mar. 25, a FIAN-led fact-finding mission submitted a report to the rapporteur for Honduras of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) saying that 23 peasants were killed in the Lower Aguán between January 2010 and February 2011 and stressing the five deaths in the Nov. 15 incident. DEG and EDF decided to withdraw their support for Dinant a little more than two weeks after release of the report.
The environmental and human rights groups are now putting pressure on the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board to reject Dinant as a recipient of CDM carbon credits. The United Kingdom’s CDM agency has also authorized the Dinant project, and in March 76 organizations sent the British government an open letter calling for an end to the authorization.
Dinant is responding with claims that the company might have to close because of “misleading statements” by the rights groups. “Eight thousand people could lose their jobs” if Dinant closes, company treasure Roger Pineda told the Bloomberg business news service on Apr. 19. Pineda said Dinant is investigating the deaths of 10 security guards and a 13-year-old boy in relation to “trespassing” on its land, and he charged that the human rights organizations “don’t seem to care about the people who get killed by the peasants.” (CDM Watch press release 4/18/11; Bloomberg 4/18/11, 4/21/11; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 4/21/11)
Miguel Facussé continues to push Dinant’s biofuel project, which he said could help fight the recent rise in oil prices in Honduras. “Not only is palm oil magnificent for health, even if used for frying, but it also could be a tremendous substitute for petroleum, which is constantly getting scarcer and more expensive,” he told the Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna, which is owned by his nephew, former president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002). Currently Honduras is the third largest African palm oil exporter in Latin America, according to the Honduran government. Facussé said the industry could create 120,000 jobs but is now being hurt by the land disputes.
Facussé also told the paper about his “a strong presentiment that things will go much better” for the country, “especially with the new law that seeks to strengthen education.” He was referring to a proposal for decentralizing the public school system that helped set off a month-long strike by teachers starting in March [see Update #1076]. (La Tribuna 4/12/11)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Beyond Solidarity
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4380
From The “Dirty War” to Poisoned Food: The World According to Marie-Monique Robin (Argentina)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3002-the-dirty-war-of-poisoned-food-the-world-according-to-marie-monique-robin
Rebellion in the Brazilian Amazon
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4331
April 17: Brazil's National Day of Struggle for Agrarian Reform
https://nacla.org/node/6951
Miami Herald Catches Chevron in Lie about Ecuador Well Site
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3005-miami-herald-catches-chevron-in-lie-about-ecuador-well-site
Chávez Withdraws Venezuela From Andean Trade Pact; Blames Colombia & Peru Free Trade Agreement With U.S.
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/22/chavez-withdraws-venezuela-from-andean-trade-pact-blames-colombia-peru-free-trade-agreement-with-u-s/
Interview with Edgardo Lander: The Path for Venezuela cannot be Neoliberalism or Stalinism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3007-interview-with-edgardo-lander-the-path-for-venezuela-can-not-be-neoliberalism-or-stalinism
Venezuela’s Rural Social Movements Condemn Murder of Two Peasant Activists
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6146
Air-Conditioned Vestiges of an Empire in Panama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3006-air-conditioned-vestiges-of-an-empire-in-panama
Obama Administration Lawyers Charge Salvadoran Ex-General With Human Rights Abuses
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/19/obama-administration-lawyers-charge-ex-salvadoran-general-with-human-rights-abuses/
Honduran Government Responsible For Murders And Human Rights Abuses, Resistance Leader Says
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/14/honduran-government-responsible-for-murders-and-human-rights-abuses-resistance-leader-says/
Global Action for Release of Indigenous Zapatista Supporters in Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/6958
How Ending the Drug War Would Support Human Rights in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4308
Mexicans Reject Calderón’s War
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4353
Obama's Mexicogate?
http://www.fpif.org/articles/obamas_mexicogate
Mexico: police arrested as mass graves unearthed in Tamaulipas
http://ww4report.com/node/9782
Coyotes and Resistance on the U.S. Mexico Border
https://nacla.org/node/6955
A Labor Law Bosses Would Love (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=186#1273
Cuba Shuffles Communist Party Leadership And Approves Economic Reforms
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/20/cuba-shuffles-communist-party-leadership-and-approves-economic-reforms/
Cuba: Raúl Castro Proposes Change from Within Socialist System
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3003-cuba-raul-castro-proposes-change-from-within-socialist-system
El Paso Jury Acquits Arch-Terrorist Posada Carriles of all Charges
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4281
Haiti and the international aid scam
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/22/haiti-aid
Hillary Clinton Meets With Haitian President-Elect Michel Martelly
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/21/hillary-clinton-meets-with-haitian-president-elect-michel-martelly/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
WNU #1076: Argentine Junta’s Last President Gets Life Sentence
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1076, April 17, 2011
1. Argentina: Junta’s Last President Gets Life Sentence
2. Honduras: Will Teachers and Government Settle?
3. Mexico: Cops Are Still Homophobic, Survey Says
4. Haiti: Workers Strike at Privatized Phone Company
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Argentina: Junta’s Last President Gets Life Sentence
In Buenos Aires on Apr. 14, Argentine federal judge María Lucía Casaín sentenced Gen. Reynaldo Bignone, the last president in the country’s 1976-1983 military regime, to life in prison for crimes against humanity. The judge also handed down life sentences to former military officers Santiago Omar Riveros and Martín Rodríguez, and former Escobar mayor Luis Patti, who was a police agent under the dictatorship. Another former police agent, Juan Fernando Meneghini, was sentenced to six years in prison. The 83-year-old Bignone, who was president from July 1982 to December 1983, had already been sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed during the dictatorship in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers.
The trial that led to the Apr. 14 sentences focused on criminal acts in Escobar, a department north of Buenos Aires, including the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Gastón Gonçalvez, a member of the Montoneros rebel group, and the murder of legislative deputy Diego Muñiz Barreto, who was detained illegally in Escobar.
Hundreds of human rights activists celebrated after the sentences were announced. “This is a historic day for all Argentines of good will,” said Estela de Carlotto, leader of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group formed by people whose children and grandchildren were “disappeared” under the military junta. “Many countries are viewing Argentina with growing respect because we are carrying the banners of truth and justice on behalf of the 30,000.” Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 people were victims of the military’s “dirty war” against supposed leftists, and that 500 of the victims’ children were secretly turned over to officers and their accomplices for adoption. More than 100 of the children have since learned their true identities.
An amnesty law originally protected officers and others involved in these crimes. The law was revoked in 2005, and since then Argentine courts have convicted more than 200 leaders of the military regime, while about 800 former soldiers and police agents have yet to be tried. (BBC 4/14/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11 from Agencia Brasil, El Mundo, Tierra, Yahoo)
*2. Honduras: Will Teachers and Government Settle?
A meeting on Apr. 14 between the Honduran government and teachers’ union representatives in Tegucigalpa seemed to be heading towards a settlement of a month-long national strike by 60,000 teachers over pension issues and a decentralization plan that they say would lead to privatization of the schools. The strike, which has continued with some interruptions since Mar. 7, has been characterized by militant demonstrations on the teachers’ side and violent repression from the police and military, with the death of an assistant principal at one protest and several attacks on journalists covering demonstrations. At least two government cabinet meetings included debates between ministers on the human rights situation and its possible effect on Honduras’ international standing [see Updates #1072, 1073, 1074].
At the Apr. 14 meeting the teachers reportedly got the government to back down on the firings and substitutions of some striking teachers and the suspension of 702 others. According to Edwin Oliva, president of the Honduran Professional Guild of Teachers’ Improvement, there was also agreement on a new way of regulating the national public school system, on a new General Law of Education and on respect for the Statute of the Teacher, a sort of bill of rights for education workers.
The government also agreed to release teachers who had been arrested in demonstrations, and to review the financial situation at the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), which handles teachers' pensions and has been a subject of dispute between the government and the unions at least since last August [see Update #1047]. Issues that remained unresolved included the government’s monitoring committee for Inprema and deductions from teachers’ salaries for the days they were out. (Prensa Latina 4/15/11; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 4/15/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11, some from Prensa Latina and La Tribuna)
*3. Mexico: Cops Are Still Homophobic, Survey Says
About a third of the Mexicans surveyed in the federal government's National Poll on Discrimination in Mexico (Enadis) for 2010 said that what gives them the greatest anxiety is the fear of violent robbery. Another quarter told Enadis, a survey carried out each year since 2005, that they were most afraid of violence by drug traffickers, while for one out of five of those polled, the main worry is “being victims of abuse by the forces of public security.”
A report on the Enadis findings, released by the government's National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) in Mexico City on Apr. 12, showed a widespread perception of violence and discrimination in Mexican society, especially against women. People reported feeling that many women are beaten and that women are frequently denied employed. Children are often hit to ensure obedience, according to many of the people polled. One half of lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals felt that discrimination was their main problem. The police are the most intolerant sector of society, according to 42.8% of the lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals surveyed, while 35.3% considered that people “from their church or congregation” were the most intolerant.
The continuing discrimination comes despite advances for lesbian and gay rights in a few places, including Mexico City [see Update #1044]. In March both chambers of Congress passed a constitutional reform that would include sexual preferences among constitutionally protected human rights; the reform still requires ratification by a majority of the states. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/13/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11)
On Apr. 12 a number of organizations, including the Special Femicide Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, launched a campaign calling for femicide (misogynist murders) to be categorized as a special crime, not simply as murder or a hate crime [see Update #1071]. More than 1,400 murders of women were recorded in 15 of Mexico’s 32 states during 2010; in 70% of these cases the motives are unknown and the perpetrators haven’t been found, according to María de la Luz Estrada, coordinator of the National Citizens’ Observatory of Femicide (OCNF). (Adital 4/13/11)
*4. Haiti: Workers Strike at Privatized Phone Company
Workers at Nationale Communication (Natcom), a Haitian telephone company, began striking in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area early in the week of Apr. 11 to demand a full 36 months’ salary in compensation for their impending layoffs. Dozens of workers occupied Natcom offices in Delmas in the north of the capital and in Pétionville, a wealthy suburb to the southeast.
The strike spread to other cities over the next few days, including Cap-Haïtien (North department), Les Cayes (South department) and Mirebalais (Center department). In Cap-Haïtien administrative personnel continued to work, while the strike was only partial in Mirebalais. “Aware of the precarious situation in Mirebalais in relation to communication, we’re a little flexible about the work stoppage started by our colleagues in Port-au-Prince and other cities,” said Pedro, a technician.
Natcom is the new name of the former state telephone company, Télécommunications d'Haïti (Haiti Téléco), which was privatized in April 2010. The Vietnamese telecommunications company Viettel acquired 60% of the shares, with the Haitian government retaining 40% [see Update #1032]. As part of an accord between Viettel and the government, employees were offered a choice between two plans for voluntary retirement. Plan A provided a severance package for workers leaving immediately, while Plan B guaranteed employment for one full year but gave the company the option to terminate the employees at the end of the period, on Aug. 31, with much less severance pay than in Plan A.
The Plan B workers, many of them long-term employees, are now striking for a larger severance package. If management goes on “turning a dear ear, we’re going to pursue our strike, and it will be less peaceful next week,” some Delmas strikers warned on Apr. 13. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/13/11, 4/16/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
CHINA SYNDROME: China’s Growing Presence in Latin America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4266
Losing Latin America
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7171/losing_latin_america
Latin America and the US: Social Movements Are the Engines of Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2998-latin-america-and-the-us-social-movements-are-the-engines-of-change
Uruguay Senate Votes to Annul Amnesty Law For Crimes During Dictatorship
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/13/uruguay-senate-votes-to-annul-amnesty-law-for-crimes-during-dictatorship/
China Cautiously Opens Its Market To Brazil
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/14/china-cautiously-opens-its-market-to-brazil/
Tensions escalate over Amazon mega dam (Brazil)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2997-tensions-escalate-over-amazon-mega-dam-
Police Charged for Role in Bagua Massacre in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2996-police-charged-for-role-in-bagua-massacre-in-peru
Peru: Humala and Fujimori in Final Stretch
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2995-peru-humala-and-fujimori-in-final-stretch
Águilas Negras: Rising from the Ashes of Demobilization in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2999-aguilas-negras-rising-from-the-ashes-of-demobilization
Victims of 2002 Coup in Venezuela Seek Justice
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6132
Opposition Has Internal Problems and Fighting, According to U.S Caracas Embassy Cables (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6134
Journalists, Activists Targeted as Honduran Repression Grows
http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/4/13/journalists_activists_targeted_as_honduran_repression
Protestors Across Honduras Challenge IDB-Funded 'Shock' Program Met with Violence and Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3000-protestors-across-honduras-challenge-idb-funded-shock-program-met-with-violence-and-repression
Special Report: Honduran Teachers get Shock Treatment
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6635
16 Mexico Police Officers Arrested Under Accusations Of Helping Zetas With Mass Grave
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/15/16-mexico-police-officers-arrested-under-accusations-of-helping-zetas-with-mass-grave/
From the Lacandon Jungle to the CPR-Salvador Fajardo: Settlements of the Displaced
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2994-from-the-lacandon-jungle-to-the-cpr-salvador-fajardo-settlements-of-the-displaced
Mexico: The Hour of the Poet
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april162011/mexico-poet-hour.php
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1076, April 17, 2011
1. Argentina: Junta’s Last President Gets Life Sentence
2. Honduras: Will Teachers and Government Settle?
3. Mexico: Cops Are Still Homophobic, Survey Says
4. Haiti: Workers Strike at Privatized Phone Company
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Argentina: Junta’s Last President Gets Life Sentence
In Buenos Aires on Apr. 14, Argentine federal judge María Lucía Casaín sentenced Gen. Reynaldo Bignone, the last president in the country’s 1976-1983 military regime, to life in prison for crimes against humanity. The judge also handed down life sentences to former military officers Santiago Omar Riveros and Martín Rodríguez, and former Escobar mayor Luis Patti, who was a police agent under the dictatorship. Another former police agent, Juan Fernando Meneghini, was sentenced to six years in prison. The 83-year-old Bignone, who was president from July 1982 to December 1983, had already been sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed during the dictatorship in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers.
The trial that led to the Apr. 14 sentences focused on criminal acts in Escobar, a department north of Buenos Aires, including the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Gastón Gonçalvez, a member of the Montoneros rebel group, and the murder of legislative deputy Diego Muñiz Barreto, who was detained illegally in Escobar.
Hundreds of human rights activists celebrated after the sentences were announced. “This is a historic day for all Argentines of good will,” said Estela de Carlotto, leader of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group formed by people whose children and grandchildren were “disappeared” under the military junta. “Many countries are viewing Argentina with growing respect because we are carrying the banners of truth and justice on behalf of the 30,000.” Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 people were victims of the military’s “dirty war” against supposed leftists, and that 500 of the victims’ children were secretly turned over to officers and their accomplices for adoption. More than 100 of the children have since learned their true identities.
An amnesty law originally protected officers and others involved in these crimes. The law was revoked in 2005, and since then Argentine courts have convicted more than 200 leaders of the military regime, while about 800 former soldiers and police agents have yet to be tried. (BBC 4/14/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11 from Agencia Brasil, El Mundo, Tierra, Yahoo)
*2. Honduras: Will Teachers and Government Settle?
A meeting on Apr. 14 between the Honduran government and teachers’ union representatives in Tegucigalpa seemed to be heading towards a settlement of a month-long national strike by 60,000 teachers over pension issues and a decentralization plan that they say would lead to privatization of the schools. The strike, which has continued with some interruptions since Mar. 7, has been characterized by militant demonstrations on the teachers’ side and violent repression from the police and military, with the death of an assistant principal at one protest and several attacks on journalists covering demonstrations. At least two government cabinet meetings included debates between ministers on the human rights situation and its possible effect on Honduras’ international standing [see Updates #1072, 1073, 1074].
At the Apr. 14 meeting the teachers reportedly got the government to back down on the firings and substitutions of some striking teachers and the suspension of 702 others. According to Edwin Oliva, president of the Honduran Professional Guild of Teachers’ Improvement, there was also agreement on a new way of regulating the national public school system, on a new General Law of Education and on respect for the Statute of the Teacher, a sort of bill of rights for education workers.
The government also agreed to release teachers who had been arrested in demonstrations, and to review the financial situation at the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), which handles teachers' pensions and has been a subject of dispute between the government and the unions at least since last August [see Update #1047]. Issues that remained unresolved included the government’s monitoring committee for Inprema and deductions from teachers’ salaries for the days they were out. (Prensa Latina 4/15/11; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 4/15/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11, some from Prensa Latina and La Tribuna)
*3. Mexico: Cops Are Still Homophobic, Survey Says
About a third of the Mexicans surveyed in the federal government's National Poll on Discrimination in Mexico (Enadis) for 2010 said that what gives them the greatest anxiety is the fear of violent robbery. Another quarter told Enadis, a survey carried out each year since 2005, that they were most afraid of violence by drug traffickers, while for one out of five of those polled, the main worry is “being victims of abuse by the forces of public security.”
A report on the Enadis findings, released by the government's National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) in Mexico City on Apr. 12, showed a widespread perception of violence and discrimination in Mexican society, especially against women. People reported feeling that many women are beaten and that women are frequently denied employed. Children are often hit to ensure obedience, according to many of the people polled. One half of lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals felt that discrimination was their main problem. The police are the most intolerant sector of society, according to 42.8% of the lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals surveyed, while 35.3% considered that people “from their church or congregation” were the most intolerant.
The continuing discrimination comes despite advances for lesbian and gay rights in a few places, including Mexico City [see Update #1044]. In March both chambers of Congress passed a constitutional reform that would include sexual preferences among constitutionally protected human rights; the reform still requires ratification by a majority of the states. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/13/11; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/11)
On Apr. 12 a number of organizations, including the Special Femicide Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, launched a campaign calling for femicide (misogynist murders) to be categorized as a special crime, not simply as murder or a hate crime [see Update #1071]. More than 1,400 murders of women were recorded in 15 of Mexico’s 32 states during 2010; in 70% of these cases the motives are unknown and the perpetrators haven’t been found, according to María de la Luz Estrada, coordinator of the National Citizens’ Observatory of Femicide (OCNF). (Adital 4/13/11)
*4. Haiti: Workers Strike at Privatized Phone Company
Workers at Nationale Communication (Natcom), a Haitian telephone company, began striking in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area early in the week of Apr. 11 to demand a full 36 months’ salary in compensation for their impending layoffs. Dozens of workers occupied Natcom offices in Delmas in the north of the capital and in Pétionville, a wealthy suburb to the southeast.
The strike spread to other cities over the next few days, including Cap-Haïtien (North department), Les Cayes (South department) and Mirebalais (Center department). In Cap-Haïtien administrative personnel continued to work, while the strike was only partial in Mirebalais. “Aware of the precarious situation in Mirebalais in relation to communication, we’re a little flexible about the work stoppage started by our colleagues in Port-au-Prince and other cities,” said Pedro, a technician.
Natcom is the new name of the former state telephone company, Télécommunications d'Haïti (Haiti Téléco), which was privatized in April 2010. The Vietnamese telecommunications company Viettel acquired 60% of the shares, with the Haitian government retaining 40% [see Update #1032]. As part of an accord between Viettel and the government, employees were offered a choice between two plans for voluntary retirement. Plan A provided a severance package for workers leaving immediately, while Plan B guaranteed employment for one full year but gave the company the option to terminate the employees at the end of the period, on Aug. 31, with much less severance pay than in Plan A.
The Plan B workers, many of them long-term employees, are now striking for a larger severance package. If management goes on “turning a dear ear, we’re going to pursue our strike, and it will be less peaceful next week,” some Delmas strikers warned on Apr. 13. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/13/11, 4/16/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico
CHINA SYNDROME: China’s Growing Presence in Latin America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4266
Losing Latin America
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7171/losing_latin_america
Latin America and the US: Social Movements Are the Engines of Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2998-latin-america-and-the-us-social-movements-are-the-engines-of-change
Uruguay Senate Votes to Annul Amnesty Law For Crimes During Dictatorship
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/13/uruguay-senate-votes-to-annul-amnesty-law-for-crimes-during-dictatorship/
China Cautiously Opens Its Market To Brazil
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/14/china-cautiously-opens-its-market-to-brazil/
Tensions escalate over Amazon mega dam (Brazil)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2997-tensions-escalate-over-amazon-mega-dam-
Police Charged for Role in Bagua Massacre in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2996-police-charged-for-role-in-bagua-massacre-in-peru
Peru: Humala and Fujimori in Final Stretch
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2995-peru-humala-and-fujimori-in-final-stretch
Águilas Negras: Rising from the Ashes of Demobilization in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2999-aguilas-negras-rising-from-the-ashes-of-demobilization
Victims of 2002 Coup in Venezuela Seek Justice
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6132
Opposition Has Internal Problems and Fighting, According to U.S Caracas Embassy Cables (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6134
Journalists, Activists Targeted as Honduran Repression Grows
http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/4/13/journalists_activists_targeted_as_honduran_repression
Protestors Across Honduras Challenge IDB-Funded 'Shock' Program Met with Violence and Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3000-protestors-across-honduras-challenge-idb-funded-shock-program-met-with-violence-and-repression
Special Report: Honduran Teachers get Shock Treatment
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6635
16 Mexico Police Officers Arrested Under Accusations Of Helping Zetas With Mass Grave
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/15/16-mexico-police-officers-arrested-under-accusations-of-helping-zetas-with-mass-grave/
From the Lacandon Jungle to the CPR-Salvador Fajardo: Settlements of the Displaced
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/2994-from-the-lacandon-jungle-to-the-cpr-salvador-fajardo-settlements-of-the-displaced
Mexico: The Hour of the Poet
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april162011/mexico-poet-hour.php
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
WNU #1075: Colombians Protest FTA, Privatization
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1075, April 10, 2011
1. Colombia: Workers, Students Protest FTA, Privatization
2. Colombia: Rebels and Paras Provided Security for Chiquita
3. Mexico: US Admits to Mistakes in 32-Year “Drug War”
4. Haiti: Martelly Will Be “New Driver in Same Vehicle”
5. Cuba: US Loses Posada Case--Again
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Workers, Students Protest FTA, Privatization
In Colombia’s largest demonstration since President Juan Manuel Santos took office last August, tens of thousands of unionists, students and teachers demonstrated throughout the country on Apr. 7 to protest a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US and proposed changes in the education system that they say will lead to privatization. The Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Colombia’s main labor federation, estimated turnout at 1.5 million. Demonstrations took place in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Bucaramanga, Santa Marta, Barranquilla and other cities.
The national day of action coincided with a visit by President Santos to Washington, DC, where he met with US president Barack Obama to push for the US Congress approve a trade accord that Colombia and the US signed in 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009). The FTA has never been approved by Congress, in part because of opposition from US unions and activists over Colombia’s record of human rights abuses and repression of unions. But Santos is looking for ratification now that the agreement has Obama’s support. “We’ve worked for five years seeking approval for this to go to Congress,” Santos said, “and today we received this green light.”
The CUT strongly opposes the FTA, which would threaten “labor rights, food sovereignty and the possibility for development,” according to Diógenes Orjuela, a CUT leader. The unionists were also protesting labor flexibility practices, such as the use of provisional contracts.
More than 100 student organizations oppose Santos’ proposal to allow private investment in public universities on a national level; in Bogotá there is already a system of concessions which lets private groups operate some public schools. The Education Ministry responded to the Apr. 7 demonstrations by agreeing to review the policies with teachers and discuss their labor and wage demands within 20 days.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, 26 unionists and 11 educators were murdered in Colombia in 2010; the CUT says there were actually 51 murders. Just 800,000 people belong to unions in Colombia, out of a population of about 45 million, and only 70,000 have collective bargaining agreements, according to the CUT. (Agence France Presse 4/7/11 via Terra México; BBC 4/7/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11 from PL, DPA)
*2. Colombia: Rebels and Paras Provided Security for Chiquita
Declassified internal documents from the Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International made public on Apr. 7 indicate that the multinational’s Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, had a much closer relation with leftist rebels and rightwing paramilitaries than Chiquita has admitted in the past.
Chiquita agreed in March 2007 to pay the US government $25 million in fines for supporting the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US designated as a terrorist group, but the company insisted that Banadex only gave the AUC money to keep it from attacking Chiquita employees; the company said it had also paid off two leftist guerrilla organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), for the same reason [see Update #892].
But the more than 5,500 pages of declassified documents suggest that Chiquita didn’t just pay extortion money to the groups. In 1994, when rebels still dominated the northwestern Urabá region of Antioquia department where Banadex had plantations, the general manager of Chiquita operations in Turbó told company attorneys that guerrillas were “used to supply security personnel at the various farms.” Later, when paramilitaries took over the region, they appear to have done similar work for Chiquita. A March 2000 memo based on a conversation with Banadex managers indicates that paramilitaries in Santa Marta had formed a front company, Inversiones Manglar, whose commercial activities “disguised the real purpose of providing security.” The managers said “all other banana companies are contributing in Santa Marta” and Chiquita “should continue making the payments” since they “can't get the same level of support from the military.”
Other documents discuss a meeting of Banadex managers with the notorious AUC leader Carlos Castaño and what appear to be donations in 1995 to Antioquia’s rightwing governor at the time, Alvaro Uribe, later a two-term Colombian president (2002-2010).
Chiquita turned the documents over to the Justice Department in connection with the 2007 agreement between the company and the government. The National Security Archive (NSA), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit research group, obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; it posted them on its website on Apr. 7, as Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos was visiting Washington to discuss a trade deal with US president Barack Obama.
“Chiquita's apparent quid pro quo with guerrillas and paramilitaries responsible for countless killings belies the company's 2007 plea deal with the Justice Department,” NSA Colombia documentation project director Michael Evans said on Apr. 7. “What we still don't know is why US prosecutors overlooked what appears to be clear evidence that Chiquita benefited from these transactions.” (“The Chiquita Papers,” NSA website 4/7/11; Inter-Press Service 4/7/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11)
*3. Mexico: US Admits to Mistakes in 32-Year “Drug War”
US officials were wrong in 1979 when they thought that the struggle against drug trafficking was “a question that only had to do with complying with the law,” one “that could be resolved quickly with an aggressive campaign” and with a “country by country” approach, William R. Brownfield, US assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told a press conference in Cancún, in the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on Apr. 7. “Thirty-two years have passed, billions of dollars and many strategies later,” he said, “and I could tell you that we weren’t right, we didn’t guess right.”
Brownfield, who was in Cancún for the 28th annual International Conference for Drug Control, was responding to a question about Mexico’s own “war on drugs,” which has cost 35,000 lives since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa militarized anti-drug operations shortly after taking office in December 2006. Mexican public security minister Genaro García Luna had said that the violence would start to diminish in 2015. Asked his opinion, Brownfield answered that based on the US experience “at least we have to think in years.” He said he was “optimistic that in two years it will be possible to speak of results,” but that if he came to Mexico then and the situation hadn’t improved, he could be questioned for his “total and complete stupidity.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11)
Another US official came close to admitting to another mistake earlier in the week. On Apr. 5. Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, told a US Senate hearing that many of the weapons being used by Mexican drug traffickers came from Central America. “Over 50% of the military-type weapons that are flowing throughout the region have a large source between Central American stockpiles, if you will, left over from wars and conflicts in the past,” he explained. (AFP 4/6/11)
The news coverage didn’t mention that many of these weapons were supplied by the US to rightwing military and paramilitary forces in Central America to fight leftists during the 1980s and 1990s. A US diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks group in February said fragmentation grenades used by drug traffickers in Monterrey came from shipments from the US to the Salvadoran military in the early 1990s [not “in 1990,” as reported in Update #1067].
*4. Haiti: Martelly Will Be “New Driver in Same Vehicle”
On Apr. 5, five days late, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results from the Mar. 20 presidential and legislative runoff elections. According to the official count, popular singer Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky,” Peasant Response) defeated Mirlande Hyppolite Manigat (Coalition of National Progressive Democrats, RDNP) by 67.57% to 31.74% in the race for president. Turnout was reported at 23%, about the same as in the first round, on Nov. 28, although Martelly claims it was 30%. The CEP is to announce the final results on Apr. 16, and the new president takes office on May 14.
Martelly is likely to have problems with the Parliament, which will be dominated by members of the Inite party of outgoing president René Préval. It appears that Inite will hold 17 of the 27 seats in the Senate and about 40 of the 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The rest will be divided among 16 other parties. Peasant Response, the party that ran Martelly for president, seems to have won just three seats in the Chamber and none in the Senate. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/7/11, ___)
Both Manigat and Martelly are rightists, and Haitian grassroots and left-leaning organizations generally didn’t support either. “Now we’re waiting for Michel Martelly to keep his promises,” Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the founder of the large Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), told the online news service AlterPresse, referring to the candidate’s promise to revitalize small-scale agriculture. But Osnel Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), was already certain that “[t]here will be no change in the conditions of life of the popular masses.”
Martelly’s policy “will be a continuation of the options that have directed the country in recent years,” according to economist Camille Chalmers, executive director of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA). “Michel Martelly will be under the dictate of the international community.” Guy Numa, a member of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), agreed that the main decisions will be made by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC, or CIRH in French and Spanish), a group set up last year by donor nations to disburse and monitor international aid after a devastating earthquake. “This is just a change of drivers, but it’s still the same vehicle,” Numa said. (AlterPresse 4/6/11)
One difference between Martelly and current president Préval may be a more repressive approach to the Haitian media. During a televised debate with Manigat on Mar. 9, Martelly complained that journalist Gotson Pierre, the founder of AlterPresse, “didn’t like” him. Pierre had asked embarrassing questions. (AlterPresse 3/16/11) On Apr. 6 a group of people saying they were Martelly supporters were at the Parliament building to “watch” the journalists. “We’ll block access to Parliament to any journalist suspected of working against the interests of the next government,” one of them told a group of reporters. (AlterPresse 4/6/11)
Three journalists at Haiti National Television (TNH), Eddy Jackson Alexis, Josias Pierre and Jacques Innocent, were let go on Apr. 5 after a courtesy visit to the station by Martelly. The journalists accused TNH director general Pradel Henriquez of favoring Martelly during the campaign; on Apr. 8 Henriquez started defamation proceedings against them. (Radio Kiskeya 4/8/11)
*5. Cuba: US Loses Posada Case--Again
A federal jury in El Paso, Texas, acquitted Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “asset” Luis Posada Carriles of 11 counts of fraud and obstruction of justice on Apr. 8, handing US prosecutors their latest defeat in a case that dates back to Posada’s illegal entry into the US in 2005. The judge in the case, US district judge Kathleen Cardone, threw out one set of immigration fraud charges in 2007; two years later, US prosecutors filed the new set of charges based on Posada’s allegedly lying to immigration officers about his terrorist activities in the past [see Update #985].
Venezuela charged Posada in the 1970s with masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which 73 people died; he escaped from prison and fled the country. In 1998 he told the New York Times that he had been involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo died in one of the bombings. Venezuela requested Posada’s extradition in 2005, but US has refused to act on the extradition request, instead trying unsuccessfully either to deport the 83-year-old former agent or jail him on charges related to his immigration status.
The jury took just three hours to clear Posada of the charges, after a 13-week trial. The Venezuelan government quickly dismissed the trial as “theater,” while Granma, the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), denounced the US court system as “Mafia justice.” But DC-based attorney José Pertierra, Venezuela’s representative in the extradition request, noted that US juries sometimes behave erratically. He called the US prosecutors’ evidence “overwhelming,” but he said Judge Cardone had allowed Posada’s defense to use delaying tactics and attacks against Cuba’s government to confuse the jurors, leaving them “deaf and blind.”
Pertierrra insists that the correct way to handle the case remains a trial for Posada’s terrorist acts, not for immigration fraud. A US Justice Department spokesperson had said the department was “disappointed by the verdict.” “I suggest that the US government not be so disappointed, and that they extradite him,” Pertierra told the Mexican daily La Jornada. (LJ 4/9/11 from correspondent, 4/10/11 from Notimex, AFP, DPA)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Resource Control and Military Might: The Future of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands (Argentina)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2987-resource-control-and-military-might-the-future-of-the-malvinasfalkland-islands
Organization of American States Requests Immediate Suspension of Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon
http://amazonwatch.org/news/2011/0405-oas-requests-immediate-suspension-of-belo-monte-dam
Peru’s Presidential Elections: Campaigning a World Away From Reality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2985-perus-presidential-elections-campaigning-a-world-away-from-reality
Peru: victory in Arequipa anti-mining struggle —after protester deaths
http://ww4report.com/node/9753
Wikileaks Ecuador: US ambassador expelled over cable
http://ww4report.com/node/9756
Ecuador: indigenous alliance accuses government of "genocide" in Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/9754
CONAIE Accuses Ecuador's Government of 'Ethnocide' Against Uncontacted Tribes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2989-conaie-accuses-ecuadors-government-of-ethnocide-against-uncontacted-tribes
Ecuador: US Ambassador Expelled Over Wikileaks Cable
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2986-ecuador-us-ambassador-expelled-over-wikileaks-cable
U.S.-Colombia Deal on Labor Rights Met with Scepticism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2990-us-colombia-deal-on-labor-rights-met-with-scepticism
Colombia agrees to FTA labor conditions; opponents don't buy it
http://ww4report.com/node/9758
USW Joins Colombian Unions in Opposition to Proposed FTA
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/04/07/2971437/usw-joins-colombian-unions-in.html
Colombia: San José de Apartadó peace community faces para terror —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9757
Cooperatives in Venezuela Promote Solidarity, Equality and Dignity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2988-cooperatives-in-venezuela-promote-solidarity-equality-and-dignity
After Posada Carriles Declared "Not Guilty" Venezuela Demands US Extradite Him
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6123
Nicaraguan Electoral Council Gives OK To Daniel Ortega Candidacy
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/07/nicaraguan-electoral-council-gives-ok-to-daniel-ortega-candidacy/
An Inconvenient Truth in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2993-an-inconvenient-truth-in-honduras
Guatemala: 3,000 campesinos evicted by agribusiness firm
http://ww4report.com/node/9759
Mexico: The Cost of U.S. Dumping
https://nacla.org/node/6938
Chiapas: international campaign for "Bachajón Five" (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9760
Action Alert! Mexican Congress Rushes to Pass Regressive Labor Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2992-action-alert-mexican-congress-rushes-to-pass-regressive-labor-law
Nobody's War, Everybody's Struggle (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april062011/struggle-war.php
Thousands march across Mexico to end narco violence
http://ww4report.com/node/9761
ICE Formalizes Policy to Deport Haitians During Humanitarian Crisis
http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ice-formalizes-policy-deport-haitians-during-humanitarian-crisis
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1075, April 10, 2011
1. Colombia: Workers, Students Protest FTA, Privatization
2. Colombia: Rebels and Paras Provided Security for Chiquita
3. Mexico: US Admits to Mistakes in 32-Year “Drug War”
4. Haiti: Martelly Will Be “New Driver in Same Vehicle”
5. Cuba: US Loses Posada Case--Again
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Workers, Students Protest FTA, Privatization
In Colombia’s largest demonstration since President Juan Manuel Santos took office last August, tens of thousands of unionists, students and teachers demonstrated throughout the country on Apr. 7 to protest a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US and proposed changes in the education system that they say will lead to privatization. The Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Colombia’s main labor federation, estimated turnout at 1.5 million. Demonstrations took place in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Bucaramanga, Santa Marta, Barranquilla and other cities.
The national day of action coincided with a visit by President Santos to Washington, DC, where he met with US president Barack Obama to push for the US Congress approve a trade accord that Colombia and the US signed in 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009). The FTA has never been approved by Congress, in part because of opposition from US unions and activists over Colombia’s record of human rights abuses and repression of unions. But Santos is looking for ratification now that the agreement has Obama’s support. “We’ve worked for five years seeking approval for this to go to Congress,” Santos said, “and today we received this green light.”
The CUT strongly opposes the FTA, which would threaten “labor rights, food sovereignty and the possibility for development,” according to Diógenes Orjuela, a CUT leader. The unionists were also protesting labor flexibility practices, such as the use of provisional contracts.
More than 100 student organizations oppose Santos’ proposal to allow private investment in public universities on a national level; in Bogotá there is already a system of concessions which lets private groups operate some public schools. The Education Ministry responded to the Apr. 7 demonstrations by agreeing to review the policies with teachers and discuss their labor and wage demands within 20 days.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, 26 unionists and 11 educators were murdered in Colombia in 2010; the CUT says there were actually 51 murders. Just 800,000 people belong to unions in Colombia, out of a population of about 45 million, and only 70,000 have collective bargaining agreements, according to the CUT. (Agence France Presse 4/7/11 via Terra México; BBC 4/7/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11 from PL, DPA)
*2. Colombia: Rebels and Paras Provided Security for Chiquita
Declassified internal documents from the Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International made public on Apr. 7 indicate that the multinational’s Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, had a much closer relation with leftist rebels and rightwing paramilitaries than Chiquita has admitted in the past.
Chiquita agreed in March 2007 to pay the US government $25 million in fines for supporting the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US designated as a terrorist group, but the company insisted that Banadex only gave the AUC money to keep it from attacking Chiquita employees; the company said it had also paid off two leftist guerrilla organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), for the same reason [see Update #892].
But the more than 5,500 pages of declassified documents suggest that Chiquita didn’t just pay extortion money to the groups. In 1994, when rebels still dominated the northwestern Urabá region of Antioquia department where Banadex had plantations, the general manager of Chiquita operations in Turbó told company attorneys that guerrillas were “used to supply security personnel at the various farms.” Later, when paramilitaries took over the region, they appear to have done similar work for Chiquita. A March 2000 memo based on a conversation with Banadex managers indicates that paramilitaries in Santa Marta had formed a front company, Inversiones Manglar, whose commercial activities “disguised the real purpose of providing security.” The managers said “all other banana companies are contributing in Santa Marta” and Chiquita “should continue making the payments” since they “can't get the same level of support from the military.”
Other documents discuss a meeting of Banadex managers with the notorious AUC leader Carlos Castaño and what appear to be donations in 1995 to Antioquia’s rightwing governor at the time, Alvaro Uribe, later a two-term Colombian president (2002-2010).
Chiquita turned the documents over to the Justice Department in connection with the 2007 agreement between the company and the government. The National Security Archive (NSA), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit research group, obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; it posted them on its website on Apr. 7, as Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos was visiting Washington to discuss a trade deal with US president Barack Obama.
“Chiquita's apparent quid pro quo with guerrillas and paramilitaries responsible for countless killings belies the company's 2007 plea deal with the Justice Department,” NSA Colombia documentation project director Michael Evans said on Apr. 7. “What we still don't know is why US prosecutors overlooked what appears to be clear evidence that Chiquita benefited from these transactions.” (“The Chiquita Papers,” NSA website 4/7/11; Inter-Press Service 4/7/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11)
*3. Mexico: US Admits to Mistakes in 32-Year “Drug War”
US officials were wrong in 1979 when they thought that the struggle against drug trafficking was “a question that only had to do with complying with the law,” one “that could be resolved quickly with an aggressive campaign” and with a “country by country” approach, William R. Brownfield, US assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told a press conference in Cancún, in the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on Apr. 7. “Thirty-two years have passed, billions of dollars and many strategies later,” he said, “and I could tell you that we weren’t right, we didn’t guess right.”
Brownfield, who was in Cancún for the 28th annual International Conference for Drug Control, was responding to a question about Mexico’s own “war on drugs,” which has cost 35,000 lives since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa militarized anti-drug operations shortly after taking office in December 2006. Mexican public security minister Genaro García Luna had said that the violence would start to diminish in 2015. Asked his opinion, Brownfield answered that based on the US experience “at least we have to think in years.” He said he was “optimistic that in two years it will be possible to speak of results,” but that if he came to Mexico then and the situation hadn’t improved, he could be questioned for his “total and complete stupidity.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/8/11)
Another US official came close to admitting to another mistake earlier in the week. On Apr. 5. Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, told a US Senate hearing that many of the weapons being used by Mexican drug traffickers came from Central America. “Over 50% of the military-type weapons that are flowing throughout the region have a large source between Central American stockpiles, if you will, left over from wars and conflicts in the past,” he explained. (AFP 4/6/11)
The news coverage didn’t mention that many of these weapons were supplied by the US to rightwing military and paramilitary forces in Central America to fight leftists during the 1980s and 1990s. A US diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks group in February said fragmentation grenades used by drug traffickers in Monterrey came from shipments from the US to the Salvadoran military in the early 1990s [not “in 1990,” as reported in Update #1067].
*4. Haiti: Martelly Will Be “New Driver in Same Vehicle”
On Apr. 5, five days late, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results from the Mar. 20 presidential and legislative runoff elections. According to the official count, popular singer Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky,” Peasant Response) defeated Mirlande Hyppolite Manigat (Coalition of National Progressive Democrats, RDNP) by 67.57% to 31.74% in the race for president. Turnout was reported at 23%, about the same as in the first round, on Nov. 28, although Martelly claims it was 30%. The CEP is to announce the final results on Apr. 16, and the new president takes office on May 14.
Martelly is likely to have problems with the Parliament, which will be dominated by members of the Inite party of outgoing president René Préval. It appears that Inite will hold 17 of the 27 seats in the Senate and about 40 of the 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The rest will be divided among 16 other parties. Peasant Response, the party that ran Martelly for president, seems to have won just three seats in the Chamber and none in the Senate. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/7/11, ___)
Both Manigat and Martelly are rightists, and Haitian grassroots and left-leaning organizations generally didn’t support either. “Now we’re waiting for Michel Martelly to keep his promises,” Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the founder of the large Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), told the online news service AlterPresse, referring to the candidate’s promise to revitalize small-scale agriculture. But Osnel Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), was already certain that “[t]here will be no change in the conditions of life of the popular masses.”
Martelly’s policy “will be a continuation of the options that have directed the country in recent years,” according to economist Camille Chalmers, executive director of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA). “Michel Martelly will be under the dictate of the international community.” Guy Numa, a member of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), agreed that the main decisions will be made by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC, or CIRH in French and Spanish), a group set up last year by donor nations to disburse and monitor international aid after a devastating earthquake. “This is just a change of drivers, but it’s still the same vehicle,” Numa said. (AlterPresse 4/6/11)
One difference between Martelly and current president Préval may be a more repressive approach to the Haitian media. During a televised debate with Manigat on Mar. 9, Martelly complained that journalist Gotson Pierre, the founder of AlterPresse, “didn’t like” him. Pierre had asked embarrassing questions. (AlterPresse 3/16/11) On Apr. 6 a group of people saying they were Martelly supporters were at the Parliament building to “watch” the journalists. “We’ll block access to Parliament to any journalist suspected of working against the interests of the next government,” one of them told a group of reporters. (AlterPresse 4/6/11)
Three journalists at Haiti National Television (TNH), Eddy Jackson Alexis, Josias Pierre and Jacques Innocent, were let go on Apr. 5 after a courtesy visit to the station by Martelly. The journalists accused TNH director general Pradel Henriquez of favoring Martelly during the campaign; on Apr. 8 Henriquez started defamation proceedings against them. (Radio Kiskeya 4/8/11)
*5. Cuba: US Loses Posada Case--Again
A federal jury in El Paso, Texas, acquitted Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “asset” Luis Posada Carriles of 11 counts of fraud and obstruction of justice on Apr. 8, handing US prosecutors their latest defeat in a case that dates back to Posada’s illegal entry into the US in 2005. The judge in the case, US district judge Kathleen Cardone, threw out one set of immigration fraud charges in 2007; two years later, US prosecutors filed the new set of charges based on Posada’s allegedly lying to immigration officers about his terrorist activities in the past [see Update #985].
Venezuela charged Posada in the 1970s with masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which 73 people died; he escaped from prison and fled the country. In 1998 he told the New York Times that he had been involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo died in one of the bombings. Venezuela requested Posada’s extradition in 2005, but US has refused to act on the extradition request, instead trying unsuccessfully either to deport the 83-year-old former agent or jail him on charges related to his immigration status.
The jury took just three hours to clear Posada of the charges, after a 13-week trial. The Venezuelan government quickly dismissed the trial as “theater,” while Granma, the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), denounced the US court system as “Mafia justice.” But DC-based attorney José Pertierra, Venezuela’s representative in the extradition request, noted that US juries sometimes behave erratically. He called the US prosecutors’ evidence “overwhelming,” but he said Judge Cardone had allowed Posada’s defense to use delaying tactics and attacks against Cuba’s government to confuse the jurors, leaving them “deaf and blind.”
Pertierrra insists that the correct way to handle the case remains a trial for Posada’s terrorist acts, not for immigration fraud. A US Justice Department spokesperson had said the department was “disappointed by the verdict.” “I suggest that the US government not be so disappointed, and that they extradite him,” Pertierra told the Mexican daily La Jornada. (LJ 4/9/11 from correspondent, 4/10/11 from Notimex, AFP, DPA)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Resource Control and Military Might: The Future of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands (Argentina)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2987-resource-control-and-military-might-the-future-of-the-malvinasfalkland-islands
Organization of American States Requests Immediate Suspension of Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon
http://amazonwatch.org/news/2011/0405-oas-requests-immediate-suspension-of-belo-monte-dam
Peru’s Presidential Elections: Campaigning a World Away From Reality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/2985-perus-presidential-elections-campaigning-a-world-away-from-reality
Peru: victory in Arequipa anti-mining struggle —after protester deaths
http://ww4report.com/node/9753
Wikileaks Ecuador: US ambassador expelled over cable
http://ww4report.com/node/9756
Ecuador: indigenous alliance accuses government of "genocide" in Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/9754
CONAIE Accuses Ecuador's Government of 'Ethnocide' Against Uncontacted Tribes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2989-conaie-accuses-ecuadors-government-of-ethnocide-against-uncontacted-tribes
Ecuador: US Ambassador Expelled Over Wikileaks Cable
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2986-ecuador-us-ambassador-expelled-over-wikileaks-cable
U.S.-Colombia Deal on Labor Rights Met with Scepticism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2990-us-colombia-deal-on-labor-rights-met-with-scepticism
Colombia agrees to FTA labor conditions; opponents don't buy it
http://ww4report.com/node/9758
USW Joins Colombian Unions in Opposition to Proposed FTA
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/04/07/2971437/usw-joins-colombian-unions-in.html
Colombia: San José de Apartadó peace community faces para terror —again
http://ww4report.com/node/9757
Cooperatives in Venezuela Promote Solidarity, Equality and Dignity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2988-cooperatives-in-venezuela-promote-solidarity-equality-and-dignity
After Posada Carriles Declared "Not Guilty" Venezuela Demands US Extradite Him
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6123
Nicaraguan Electoral Council Gives OK To Daniel Ortega Candidacy
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/07/nicaraguan-electoral-council-gives-ok-to-daniel-ortega-candidacy/
An Inconvenient Truth in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2993-an-inconvenient-truth-in-honduras
Guatemala: 3,000 campesinos evicted by agribusiness firm
http://ww4report.com/node/9759
Mexico: The Cost of U.S. Dumping
https://nacla.org/node/6938
Chiapas: international campaign for "Bachajón Five" (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/9760
Action Alert! Mexican Congress Rushes to Pass Regressive Labor Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2992-action-alert-mexican-congress-rushes-to-pass-regressive-labor-law
Nobody's War, Everybody's Struggle (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april062011/struggle-war.php
Thousands march across Mexico to end narco violence
http://ww4report.com/node/9761
ICE Formalizes Policy to Deport Haitians During Humanitarian Crisis
http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ice-formalizes-policy-deport-haitians-during-humanitarian-crisis
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, April 4, 2011
WNU #1074: Sweatshop Zone Will Displace Haitian Farmers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1074, April 3, 2011
1. Haiti: New Sweatshop Zone Will Displace Farmers
2. Mexico: Unions Protest “Labor Reform” Proposal
3. Honduras: US Blames Protesters as Repression Mounts
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: New Sweatshop Zone Will Displace Farmers
Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd, South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, is pushing ahead with plans to open a large garment assembly plant next March near the coastal village of Caracol in Haiti’s Northeast department. The firm, which supplies garments to such major US retailers as Target, Wal-Mart, Kohl’s and GAP, claims the factory will create 20,000 jobs paying at least four times the average Haitian’s share of the annual gross domestic product (GDP)--which would work out to a wage of about $8 a day for the factory workers. The operation is to include the country’s first facility for producing textiles, a knit and dyeing mill which will use some 6,000 tons of ground water a day.
Sae-A will be the main tenant in the Northern Industrial Park, a new 617-acre “free trade zone” (FTZ, a complex of assembly plants). The park may also house two other apparel companies and a furniture manufacturer, according to Mark D’Sa, a Miami-based GAP executive who has been “on loan” with the State Department to work on Haiti trade policy.
In what US officials call an “unprecedented collaboration,” the US is providing the Northern Industrial Park project with $124 million for constructing 5,000 houses, a 25-megawatt electricity grid, and a waste and water treatment plant, while the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB, or BID in French and Spanish) is putting in more than $100 million for buildings and roads. Sae-A’s investment is $78 million, bringing the cost of the FTZ to more than $300 million. The administration of Haitian president René Préval is donating the land, which the government says is state property, and has committed to compensating the farmers currently using it—illegally, according to the government. [The sources didn’t specify whether the Haitian government would also grant the manufacturers the duty and tariff exemptions that usually benefit assembly plants producing for export.]
The Caracol industrial park is one of two complexes covered by an agreement the Haitian and US governments signed last September. The other factory complex is to be built near a displaced persons camp in Corail-Cesselesse, north of Port-au-Prince [see Update #1052]. The Northern Industrial Park is the second FTZ in the Northeast department: the first was built at Ouanaminthe, near the Dominican border, under the second administration of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004).
The US government has been a major force in pushing for the industrial parks. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) calls them “smart economic investments” that will “allow the Haitian people to help themselves.” According to the Miami Herald, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton personally brought the issue up during a visit to South Korea; Sae-A had been apparently been hesitant about the deal, fearing political instability in Haiti. “So much is at stake” in the project, the Herald reported, “that some Haiti observers mused that it was perhaps one of the reasons for the United States’ heavy involvement in the Nov. 28 presidential election debacle.” (MH 3/29/11; USAID Frontlines February/March 2011)
Another project that USAID says allows “Haitian people to help themselves” is the agency’s agricultural program, WINNER (Watershed Initiative for National Natural Environmental Resources), which in 2010 “helped more than 10,500 small- and medium-sized farmers grow corn, sorghum, beans, potatoes and other vegetables…. Overall, the campaign increased production by 75%.” (USAID Frontlines February/March 2011)
A Mar. 30 report by a group of Haitian media organizations, Haiti Grassroots Watch (Ayiti Kale Je, “Haiti Keep Your Eyes Open” in Creole), gave a very different view of the WINNER program.
Following the January 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti, WINNER and other organizations began distributing donated foreign seeds to Haitian farmers on the assumption that there would be a shortage. But the report found that there was “no seed emergency” in Haiti and that the donated seeds undercut local seed producers and distributors. WINNER was in charge of distributing hybrid seeds donated by the Monsanto Company, a giant US-based biotechnology multinational [see Update #1036]. The Haitian journalists found evidence that “[a]t least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting ‘hooked’ on hybrid seeds” and “also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids” and might be using the seeds without the recommended masks and gloves. In one case, the farmers were “planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.”
USAID refused to be interviewed by the Haitian reporters and told farmers’ groups not to talk to them. (Haiti Grassroots Watch 3/30/11)
*2. Mexico: Unions Protest “Labor Reform” Proposal
Thousands of workers, many of them affiliated with the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s largest independent labor federation, marched from the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City to the Chamber of Deputies on the afternoon of Mar. 31 to protest a proposed reform of the labor code. Union leaders said the legislation “intends to finish off collective contracts and make the workers modern slaves.” Martín Esparza, general secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), called on workers to stay alert, because the politicians plan “to sacrifice us during Holy Week”—a reference to the possibility that Congress will try to pass the law the week of Apr. 18, when many people are taking Easter vacation. The head of the telephone workers’ union, Francisco Hernández Juárez, called for a nationwide mobilization on Apr. 7 to step up the pressure on the legislators. (El Sol de México (Mexico) 4/1/11)
Legislators from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) proposed the reform on Mar. 10. The center-right National Action Party (PAN), which has been pushing for changes to the labor code for years, is backing the PRI proposal. Together the two parties have enough votes in Congress to pass the legislation, and President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, a member of the PAN, would presumably endorse it.
The unions say the reform would, among other things, weaken collective bargaining by favoring individual contracts; reduce costs to the employer in cases of unfair dismissals by limiting the payment of lost wages to no more than 12 months; in effect abolish the concept of a minimum wage and allow for the employer to impose work conditions with no possibility for review; and allow the employer to adjust working hours, regardless of whether this is stipulated in a contract.
One especially contentious change concerns the regulation of subcontracting, outsourcing and temporary employment. Matteo Dean, a researcher at the Labor Research and Union Consulting Center (CILAS), says the reform’s goal is not to regulate subcontracting but to give it legal support, “to water down the responsibilities of the company benefiting from subcontracting and to make a joke of workers’ rights, since the basic guarantees to avoid abuse of these rights aren’t established clearly and concretely.” Dean stressed the importance of subcontracted workers’ rights at a time when it is estimated that 40% of all employees are working under some form of subcontracting, up from just 8% in 2004. (International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) 3/21/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/2/11)
*3. Honduras: US Blames Protesters as Repression Mounts
Thousands of Hondurans demonstrated on Mar. 30 in a “National Civic Strike” called by teachers’ unions and the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition of unions and grassroots organizations. The action was called to support teachers striking to oppose an education reform plan that they say will lead to the privatization of schools. The protesters were also demanding the approval of a general minimum wage increase, a reduction of the price of fuel, and a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country’s Constitution.
In Tegucigalpa, protesters occupied various points in the city, including the highways in front of headquarters of the militant Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS). “At 10:30 am hundreds of police agents and soldiers attacked us with tear gas bombs and vehicles with water cannons that were filled with a stinging liquid,” union vice president Porfirio Ponce said. “They started to beat people savagely and to chase them through the neighborhoods near our headquarters.”
At Planes, in the Aguán Valley region of the northern department of Colón, one person reportedly died in the repression, 12 were wounded and at least eight were arrested. The demonstration had started at 7 am with protesters blocking highways. Police and soldiers arrived minutes later, armed and protected by anti-riot shields.
Students at the Northern Regional University Center (CURN) in the Sula Valley were attacked with tear gas. In Nacaome in the southwestern department of Valle, police agents attacked groups of youths and arrested the local human rights prosecutor. Other arrests were recorded in Proterillos, with six detentions; Choloma, with about 11, Santa Cruz de Yojoa, with about 30. (Adital (Brazil) 3/31/11 from Defensoresenlinea.com, Sireal, FNRP)
On Mar. 29, the day before the general strike, the US embassy’s human rights and labor attaché, Jeremy Spector, emailed Honduran human rights organizations that had written him about the detention of Miriam Miranda, director of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) the day before. After explaining that Honduran officials said Miranda had been released, Spector added: “However, we cannot condone the frequent violence employed also by the demonstrators.” He accused the protesters of using “bottles, rocks, slings, clubs with nails at the end, and Molotov cocktails.” “Other reports of damage caused by the demonstrations are a cause of great concern for the embassy,” he went on. “That said, it seems that the majority of the injuries reported have affected security personnel.”
Spector asked for people “who have contacts with the teachers’ organization to encourage them to stop the violence and return to their classrooms.” (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/2/11)
While the US human rights attaché seemed to blame protesting teachers for most of the violence, at the Honduran government’s cabinet meeting on Mar. 29 Justice and Human Rights Minister Ana Pineda criticized the police and military for the second week in a row [see Update #1073]. They were using tear gas “irrationally” and in violation of United Nations (UN) protocols, Pineda said. The ministers also listened to a letter from Ramón Custodio, the conservative official human rights commissioner, noting that the use of wooden clubs by the police violated the UN conventions on the use of force. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 3/30/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Wikileaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, March 21-25, 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2971-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-march-21-25-2011
Latin America: Growing Opposition to Military Intervention in Libya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2974-latin-america-growing-opposition-to-military-intervention-in-libya
Former Argentine general gets life in "Operation Condor" crimes
http://ww4report.com/node/9732
Brazil to provide Bolivia "drug war" aid, drones
http://ww4report.com/node/9733
Peru: Amazon peoples mobilize against illegal loggers
http://ww4report.com/node/9734
Venezuela’s Metropolitan Police of Caracas Disbanded
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6107
Venezuelan Workers March Again to Demand Socialism at the Workplace
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6106
Obama in Latin America: 'Common Prosperity,' But For Whom? (El Salvador)
https://nacla.org/node/6931
Honduras: Probe Charges of Police Brutality
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/03/30/honduras-probe-charges-police-brutality
Honduras is Burning: Eye-Witness Report on Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2982-honduras-is-burning-eye-witness-report-on-repression
Brutal Repression in Honduras Targets Teachers, Popular Resistance
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6530
Report from Land Occupations in Post-Coup Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6513
Towards the Reconstruction of the Country: The Constituent Assembly of Indigenous and Black People of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2978-towards-the-reconstruction-of-the-country-the-constituent-assembly-of-indigenous-and-black-people-of-honduras
Honduras: Garífuna march on capital
http://ww4report.com/node/9731
Evictions of Native Families Add Fuel to Fire Over Land Access in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2972-evictions-of-native-families-add-fuel-to-fire-over-land-access-in-guatemala
Narcoviolence in Mexico: Eight Theses and Many Questions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2970-narcoviolence-in-mexico-eight-theses-and-many-questions
Why Mexico’s War on Drugs is Unwinnable
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4232
Mexican Attorney General Resigns; Calderón Nominates Female Anti-Drug Official
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/01/mexican-attorney-general-resigns-calderon-nominates-female-anti-drug-official/
Mexico: rights commission says 5,397 "disappeared" since 2006
http://ww4report.com/node/9730
Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push Transgenic Corn in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4244
Sacred Indigenous Site in Mexico Threatened by Canadian Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2981-sacred-indigenous-site-in-mexico-threatened-by-canadian-mining-company
Indigenous Zapatista Supporters “Held Hostage” in Chiapas for Opposing Ecotourism Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2976-indigenous-zapatista-supporters-held-hostage-in-chiapas-for-opposing-ecotourism-project
In memory: Radical civil rights lawyer Leonard Weinglass (Cuba)
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/Comuniques/COWeinglassDead32411.htm
Fraud Delays Haitian Election Results; Final Results Due In April
http://latindispatch.com/2011/03/31/fraud-delays-haitian-election-results-final-results-due-in-april/
Haiti's Movement from Below Endures
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2980-haitis-movement-from-below-endures-
Haiti – Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction?
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/3/30/seeding-reconstruction-or-destruction.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1074, April 3, 2011
1. Haiti: New Sweatshop Zone Will Displace Farmers
2. Mexico: Unions Protest “Labor Reform” Proposal
3. Honduras: US Blames Protesters as Repression Mounts
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: New Sweatshop Zone Will Displace Farmers
Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd, South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, is pushing ahead with plans to open a large garment assembly plant next March near the coastal village of Caracol in Haiti’s Northeast department. The firm, which supplies garments to such major US retailers as Target, Wal-Mart, Kohl’s and GAP, claims the factory will create 20,000 jobs paying at least four times the average Haitian’s share of the annual gross domestic product (GDP)--which would work out to a wage of about $8 a day for the factory workers. The operation is to include the country’s first facility for producing textiles, a knit and dyeing mill which will use some 6,000 tons of ground water a day.
Sae-A will be the main tenant in the Northern Industrial Park, a new 617-acre “free trade zone” (FTZ, a complex of assembly plants). The park may also house two other apparel companies and a furniture manufacturer, according to Mark D’Sa, a Miami-based GAP executive who has been “on loan” with the State Department to work on Haiti trade policy.
In what US officials call an “unprecedented collaboration,” the US is providing the Northern Industrial Park project with $124 million for constructing 5,000 houses, a 25-megawatt electricity grid, and a waste and water treatment plant, while the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB, or BID in French and Spanish) is putting in more than $100 million for buildings and roads. Sae-A’s investment is $78 million, bringing the cost of the FTZ to more than $300 million. The administration of Haitian president René Préval is donating the land, which the government says is state property, and has committed to compensating the farmers currently using it—illegally, according to the government. [The sources didn’t specify whether the Haitian government would also grant the manufacturers the duty and tariff exemptions that usually benefit assembly plants producing for export.]
The Caracol industrial park is one of two complexes covered by an agreement the Haitian and US governments signed last September. The other factory complex is to be built near a displaced persons camp in Corail-Cesselesse, north of Port-au-Prince [see Update #1052]. The Northern Industrial Park is the second FTZ in the Northeast department: the first was built at Ouanaminthe, near the Dominican border, under the second administration of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004).
The US government has been a major force in pushing for the industrial parks. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) calls them “smart economic investments” that will “allow the Haitian people to help themselves.” According to the Miami Herald, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton personally brought the issue up during a visit to South Korea; Sae-A had been apparently been hesitant about the deal, fearing political instability in Haiti. “So much is at stake” in the project, the Herald reported, “that some Haiti observers mused that it was perhaps one of the reasons for the United States’ heavy involvement in the Nov. 28 presidential election debacle.” (MH 3/29/11; USAID Frontlines February/March 2011)
Another project that USAID says allows “Haitian people to help themselves” is the agency’s agricultural program, WINNER (Watershed Initiative for National Natural Environmental Resources), which in 2010 “helped more than 10,500 small- and medium-sized farmers grow corn, sorghum, beans, potatoes and other vegetables…. Overall, the campaign increased production by 75%.” (USAID Frontlines February/March 2011)
A Mar. 30 report by a group of Haitian media organizations, Haiti Grassroots Watch (Ayiti Kale Je, “Haiti Keep Your Eyes Open” in Creole), gave a very different view of the WINNER program.
Following the January 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti, WINNER and other organizations began distributing donated foreign seeds to Haitian farmers on the assumption that there would be a shortage. But the report found that there was “no seed emergency” in Haiti and that the donated seeds undercut local seed producers and distributors. WINNER was in charge of distributing hybrid seeds donated by the Monsanto Company, a giant US-based biotechnology multinational [see Update #1036]. The Haitian journalists found evidence that “[a]t least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting ‘hooked’ on hybrid seeds” and “also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids” and might be using the seeds without the recommended masks and gloves. In one case, the farmers were “planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.”
USAID refused to be interviewed by the Haitian reporters and told farmers’ groups not to talk to them. (Haiti Grassroots Watch 3/30/11)
*2. Mexico: Unions Protest “Labor Reform” Proposal
Thousands of workers, many of them affiliated with the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s largest independent labor federation, marched from the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City to the Chamber of Deputies on the afternoon of Mar. 31 to protest a proposed reform of the labor code. Union leaders said the legislation “intends to finish off collective contracts and make the workers modern slaves.” Martín Esparza, general secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), called on workers to stay alert, because the politicians plan “to sacrifice us during Holy Week”—a reference to the possibility that Congress will try to pass the law the week of Apr. 18, when many people are taking Easter vacation. The head of the telephone workers’ union, Francisco Hernández Juárez, called for a nationwide mobilization on Apr. 7 to step up the pressure on the legislators. (El Sol de México (Mexico) 4/1/11)
Legislators from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) proposed the reform on Mar. 10. The center-right National Action Party (PAN), which has been pushing for changes to the labor code for years, is backing the PRI proposal. Together the two parties have enough votes in Congress to pass the legislation, and President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, a member of the PAN, would presumably endorse it.
The unions say the reform would, among other things, weaken collective bargaining by favoring individual contracts; reduce costs to the employer in cases of unfair dismissals by limiting the payment of lost wages to no more than 12 months; in effect abolish the concept of a minimum wage and allow for the employer to impose work conditions with no possibility for review; and allow the employer to adjust working hours, regardless of whether this is stipulated in a contract.
One especially contentious change concerns the regulation of subcontracting, outsourcing and temporary employment. Matteo Dean, a researcher at the Labor Research and Union Consulting Center (CILAS), says the reform’s goal is not to regulate subcontracting but to give it legal support, “to water down the responsibilities of the company benefiting from subcontracting and to make a joke of workers’ rights, since the basic guarantees to avoid abuse of these rights aren’t established clearly and concretely.” Dean stressed the importance of subcontracted workers’ rights at a time when it is estimated that 40% of all employees are working under some form of subcontracting, up from just 8% in 2004. (International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) 3/21/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/2/11)
*3. Honduras: US Blames Protesters as Repression Mounts
Thousands of Hondurans demonstrated on Mar. 30 in a “National Civic Strike” called by teachers’ unions and the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition of unions and grassroots organizations. The action was called to support teachers striking to oppose an education reform plan that they say will lead to the privatization of schools. The protesters were also demanding the approval of a general minimum wage increase, a reduction of the price of fuel, and a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country’s Constitution.
In Tegucigalpa, protesters occupied various points in the city, including the highways in front of headquarters of the militant Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS). “At 10:30 am hundreds of police agents and soldiers attacked us with tear gas bombs and vehicles with water cannons that were filled with a stinging liquid,” union vice president Porfirio Ponce said. “They started to beat people savagely and to chase them through the neighborhoods near our headquarters.”
At Planes, in the Aguán Valley region of the northern department of Colón, one person reportedly died in the repression, 12 were wounded and at least eight were arrested. The demonstration had started at 7 am with protesters blocking highways. Police and soldiers arrived minutes later, armed and protected by anti-riot shields.
Students at the Northern Regional University Center (CURN) in the Sula Valley were attacked with tear gas. In Nacaome in the southwestern department of Valle, police agents attacked groups of youths and arrested the local human rights prosecutor. Other arrests were recorded in Proterillos, with six detentions; Choloma, with about 11, Santa Cruz de Yojoa, with about 30. (Adital (Brazil) 3/31/11 from Defensoresenlinea.com, Sireal, FNRP)
On Mar. 29, the day before the general strike, the US embassy’s human rights and labor attaché, Jeremy Spector, emailed Honduran human rights organizations that had written him about the detention of Miriam Miranda, director of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) the day before. After explaining that Honduran officials said Miranda had been released, Spector added: “However, we cannot condone the frequent violence employed also by the demonstrators.” He accused the protesters of using “bottles, rocks, slings, clubs with nails at the end, and Molotov cocktails.” “Other reports of damage caused by the demonstrations are a cause of great concern for the embassy,” he went on. “That said, it seems that the majority of the injuries reported have affected security personnel.”
Spector asked for people “who have contacts with the teachers’ organization to encourage them to stop the violence and return to their classrooms.” (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 4/2/11)
While the US human rights attaché seemed to blame protesting teachers for most of the violence, at the Honduran government’s cabinet meeting on Mar. 29 Justice and Human Rights Minister Ana Pineda criticized the police and military for the second week in a row [see Update #1073]. They were using tear gas “irrationally” and in violation of United Nations (UN) protocols, Pineda said. The ministers also listened to a letter from Ramón Custodio, the conservative official human rights commissioner, noting that the use of wooden clubs by the police violated the UN conventions on the use of force. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 3/30/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Wikileaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, March 21-25, 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2971-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-march-21-25-2011
Latin America: Growing Opposition to Military Intervention in Libya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2974-latin-america-growing-opposition-to-military-intervention-in-libya
Former Argentine general gets life in "Operation Condor" crimes
http://ww4report.com/node/9732
Brazil to provide Bolivia "drug war" aid, drones
http://ww4report.com/node/9733
Peru: Amazon peoples mobilize against illegal loggers
http://ww4report.com/node/9734
Venezuela’s Metropolitan Police of Caracas Disbanded
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6107
Venezuelan Workers March Again to Demand Socialism at the Workplace
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6106
Obama in Latin America: 'Common Prosperity,' But For Whom? (El Salvador)
https://nacla.org/node/6931
Honduras: Probe Charges of Police Brutality
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/03/30/honduras-probe-charges-police-brutality
Honduras is Burning: Eye-Witness Report on Repression
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2982-honduras-is-burning-eye-witness-report-on-repression
Brutal Repression in Honduras Targets Teachers, Popular Resistance
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6530
Report from Land Occupations in Post-Coup Honduras
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6513
Towards the Reconstruction of the Country: The Constituent Assembly of Indigenous and Black People of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2978-towards-the-reconstruction-of-the-country-the-constituent-assembly-of-indigenous-and-black-people-of-honduras
Honduras: Garífuna march on capital
http://ww4report.com/node/9731
Evictions of Native Families Add Fuel to Fire Over Land Access in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2972-evictions-of-native-families-add-fuel-to-fire-over-land-access-in-guatemala
Narcoviolence in Mexico: Eight Theses and Many Questions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2970-narcoviolence-in-mexico-eight-theses-and-many-questions
Why Mexico’s War on Drugs is Unwinnable
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4232
Mexican Attorney General Resigns; Calderón Nominates Female Anti-Drug Official
http://latindispatch.com/2011/04/01/mexican-attorney-general-resigns-calderon-nominates-female-anti-drug-official/
Mexico: rights commission says 5,397 "disappeared" since 2006
http://ww4report.com/node/9730
Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push Transgenic Corn in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4244
Sacred Indigenous Site in Mexico Threatened by Canadian Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2981-sacred-indigenous-site-in-mexico-threatened-by-canadian-mining-company
Indigenous Zapatista Supporters “Held Hostage” in Chiapas for Opposing Ecotourism Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2976-indigenous-zapatista-supporters-held-hostage-in-chiapas-for-opposing-ecotourism-project
In memory: Radical civil rights lawyer Leonard Weinglass (Cuba)
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/Comuniques/COWeinglassDead32411.htm
Fraud Delays Haitian Election Results; Final Results Due In April
http://latindispatch.com/2011/03/31/fraud-delays-haitian-election-results-final-results-due-in-april/
Haiti's Movement from Below Endures
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2980-haitis-movement-from-below-endures-
Haiti – Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction?
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/3/30/seeding-reconstruction-or-destruction.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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