Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [see Update #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [seeUpdate #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
WNU #1251: Haitian President to Rule by Decreeby Weekly News Update on the Americas (noreply@blogger.com)
Issue #1251, January 18, 2015
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, 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. It is archived athttp://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold
overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass
amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti(MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [seeUpdate #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15,1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the
victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International
Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centristInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC).
RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [seeUpdate #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [seeUpdate #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, 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. It is archived athttp://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold
overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass
amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti(MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [seeUpdate #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15,1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the
victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International
Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centristInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC).
RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [seeUpdate #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [seeUpdate #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
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WNU #1252: Argentine Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”by Weekly News Update on the Americas (noreply@blogger.com)
Issue #1252, January 25, 2015
1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived athttp://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
Argentine federal prosecutor Natalio Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment late on Jan. 18 with a gunshot wound to his head. Nisman had filed a 289-page criminal complaint on Jan. 14 charging that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and eight others, including two Iranians, had acted to cover up the alleged role of the Iranian government in the July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires [see World War 4 Report 1/19/15]. The bombing, which left 85 dead and some 300 injured, is considered the deadliest anti-Semitic attack carried out anywhere since World War 2. Nisman’s death came the day before he was to testify to the National Congress about the charges.
Nisman’s body was found in his locked apartment by his mother and agents from his 10-member security detail after the prosecutor failed to answer phone calls; he was lying next to the .22-caliber handgun used to shoot him. Investigators initially suggested suicide, as did President Fernández in a Facebook posting on Jan. 20. But evidence emerged later that undercut the suicide hypothesis: Nisman had not appeared suicidal; there was no note; gunpowder traces weren’t detected on Nisman’s hands; a locksmith disputed claims that two entrances to the apartment were locked; and a previously unnoticed third entrance was discovered. Reversing her earlier position, Fernández wrote on Jan. 22 that the prosecutor had probably been murdered. (New York Times 1/22/15, 1/23/15 from correspondents; InfoBAE (Argentina) 1/22/15)
In October 2006 Nisman--who was appointed to head the AMIA inquiry by former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández’s late husband--formally charged the Lebanese organization Hezbollah with carrying out the AMIA bombing and the Iranian government with ordering it. In January 2013 Argentina and Iran signed an agreement for a joint investigation into the attack [seeUpdate #1195]. Nisman opposed the deal, as did Jewish community leaders, who felt this would impede prosecution of the Iranian suspects. An Argentine appeals court ruled the agreement unconstitutional on May 15, 2014, although the government has appealed the decision [see World War 4 Report 5/18/14].
In his Jan. 14 complaint, based in part on intercepted phone calls, Nisman accused the presidency and people close to Fernández of working to negate the charges against Iran in exchange for trade
deals. In addition to President Fernández and Foreign Minister Timerman, Nisman named legislative deputy Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque; Luis
D’Elía, a leader in the leftist Federation of Argentine Workers(CTA) and the piquetero (“picketer”) unemployed movement who is close to the government [seeUpdate #975]; Fernando Esteche, the leader of the far-left group Quebracho [see Update #960]; Héctor Yrimia, a former prosecutor in the AMIA case; Mohsen Rabbani, a former cultural attaché to the Iranian embassy suspected of masterminding the bombing [see Update #1124]; and Jorge “Yussuf” Khalil, an Iranian community leader in Buenos Aires. The complaint included transcripts of phone conversations between D’Elía and Khalil. (Todo Noticias (Argentina) 1/15/15, 1/23/15; NYT 1/22/15 from correspondents)
Fernández supporters noted that Nisman had close relations with the US embassy in Buenos Aires, according to US diplomatic cables released by the Wikileaks group in 2010, and that he followed advice from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs (OIA). It seems that Nisman regularly notified the embassy in advance about his legal moves. A confidential diplomatic cable dated May 19, 2009, notes that Nisman advised the embassy of his request for the indictment of a new AMIA suspect the day before he submitted the request to the judge in the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corra. (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
In related news, at least 10 people were injured the night of Jan. 18-19 when a crowd chanting anti-Semitic slogans attacked a hostel in Lago Puelo in the southern province of Chubut, beating and robbing Israeli tourists. The hostel’s owner, Sergio Polak, said the crowd also hurled rocks and Molotov bombs and fired shots. Attacks on the hostel “started in March or April last year,” he said. “We connect it with the campaign going on for a while on the subject of Israeli tourism. They say [the guests] are Israeli soldiers.” The attack reportedly went on for hours because the local police didn’t have enough agents on hand. There were about 10 assailants, identified as neighbors of the hostel. Initially no one was arrested, but a local radio station reported later that the attackers were “at the disposition of justice.” (La Nación (Argentina) 1/21/15 from Agencia DyN)
*2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
While the US media focused on the late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s Jan. 14 charges against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, many people have been accused over the years of blocking the investigation into the deadly 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building. The people suspected include a former president, a judge, an intelligence chief, and officials of two foreign governments. After an inquiry that has gone on for 21 years under several different governments, Argentine prosecutors have still not won a single conviction in the case.
In May 2008 Nisman charged former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) with impeding the initial investigation during his presidency. In March 2012 federal judge Ariel Lijo ordered Menem to stand trial on the charges, along with the judge who headed the original investigation, Juan José Galeano; intelligence service directors Hugo Anzorreguy and Juan Carlos Anchezar; and two commanders of the federal police [see Update #1124]. The trial still hasn’t taken place. Formerly an opponent of President Fernández, Menem is now a political ally and seems to be having a relatively easy time in the courts. He is also implicated in the government's clandestine sales of 6,500 tons of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995. In March 2013 an appeals court found him guilty of “aggravated smuggling,” but he currently enjoys immunity as a senator for La Rioja province [seeUpdates #1097, 1167].
Menem was allied with the US government while he was president, and the US embassy was clearly upset when Nisman filed charges against him in the AMIA case. Nisman apologized for not giving the embassy advance warning, according to a May 27 confidential cable obtained by the Wikileaks group. Then-US ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne, now the ambassador to Mexico, complained in another confidential cable two days later that the Menem charges “could complicate international efforts to bring the Iranian indictees to justice.” “Nisman may still be currying favor from the Casa Rosada [Argentina’s presidential palace] with a view to a favorable judicial appointment in the future,” Wayne claimed. The May 27 cable emphasized the US government’s interest in keeping the investigation centered on Iran and away from Menem: “Legatt officers [legal attachés] have for the past two years recommended to Nisman that he focus on the perpetrators of the terrorist attack and not on the possible mishandling of the first investigation.” (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
Although never formally charged, another coverup suspect is Antonio Horacio Stiles, better known as “Jaime Stiusso” (or “Stiuso”), the director of operations for the federal Intelligence Service (SI) until Fernández replaced him in December. Stiusso entered intelligence work in 1972, serving under the highly repressive 1976-1983 military junta and then under all governments since the restoration of democracy. He is said to have been close to Nisman, and also to have worked closely with Israel’s Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Stiusso seemed to have a great deal of power in the government. Then-justice minister Gustavo Beliz had to resign his post on July 25, 2004 after tangling with the intelligence director. Beliz went on television the same day to charge that Stiusso had “messed up” the AMIA investigation. Beliz also said Argentina’s intelligence apparatus was a “black hole,” a “parallel state” and a “secret police without any controls,” and he described Stiusso as someone “the whole world fears because they say he’s dangerous and can have you killed.” (La Nación (Argentina) 12/18/14; El País (Madrid) 1/25/15)
Although the Iranian government would obviously have reasons to block the inquiry if Iranian officials were involved in the AMIA bombing, there have also been accusations against Israeli officials. In January 2014 former Israeli ambassador to Argentina Yitzhak Aviran (1993-2000) announced that his country had killed most of the perpetrators of the attack. “The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” he said. Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman noted that Aviran’s comments “would imply that Israel hid information from Argentine courts, blocking new evidence from appearing.” Timerman demanded that Aviran tell Argentine prosecutors whether Israel had further information [see Update #1205].
Some Argentines noted that suspect “suicides” like Nisman’s are hardly unprecedented in the country [see Update #454]. Claims of suicide have been questioned in at least five other cases, all of which took place during Menem’s presidency or involved Menem or people close to him. In three of the cases, the victim was about to testify or was considering doing so.
Former Customs head Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Echegoyen (or Etchegoyen) was shot in the head in his studio in December 1990; as in the Nisman case, there were no traces of gunpowder on his hands. Echegoyen was reportedly investigating the Edcadassa company, owned by members of the Yoma family, former in-laws of then-president Menem. Postal magnate and former Menem associateAlfredo Yabrán was found dead of apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds in one of his country estates in May 1998; he was sought for questioning in the January 1997 murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas, who had been investigating Yabrán’s business activities. Naval captain Horacio Pedro Estrada was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment in August 1998; again, no traces of gunpowder were found, and the right-handed Estrada was shot in the left side of his head. Estrada was reportedly considering testifying in the case of illegal arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia. Also in August 1998, Marcelo Cattáneo was found hanging in an abandoned structure on a Buenos Aires university campus; he was charged with paying bribes in a corruption case involving the state-owned Banco Nacion bank and IBM, the US computer giant. His family expressed doubts about the suicide hypothesis. Lourdes di Natale, once a secretary to former Menem in-law Emir Yoma, supposedly fell or jumped to her death from her apartment’s balcony while drunk in March 2003, but no alcoholic beverage was found in her apartment and the amount of alcohol in her blood should have made her incapable of getting on the balcony. She was about to testify in the case of the smuggled arms. (Diario Uno (Argentina) 6/18/12; Página 12 (Argentina) 1/20/15)
*3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico’s giant state-owned oil monopoly, signed contracts worth $149 billion with outside companies from 2003 to 2012, according to a Jan. 23 investigative report by the Reuters wire service; about 8% of these contracts were cited by a congressional watchdog, the Chamber of Deputies’ Federal Audit Office (ASF), as having irregularities “ranging from overcharging for shoddy work to outright fraud,” Reuters’ reporters wrote. The problems involved more than 100 contracts with a total value of $11.7 billion.
Reuters’ revelations appeared as Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was pushing ahead with an “energy reform” program to open up the country’s petroleum industry to still more contracts with private firms. Praised by the US government and media, the program is unpopular with many Mexicans, who see it as a form of disguised privatization. Two major scandals implicating PEMEX contractors came to light last year, one involving Oceanografía SA de CV and the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc., the other involving the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) [see Update #1239].
PEMEX officials rarely act to correct the contract problems, according to Reuters.
From 2008 to 2012 the ASF sent PEMEX 274 recommendations to take action on the
irregularities. PEMEX’s response so far has been to suspend a few employees in just three of the cases; the rest of the recommendations were dismissed or are still awaiting action. The government plans to establish a new independent auditing office for the enterprise to resolve this problem, but past performance by PEMEX auditors leads to skepticism. One example was the case of sales to Brazilian chemical makerUnigel SA. From to 2009 to 2011 PEMEX’s petrochemicals subsidiary sold the Brazilian company a chemical at an unexplained discount that cost the Mexican enterprise $24.2 million. PEMEX internal auditors flagged the problem, but the head auditor advised his colleagues to “work with the director of PEMEX Petrochemicals to attend to and answer [our] recommendations, with the aim of avoiding them becoming definitive issues.” The PEMEX officials who approved the deal weren’t disciplined; one now works for Unigel.
“PEMEX’s taxes and dividends finance about 30 percent of the federal budget,” Reuters noted. “Contract abuse at the oil giant eats into the government’s ability to fund services from healthcare to road building.” (Business Insider 1/23/15 from Reuters)
Meanwhile, PEMEX and the overall Mexican economy are being hurt by plunging oil prices on international markets. As of Jan. 23 PEMEX’s oil was selling at $38.03 a barrel, its lowest price since June 2009. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/15). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects a growth rate of 3.2% for Mexico this year and 3.5% for 2016, a little below its projections for the world as a whole--3.5% in 2015 and 3.7% in 2016. (Forbes México 1/20/15 from Reuters)
*4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
On Jan. 19 Guatemala’s High Risk Court B convicted former police chief Pedro García Arredondo of the deaths of 37 people in a fire at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on Jan. 31, 1980 [seeUpdate #1237]. García Arredondo was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the fire and
50 years for the deaths of two students; he is already serving a 70-year sentence for the killing of a student. The fire broke out when police stormed the embassy, which had been occupied by indigenous and campesino protesters from El Quiché department; the police blocked the doors and refused to let firefighters enter. The victims included the Spanish consul, two of his employees, a former Guatemalan vice president, a former Guatemalan foreign relations minister, and 22 El Quiché campesinos; one was Vicente Menchú, the father of 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum.
The rightwing government of President Otto Pérez Molina, who was a military officer at the time of the fire, said it respected the court’s decision. A note from the Foreign Relations Ministry expressed regret for the deaths of “famous Spanish people and Guatemalans.” “These situations cannot be repeated,” the note added. The Spanish Foreign Ministry wrote that the Spanish government “expresses its satisfaction and congratulates the Guatemalan justice system for having, 35 years later, judged these acts in accordance with the laws and with respect for due process.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 1/20/15 from AFP; Prensa Latina 1/20/15)
As of Jan. 13 Judge Carol Patricia Flores had ordered a medical examination for former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) to determine whether he can attend his new trial for genocide against Ixil Mayans in El Quiché department. He failed to appear at a hearing on Jan. 12 to discuss administrative issues in the trial. Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10, 2013, but the Constitutional Court threw the verdict out 10 days later [see Update #1178]. A new trial started on Jan. 5 but was immediately suspended because of a defense challenge to one of the judges, Jeannette Valdez, on the grounds that she had written her 2004 doctoral thesis about the genocide. (La Nación (Costa Rica) 1/13/15 from AFP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Commodity boom extracting increasingly heavy toll on Amazon forests (South America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5191-commodity-boom-extracting-increasingly-heavy-toll-on-amazon-forests-
New Evidence Raises Questions About Death of Argentine Prosecutor
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/22/new-evidence-raises-questions-about-death-of-argentine-prosecutor/
Prosecutor’s Death a Test for Argentine Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/5192-prosecutors-death-a-test-for-argentine-democracy
La Legua: Building Community in Small Spaces (Chile)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14486
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel (Chile)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/23/memoriam-pedro-lemebel
Bolivian Socialist Funds Election Campaign by Selling Potatoes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5188-bolivian-socialist-funds-election-campaign-by-selling-potatoes
Ecuador: Waorani warriors on trial in oil-field raid
http://ww4report.com/node/13925
Chevron Crowned as World's Worst Company for the Environment (Ecuador)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chevron-Crowned-as-Worlds-Worst-Company-for-the-Environment-20150123-0024.html
Ecuador: The “Citizens’ Revolution” vs Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5189-ecuador-the-citizens-revolution-vs-social-movements
Social Movements Demand ¨Maximum Sentence¨ for Indigenous Leader’s Murderer as Trial Continues (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11165
El Salvador: Pardon Granted For One of 17 Women Jailed for Miscarriage, Accused of Homicide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5198-el-salvador-pardon-granted-for-one-of-17-women-jailed-for-miscarraige
Evidence the DEA Attempted to Alter Testimony on Drug War Massacre in Honduras
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14509
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Mexico: Ayotzinapa, Emblem of the Twenty-First Century Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5193-mexico-ayotzinapa-emblem-of-the-twenty-first-century-social-order
Forced Disappearances Are Humanitarian Crisis in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5195-forced-disappearances-are-humanitarian-crisis-in-mexico
Lopez Obrador Back on the Battlefield (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/lopez-obrador-back-on-the-battlefield/
Vanished in Vallarta (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/vanished-in-vallarta/
Mexico: cops arrested in 'disappearance' of reporter
http://ww4report.com/node/13920
Cuba, U.S. Agree on Diplomacy, Clash Over Human Rights During Historic Talks
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/23/cuba-u-s-agree-on-diplomacy-clash-over-human-rights-during-historic-talks/
The Cuban Opening and the Struggles for a New Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5194-the-cuban-opening-and-the-struggles-for-a-new-social-order
Security Council Arrives in Haiti as New Electoral Commission is Announced
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/security-council-arrives-in-haiti-as-new-electoral-commission-is-announced
New Tools for Assessing Progress in Haiti Reconstruction and Development
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-tools-for-assessing-progress-in-haiti-reconstruction-and-development
Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover, or US Contractors to Make Millions?
www.thenation.com/article/195673/usaid-helping-haiti-recover-or-us-contractors-make-millions
Over 17,000 Mexican Children Attempt to Enter US Every Year (US/immigration)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Over-17000-Mexican-Children-Attempt-to-Enter-US-Every-Year-20150123-0019.html
The Israel-Mexico Border: How Israeli High-Tech Firms Are Up-Armoring the U.S.-Mexico Border
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/27/israel-mexico-border
Joining our struggles to build another world: 10 years of horizontal organising in El Barrio, New York (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14495
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived athttp://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
Argentine federal prosecutor Natalio Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment late on Jan. 18 with a gunshot wound to his head. Nisman had filed a 289-page criminal complaint on Jan. 14 charging that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and eight others, including two Iranians, had acted to cover up the alleged role of the Iranian government in the July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires [see World War 4 Report 1/19/15]. The bombing, which left 85 dead and some 300 injured, is considered the deadliest anti-Semitic attack carried out anywhere since World War 2. Nisman’s death came the day before he was to testify to the National Congress about the charges.
Nisman’s body was found in his locked apartment by his mother and agents from his 10-member security detail after the prosecutor failed to answer phone calls; he was lying next to the .22-caliber handgun used to shoot him. Investigators initially suggested suicide, as did President Fernández in a Facebook posting on Jan. 20. But evidence emerged later that undercut the suicide hypothesis: Nisman had not appeared suicidal; there was no note; gunpowder traces weren’t detected on Nisman’s hands; a locksmith disputed claims that two entrances to the apartment were locked; and a previously unnoticed third entrance was discovered. Reversing her earlier position, Fernández wrote on Jan. 22 that the prosecutor had probably been murdered. (New York Times 1/22/15, 1/23/15 from correspondents; InfoBAE (Argentina) 1/22/15)
In October 2006 Nisman--who was appointed to head the AMIA inquiry by former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández’s late husband--formally charged the Lebanese organization Hezbollah with carrying out the AMIA bombing and the Iranian government with ordering it. In January 2013 Argentina and Iran signed an agreement for a joint investigation into the attack [seeUpdate #1195]. Nisman opposed the deal, as did Jewish community leaders, who felt this would impede prosecution of the Iranian suspects. An Argentine appeals court ruled the agreement unconstitutional on May 15, 2014, although the government has appealed the decision [see World War 4 Report 5/18/14].
In his Jan. 14 complaint, based in part on intercepted phone calls, Nisman accused the presidency and people close to Fernández of working to negate the charges against Iran in exchange for trade
deals. In addition to President Fernández and Foreign Minister Timerman, Nisman named legislative deputy Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque; Luis
D’Elía, a leader in the leftist Federation of Argentine Workers(CTA) and the piquetero (“picketer”) unemployed movement who is close to the government [seeUpdate #975]; Fernando Esteche, the leader of the far-left group Quebracho [see Update #960]; Héctor Yrimia, a former prosecutor in the AMIA case; Mohsen Rabbani, a former cultural attaché to the Iranian embassy suspected of masterminding the bombing [see Update #1124]; and Jorge “Yussuf” Khalil, an Iranian community leader in Buenos Aires. The complaint included transcripts of phone conversations between D’Elía and Khalil. (Todo Noticias (Argentina) 1/15/15, 1/23/15; NYT 1/22/15 from correspondents)
Fernández supporters noted that Nisman had close relations with the US embassy in Buenos Aires, according to US diplomatic cables released by the Wikileaks group in 2010, and that he followed advice from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs (OIA). It seems that Nisman regularly notified the embassy in advance about his legal moves. A confidential diplomatic cable dated May 19, 2009, notes that Nisman advised the embassy of his request for the indictment of a new AMIA suspect the day before he submitted the request to the judge in the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corra. (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
In related news, at least 10 people were injured the night of Jan. 18-19 when a crowd chanting anti-Semitic slogans attacked a hostel in Lago Puelo in the southern province of Chubut, beating and robbing Israeli tourists. The hostel’s owner, Sergio Polak, said the crowd also hurled rocks and Molotov bombs and fired shots. Attacks on the hostel “started in March or April last year,” he said. “We connect it with the campaign going on for a while on the subject of Israeli tourism. They say [the guests] are Israeli soldiers.” The attack reportedly went on for hours because the local police didn’t have enough agents on hand. There were about 10 assailants, identified as neighbors of the hostel. Initially no one was arrested, but a local radio station reported later that the attackers were “at the disposition of justice.” (La Nación (Argentina) 1/21/15 from Agencia DyN)
*2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
While the US media focused on the late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s Jan. 14 charges against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, many people have been accused over the years of blocking the investigation into the deadly 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building. The people suspected include a former president, a judge, an intelligence chief, and officials of two foreign governments. After an inquiry that has gone on for 21 years under several different governments, Argentine prosecutors have still not won a single conviction in the case.
In May 2008 Nisman charged former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) with impeding the initial investigation during his presidency. In March 2012 federal judge Ariel Lijo ordered Menem to stand trial on the charges, along with the judge who headed the original investigation, Juan José Galeano; intelligence service directors Hugo Anzorreguy and Juan Carlos Anchezar; and two commanders of the federal police [see Update #1124]. The trial still hasn’t taken place. Formerly an opponent of President Fernández, Menem is now a political ally and seems to be having a relatively easy time in the courts. He is also implicated in the government's clandestine sales of 6,500 tons of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995. In March 2013 an appeals court found him guilty of “aggravated smuggling,” but he currently enjoys immunity as a senator for La Rioja province [seeUpdates #1097, 1167].
Menem was allied with the US government while he was president, and the US embassy was clearly upset when Nisman filed charges against him in the AMIA case. Nisman apologized for not giving the embassy advance warning, according to a May 27 confidential cable obtained by the Wikileaks group. Then-US ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne, now the ambassador to Mexico, complained in another confidential cable two days later that the Menem charges “could complicate international efforts to bring the Iranian indictees to justice.” “Nisman may still be currying favor from the Casa Rosada [Argentina’s presidential palace] with a view to a favorable judicial appointment in the future,” Wayne claimed. The May 27 cable emphasized the US government’s interest in keeping the investigation centered on Iran and away from Menem: “Legatt officers [legal attachés] have for the past two years recommended to Nisman that he focus on the perpetrators of the terrorist attack and not on the possible mishandling of the first investigation.” (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
Although never formally charged, another coverup suspect is Antonio Horacio Stiles, better known as “Jaime Stiusso” (or “Stiuso”), the director of operations for the federal Intelligence Service (SI) until Fernández replaced him in December. Stiusso entered intelligence work in 1972, serving under the highly repressive 1976-1983 military junta and then under all governments since the restoration of democracy. He is said to have been close to Nisman, and also to have worked closely with Israel’s Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Stiusso seemed to have a great deal of power in the government. Then-justice minister Gustavo Beliz had to resign his post on July 25, 2004 after tangling with the intelligence director. Beliz went on television the same day to charge that Stiusso had “messed up” the AMIA investigation. Beliz also said Argentina’s intelligence apparatus was a “black hole,” a “parallel state” and a “secret police without any controls,” and he described Stiusso as someone “the whole world fears because they say he’s dangerous and can have you killed.” (La Nación (Argentina) 12/18/14; El País (Madrid) 1/25/15)
Although the Iranian government would obviously have reasons to block the inquiry if Iranian officials were involved in the AMIA bombing, there have also been accusations against Israeli officials. In January 2014 former Israeli ambassador to Argentina Yitzhak Aviran (1993-2000) announced that his country had killed most of the perpetrators of the attack. “The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” he said. Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman noted that Aviran’s comments “would imply that Israel hid information from Argentine courts, blocking new evidence from appearing.” Timerman demanded that Aviran tell Argentine prosecutors whether Israel had further information [see Update #1205].
Some Argentines noted that suspect “suicides” like Nisman’s are hardly unprecedented in the country [see Update #454]. Claims of suicide have been questioned in at least five other cases, all of which took place during Menem’s presidency or involved Menem or people close to him. In three of the cases, the victim was about to testify or was considering doing so.
Former Customs head Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Echegoyen (or Etchegoyen) was shot in the head in his studio in December 1990; as in the Nisman case, there were no traces of gunpowder on his hands. Echegoyen was reportedly investigating the Edcadassa company, owned by members of the Yoma family, former in-laws of then-president Menem. Postal magnate and former Menem associateAlfredo Yabrán was found dead of apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds in one of his country estates in May 1998; he was sought for questioning in the January 1997 murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas, who had been investigating Yabrán’s business activities. Naval captain Horacio Pedro Estrada was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment in August 1998; again, no traces of gunpowder were found, and the right-handed Estrada was shot in the left side of his head. Estrada was reportedly considering testifying in the case of illegal arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia. Also in August 1998, Marcelo Cattáneo was found hanging in an abandoned structure on a Buenos Aires university campus; he was charged with paying bribes in a corruption case involving the state-owned Banco Nacion bank and IBM, the US computer giant. His family expressed doubts about the suicide hypothesis. Lourdes di Natale, once a secretary to former Menem in-law Emir Yoma, supposedly fell or jumped to her death from her apartment’s balcony while drunk in March 2003, but no alcoholic beverage was found in her apartment and the amount of alcohol in her blood should have made her incapable of getting on the balcony. She was about to testify in the case of the smuggled arms. (Diario Uno (Argentina) 6/18/12; Página 12 (Argentina) 1/20/15)
*3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico’s giant state-owned oil monopoly, signed contracts worth $149 billion with outside companies from 2003 to 2012, according to a Jan. 23 investigative report by the Reuters wire service; about 8% of these contracts were cited by a congressional watchdog, the Chamber of Deputies’ Federal Audit Office (ASF), as having irregularities “ranging from overcharging for shoddy work to outright fraud,” Reuters’ reporters wrote. The problems involved more than 100 contracts with a total value of $11.7 billion.
Reuters’ revelations appeared as Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was pushing ahead with an “energy reform” program to open up the country’s petroleum industry to still more contracts with private firms. Praised by the US government and media, the program is unpopular with many Mexicans, who see it as a form of disguised privatization. Two major scandals implicating PEMEX contractors came to light last year, one involving Oceanografía SA de CV and the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc., the other involving the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) [see Update #1239].
PEMEX officials rarely act to correct the contract problems, according to Reuters.
From 2008 to 2012 the ASF sent PEMEX 274 recommendations to take action on the
irregularities. PEMEX’s response so far has been to suspend a few employees in just three of the cases; the rest of the recommendations were dismissed or are still awaiting action. The government plans to establish a new independent auditing office for the enterprise to resolve this problem, but past performance by PEMEX auditors leads to skepticism. One example was the case of sales to Brazilian chemical makerUnigel SA. From to 2009 to 2011 PEMEX’s petrochemicals subsidiary sold the Brazilian company a chemical at an unexplained discount that cost the Mexican enterprise $24.2 million. PEMEX internal auditors flagged the problem, but the head auditor advised his colleagues to “work with the director of PEMEX Petrochemicals to attend to and answer [our] recommendations, with the aim of avoiding them becoming definitive issues.” The PEMEX officials who approved the deal weren’t disciplined; one now works for Unigel.
“PEMEX’s taxes and dividends finance about 30 percent of the federal budget,” Reuters noted. “Contract abuse at the oil giant eats into the government’s ability to fund services from healthcare to road building.” (Business Insider 1/23/15 from Reuters)
Meanwhile, PEMEX and the overall Mexican economy are being hurt by plunging oil prices on international markets. As of Jan. 23 PEMEX’s oil was selling at $38.03 a barrel, its lowest price since June 2009. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/15). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects a growth rate of 3.2% for Mexico this year and 3.5% for 2016, a little below its projections for the world as a whole--3.5% in 2015 and 3.7% in 2016. (Forbes México 1/20/15 from Reuters)
*4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
On Jan. 19 Guatemala’s High Risk Court B convicted former police chief Pedro García Arredondo of the deaths of 37 people in a fire at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on Jan. 31, 1980 [seeUpdate #1237]. García Arredondo was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the fire and
50 years for the deaths of two students; he is already serving a 70-year sentence for the killing of a student. The fire broke out when police stormed the embassy, which had been occupied by indigenous and campesino protesters from El Quiché department; the police blocked the doors and refused to let firefighters enter. The victims included the Spanish consul, two of his employees, a former Guatemalan vice president, a former Guatemalan foreign relations minister, and 22 El Quiché campesinos; one was Vicente Menchú, the father of 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum.
The rightwing government of President Otto Pérez Molina, who was a military officer at the time of the fire, said it respected the court’s decision. A note from the Foreign Relations Ministry expressed regret for the deaths of “famous Spanish people and Guatemalans.” “These situations cannot be repeated,” the note added. The Spanish Foreign Ministry wrote that the Spanish government “expresses its satisfaction and congratulates the Guatemalan justice system for having, 35 years later, judged these acts in accordance with the laws and with respect for due process.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 1/20/15 from AFP; Prensa Latina 1/20/15)
As of Jan. 13 Judge Carol Patricia Flores had ordered a medical examination for former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) to determine whether he can attend his new trial for genocide against Ixil Mayans in El Quiché department. He failed to appear at a hearing on Jan. 12 to discuss administrative issues in the trial. Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10, 2013, but the Constitutional Court threw the verdict out 10 days later [see Update #1178]. A new trial started on Jan. 5 but was immediately suspended because of a defense challenge to one of the judges, Jeannette Valdez, on the grounds that she had written her 2004 doctoral thesis about the genocide. (La Nación (Costa Rica) 1/13/15 from AFP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Commodity boom extracting increasingly heavy toll on Amazon forests (South America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5191-commodity-boom-extracting-increasingly-heavy-toll-on-amazon-forests-
New Evidence Raises Questions About Death of Argentine Prosecutor
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/22/new-evidence-raises-questions-about-death-of-argentine-prosecutor/
Prosecutor’s Death a Test for Argentine Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/5192-prosecutors-death-a-test-for-argentine-democracy
La Legua: Building Community in Small Spaces (Chile)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14486
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel (Chile)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/23/memoriam-pedro-lemebel
Bolivian Socialist Funds Election Campaign by Selling Potatoes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5188-bolivian-socialist-funds-election-campaign-by-selling-potatoes
Ecuador: Waorani warriors on trial in oil-field raid
http://ww4report.com/node/13925
Chevron Crowned as World's Worst Company for the Environment (Ecuador)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chevron-Crowned-as-Worlds-Worst-Company-for-the-Environment-20150123-0024.html
Ecuador: The “Citizens’ Revolution” vs Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5189-ecuador-the-citizens-revolution-vs-social-movements
Social Movements Demand ¨Maximum Sentence¨ for Indigenous Leader’s Murderer as Trial Continues (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11165
El Salvador: Pardon Granted For One of 17 Women Jailed for Miscarriage, Accused of Homicide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5198-el-salvador-pardon-granted-for-one-of-17-women-jailed-for-miscarraige
Evidence the DEA Attempted to Alter Testimony on Drug War Massacre in Honduras
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14509
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Mexico: Ayotzinapa, Emblem of the Twenty-First Century Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5193-mexico-ayotzinapa-emblem-of-the-twenty-first-century-social-order
Forced Disappearances Are Humanitarian Crisis in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5195-forced-disappearances-are-humanitarian-crisis-in-mexico
Lopez Obrador Back on the Battlefield (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/lopez-obrador-back-on-the-battlefield/
Vanished in Vallarta (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/vanished-in-vallarta/
Mexico: cops arrested in 'disappearance' of reporter
http://ww4report.com/node/13920
Cuba, U.S. Agree on Diplomacy, Clash Over Human Rights During Historic Talks
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/23/cuba-u-s-agree-on-diplomacy-clash-over-human-rights-during-historic-talks/
The Cuban Opening and the Struggles for a New Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5194-the-cuban-opening-and-the-struggles-for-a-new-social-order
Security Council Arrives in Haiti as New Electoral Commission is Announced
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/security-council-arrives-in-haiti-as-new-electoral-commission-is-announced
New Tools for Assessing Progress in Haiti Reconstruction and Development
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-tools-for-assessing-progress-in-haiti-reconstruction-and-development
Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover, or US Contractors to Make Millions?
www.thenation.com/article/195673/usaid-helping-haiti-recover-or-us-contractors-make-millions
Over 17,000 Mexican Children Attempt to Enter US Every Year (US/immigration)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Over-17000-Mexican-Children-Attempt-to-Enter-US-Every-Year-20150123-0019.html
The Israel-Mexico Border: How Israeli High-Tech Firms Are Up-Armoring the U.S.-Mexico Border
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/27/israel-mexico-border
Joining our struggles to build another world: 10 years of horizontal organising in El Barrio, New York (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14495
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Read the whole story
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Visa Corporate by Richard Martin, Visa Corporate Relations
President Obama made it clear during his January State of the Union address that protecting American companies and consumers from cyberthreats was a national priority. At Visa, we share this critical goal. We recognize ... Currently, 46 states, Washington, D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico have laws regarding breach notification. Since many companies have ... Securing the Future of Payments: A Special Report from the Payments Security Task Force. Securing the Future of Payments: A ...
Latino Stats American Hispanics by the Numbersby Clarisel Gonzalez (noreply@blogger.com)
The Reading Corner Last Christmas I received in the mail a new book titled Latino Stats by Idelisse Malave and Esti Giordani, a Puerto Rican mother-daughter team who take a closer look at Hispanics in this country. The recently released paperback book (published by The New Press) is now part of my Puerto Rican/Latino library collection, and it is expected to become a go to guidebook for anyone
Here at Latino Rebels we like to cover the serious issues, and what can be more serious than Puerto Rican politics becoming part of the 2015 Miss Universe contest, which ended last Sunday. During preliminary evers before the primetime show, Miss Puerto Rico was asked whether she thought the U.S. colony (sorry, territory) should become 51st state of the Union or not. This is what Gabriela Berríos told Primera Hora (our translation from Spanish):
I answered that I am very patriotic. I feel very Puerto Rican and I love the Island of Enchantment, no one can doubt that. For me, and this is my opinion, Puerto Rico should have a representative from our country in Miss Universe.I love mofongo, carne frita and, I will say it again, I feel very Puerto Rican and I think Puerto Rico needs to be separate from the United States. I didn’t answer that, but I did say that I would want to see a boricua candidate every year in Miss Universe.
It was a crafty answer, and it is unclear what Berríos —who lives and studies in Orlando now— was trying to say. Nonetheless, this whole illusion that if Puerto Rico were to become the 51st state wouldn’t change a thing is hilarious. For example, just a few years back, pro-statehood governor Luis Fortuño made sure that people took pride in the island’s Puerto Rican Olympics team, when in fact, if Fortuño was true to his United States leanings, he would have been cheering for Team USA and telling people that statehood for Puerto Rico would mean “Adiós, Team Puerto Rico.” Sure, the International Olympic Committee is a private organization, but once you became an official part of the USA, there’s no way the USA would tell Puerto Rico that it can have its own Olympic team.
So you can imagine that this whole Miss Universe thing (and trust us, Miss Universe is a serious-ass topic on the island) would also add to that illusion. Because of that, we are not surprised that Desireé Lowry, head of Puerto Rico’s Miss Universe franchise, went on Puerto Rican radio to assure everyone that even if Puerto Rico were to become a state, not to worry, there would still be a Miss Puerto Rico in Miss Universo. The following clip is in Spanish, but at the end of it, Lowry tries to calms everyone’s fears by suggesting that.
If Puerto
Rico were to one day became a state, I don’t think that the [Miss Universe organization] would necessarily eliminate Puerto Rico as a separate representation from that of the United States.
Lowry also said in a separate report that Berríos’ answer was a good one because “one of the worriers we have as Puerto Ricans is that if were to to become a state, well then we would no longer be able to participate in events like the Olympics and Miss Universe. But that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case… That’s why I thought it was great to see [Berríos] express her opinion.”
Here’s the thing: you can’t have it both ways. If you are pushing for Puerto Rican statehood, you have to go all in. No more Olympics. No more Miss Universe. Instead of being honest with people, those who push for statehood will tell you that we are being alarmists. Really? You really think the United States will tell Puerto Rico, “yeah, don’t worry about those Olympics and Miss Universe things. We know you guys love them and all that. You can keep that and still be a state.” Yeah, that will play well on U.S. media.
Stop selling the illusion, people. If Puerto Rico were to become the the 51st state, a little bit of that “Puerto Ricanness” goes away. That’s fine if that’s what people want (we can only imagine the reaction when the Miss Universe run were to end), but let’s not pretend everything will be the same if indeed La Isla del Encanto were to be named the Estado del Encanto. Time to move away from those mediocre arguments and tell the truth.
Read the whole story
· · · ·
Vladimir Putin at a press conference on December 18, 2014. Kremlin press service, public domain.
When I visit the United States, I’m often asked how bad is it to live in Putin's Russia. Knowing that I work at an independent television channel (www.tvrain.ru), the people asking me this question probably expect horror stories about the daily nightmare I endure under the pressure of a totalitarian regime.
Responding can be awkward, because I have to disappoint such expectations, as I’m not able to portray my life in Russia in such simplistic, black-and-white terms.
Many aspects of living in Russia are strangely difficult to explain to someone who’s never experienced life here. There is a huge gap—a canyon of hypocrisy—between what's official and what's real, and you’re supposed to know what you can’t say aloud. (Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film “Leviathan” is largely about this phenomenon.)
For instance, you can’t say Russia has no independent media; I work at an independent TV station, after all. But the Devil is in the details, and, in this case, we’re hopelessly outgunned. What’s happened in Russia would be like Fox News taking over the airways in the US, booting MSNBC from cable TV, and reducing liberals to broadcasting online from a small private apartment in Brooklyn.
This farce is the same with elections (where competition is fake), the courts (where justice is a lie), and mass demonstrations (where participation is obligatory).
For many years, the Internet was Russia’s last beacon of honesty. That’s no longer the case. Over the past three years, a social-media army fielded by the Kremlin has stormed what was once a stronghold for people who seek a “Russia without Putin.”
Here’s how it happened.
Before the 2011 parliamentary elections, the phoniness of which sent as many as 100,000 thousand protesters into the streets, the Kremlin couldn’t care less about political significance of social media and the Internet. The government’s puppet master of domestic politics, a man named Vladislav Surkov, was content merely to funnel cash to top bloggers, paying them to publish planted stories on LiveJournal from time to time.
When the winter protests began in December 2011, the new social media, namely Twitter and Facebook, were under the complete control of Putin’s political opponents, who knew it and unsurprisingly built vast networks to organize demonstrations against the fraudulent elections.
After two mass rallies in Moscow against the parliamentary election results, Surkov lost his job in the Kremlin, following his obvious failure to contain the Internet. His replacement is Vyacheslav Volodin, a less cerebral man known for his rough-and-ready management style.
Volodin is said to have only a weak grasp of the digital world, but others with a better understanding are believed to have his ear. In 2012, Volodin promoted some of these Internet-savvy advisers to a special unit inside the Kremlin’s Department of Internal Policy. He put Timur Prokopenko, a young man in his thirties with experience working for pro-Kremlin youth movements, in charge of the outfit.
At first, the Kremlin’s social media team simply copied whatever the Russian opposition did online. If Putin’s rivals criticized him with hashtags, Putin’s people would respond instantly with hashtags targeting Alexey Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader. When this method of retaliation proved too obvious and primitive, the Kremlin’s social media team moved on to other tactics.
They tried spamming social media with “bot” accounts, though networks like Twitter were quick to recognize it and intervene. The Kremlin’s team then turned to its activists in the regions, outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, whom they’d largely overlooked in the past. Now they recruited these people to serve as living, breathing bots. Imagine it: young men and women across Russia enlisted to do nothing but promote trending topics on Twitter and troll the liberal media on Facebook.
My contact at Twitter has indicated to me that they’re powerless to intervene against such accounts, as it is indeed real people running them. The workaround to a bot army, the Kremlin has discovered, is a troll army.
Of course, even tapping the regions’ stores of pro-Kremlin activists wasn’t enough. What started with dozens of re-purposed boy scouts grew to hundreds, but there it hit a ceiling. When that happened, Putin’s team approached Russian advertisers. According to my sources, there are currently 10 different advertising agencies working for the Kremlin. These contracts are secret, and the firms are careful to maintain other, non-political clients.
The agencies compete fiercely with one another for contract extensions and bigger deals, making Russia’s online propaganda industry quite lucrative and surprisingly effective. It’s like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” except the opposite.
Combined, these efforts field a troll army of thousands. In some areas, like on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, the enterprise is so big that there are whole office buildings for these people.
It seems like a joke, but thousands of hired bloggers “go to work” every day, writing online about Vladimir Putin’s greatness and the decay of the West. They’re on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, and anywhere else the Kremlin feels threatened and outnumbered. Fresh instructions arrive every day in emails, specifying what to say and where to post it, all with the aim of bolstering Putin’s presidency amidst war and economic crisis.
Sadly, it’s working. People have trouble believing the scope of the Kremlin’s Internet invasion, thinking it incredulous that the government could be capable of such sophisticated, targeted manipulation. And yet that is exactly what Putin’s social media team has achieved.
Of course, conquering the Internet has been a lot easier, after the dramatic reduction of independent media outlets in Russia—a phenomenon known as the “f#cking chain.” The Kremlin’s social media takeover has at last reached the people who don’t watch state-run television. The circle is now complete.
The system works like this: trolls flood a comments section with scripted complaints against the West or the liberal opposition, and the state-run media then reports these comments as “bloggers’ outrage,” fueling further conversations online, building what becomes an organic/artificial mix. In this way, Putin’s team is able to impose its agenda even on the Russian Internet’s liberal ghetto.
Based on the success of this model in Russia, the Kremlin is now investing heavily in “exporting” it to social media popular in Europe and the United States.
If you live in the West, beware.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the original author. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Global Voices or RuNet Echo.
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