Latin America Blog

Cuba ready to send doctors, rescuers to Japan

2011-03-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Cuban authorities said they were ready to send a team of doctors and rescuers to assist in rescue efforts in earthquake-stricken Japan, Cuba's AIN news agency reported on Tuesday.

Cuban Ambassador to Japan Jose Fernandez de Cossio also said all Cubans currently in Japan were ready to render any necessary aid.

Relief operations continue in Japan following a devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that have killed nearly 6,000 people and left thousands missing. Aftershocks still continue to rattle the area.

Groups of Cuban doctors worked in Haiti during last year's severe earthquake, helping at least 71,000 victims of the natural disaster and cholera outbreak that followed.

Colombia Slips Into the Abyss as FTA Threatens Further Havoc

2011-03-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

By Dan Kovalik

While little attention has been paid by the press, Colombia just reached an ignominious benchmark -- it is now the country with the largest population of internally displaced persons in the world, surpassing Sudan which had held this position for the past several years. Colombia, with a population of around 44 million, now has 5.2 million internally displaced persons, meaning that almost 12% of its population is displaced -- most of them by violence, and a disproportionate number being Afro-Colombians and indigenous.

As a report by the Colombian human rights group CODHES notes, half of the 5.2 internally displaced were displaced during the presidential term of Alvaro Uribe and as a direct consequence of his "counterinsurgency program" -- a program funded in large measure by the U.S. As CODHES noted, in a significant proportion of the municipalities impacted by this program, there has been large-scale mining and cultivation of oil palm and biofuel. CODHES is clear that this production is directly responsible for the violent displacement of persons from their land Indeed, it appears that the "counterinsurgency program" has in fact largely been intended to make Colombia safe for multi-national exploitation of the land at the very expense of the people the program has claimed to be helping.

The proposed Colombia FTA is also intended to do the very same -- to protect the rights of multi-national corporations over the basic human rights of the Colombian people. For example, the Colombia FTA would privilege the very palm oil production which is leading to the mass displacement of people. Even more frightening, as The Nation Magazine explained in a detailed article, around half of the palm oil companies are actually owned and controlled by paramilitary groups, meaning that the FTA will directly aid these groups by incentivizing their crops.

As the Washington Office on Latin America recently noted, the FTA's agricultural provisions will also undermine the livelihood of Colombia's rural inhabitants who will not be able to compete with the subsidized, cheap food stuffs which will be able to flood the Colombian markets duty-free under the FTA. Indeed, we have seen this before in Mexico where NAFTA led to the impoverishment and displacement of 1.3 million small farmers, and in Haiti which lost its ability to feed its own people with its rice production after Clinton's free trade policies with that country.

And indeed, Bill Clinton apologized to the Senate last year over these very free trade policies, saying:

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. . . . I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Clinton went further, even conceding that such trade policy has "failed everywhere it's been tried." And yet, the current administration, with Bill Clinton himself cheering it on, appears to be pushing for the same failed free trade policy for Colombia.

Meanwhile, the labor rights situation in Colombia remains dismal. Thus, according to the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS), fifty-one (51) trade unionists were killed in 2010, and 4 unionists (including 3 teachers) have already been killed this year. The 51 unionists killed in 2010 matches precisely the number of unionists killed in 2008 when President Obama vowed to oppose the Colombia FTA based upon his concern that unionists face unprecedented violence in that country. The same concerns should motivate President Obama to oppose the FTA now.

The continued violence against trade unionists in Colombia led the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to inform leaders of the EU, who are considering a similar free trade agreement, that the Colombian administration's attempts to sell the agreement on the claim that labor and human rights are improving in Colombia are in fact a sham. (See letter.) In the words of the ITUC, "the intensive lobbying campaign at the European Parliament by the Colombian Government is an attempt to mislead the international community." The ITUC urges the international community not to be fooled by the Colombian government's campaign and to continue to reject a free trade agreement with that country. Hopefully, the Obama Administration will take heed of such warnings.

Human Rights Crisis in Puerto Rico: First Amendment Under Seige

2011-02-24T07:18:00.000-08:00

By American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Puerto Rico National Chapter (Ferbruary 2011)

While the world celebrates the democratic revolution in Egypt, major violations of basic human rights
are occurring in our own backyard. Since Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño came into power two years ago, free speech has been under all-out assault. The following events have taken place recently:

* Thousands of public workers have been laid off and had their union contracts terminated, leading to tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting over the past year. One event turned out over 100,000 peaceful protestors and while in NYC hundreds marched on May Day, in Puerto Rico May Day turned out an estimated 30,000 citizens.

* At a protest at the steps of the Capital Building over the closing of access to legislative sessions,
access that is constitutionally mandated, protesters were beaten mercilessly, pepper sprayed and shot at by Puerto Rico Police. The same has occurred at other locations.

At most events young women are the first to be targeted for police violence. At the University of Puerto Rico, female students, many of whom were beaten, were also sexually harassed, groped and assaulted (touched) by police. Students have been mercilessly beaten, mazed and shot at with rubber bullets. Citizens have accused, which images captured confirm, police of applying torture techniques on immobilized student protesters. In the past two years, there have been several riots at protests in and around the University of Puerto Rico. Many protesters have accused the police of causing the riots, which some videos also seem to confirm.

Since taking the oath of office, the current administration, which controls all three branches of government, has set out to quash Freedom of Expression. In Puerto Rico, Expression has been in the form of protests against government policies, such as the firing of approximately 26,000 workers in total, privatizing government, closing off access to public information and legislative sessions, attempting to close down the university FM radio station during periods of civil unrest and going after the Puerto Rico Bar Association, which was a mandatory integrated Bar and is Puerto Rico's oldest institution. The 171 year old Puerto Rico Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico) has historically been a known focal point for liberal dissent against government policies.

Puerto Rico Governor Fortuño, who is considered a rising star in the Republican Party, has publicly committed to not allowing what he calls "extreme left" protests and expression. On Friday, February 11, 2011, Governor Fortuño spoke about his administration's policies while speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference of the American Conservative Union (ACU) in Washington, DC, an activity attended by members of the National Rifle Association, the Tea Party and the John Birch Society.

* At the University of Puerto Rico all forms of expression have been prohibited, through a Resolution issued by UPR Chancellor Ana Guadalupe; a resolution which Governor Luis Fortuño ordered armed police officers to enforce. On Wednesday, February 9, 2011, a group of students participated in civil disobedience on campus, consisting of a paint-in. During the paint-in, students peacefully and without interrupting the educational process painted messages of protest in a limited area of the street at the front of the main library, in defiance of the Chancellor's absolute prohibition on any form of protest. Students immediately came under extreme physical and violent attack by members of the police force's elite and heavily armed SWAT and Riot Squad teams.

While the ACLU is looking to file charges on Human Rights violations and evaluating other legal options, the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, a conservative English language newspaper, published a damming editorial in which it called for the resignation of the university's president, chancellors and the Board of Trustees. On Friday, February 11, 2011, President Ramón De la Torres' resignation was unanimously accepted by the Board of Trustees. However, the Board Chairperson, Ygrí Rivera, immediately stated that she will not be removing armed Puerto Rico Police officers from the University of Puerto Rico campus.

In its editorial, the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, stated that "[t]he indiscriminate aggression of police riot squads against students, who are exercising their constitutional rights in public areas without interfering with any academic or administrative activity, is a gross violation of their rights and an act comparable only to the acts of the dictatorships we all denounce and reject". The Daily Sun added that "[w]e do not want this new order, neither for our university, the Capitol, La Fortaleza or our neighborhoods. We reject it with all our might, exercising our freedom of speech, or freedom of association, is not a crime".

As we say in Puerto Rico, "mas claro no canta un gallo" (it could not have been more clearly stated). On Sunday, February 12, 2011, just four days after students were mercilessly beaten by Puerto Rico Police agents, over 10,000 alumnus, parents, grandparents, family members and other citizens took to the streets and marched over to reclaim the UPR campus, demanding that the PRPD be immediately ordered off campus. See news video: http://www.primerahora.com/milesseunencontralacuotaylainvasionpoliciacaenlaupr-474118.html

In addition to the debacle and related violence at the University of Puerto Rico, in the past two years legislation has been passed that would prohibit protests at construction sites and most recently at any government building that renders educational services and other locations providing government services, under penalty of criminal prosecution.

The Puerto Rico Bar Association was recently de-certified through legislation which the governor signed into law, which all but shut down its operations. Several lawyers aligned with the views of the current administration pushed for de-certification and had previously sued the Bar Association in federal court alleging that the Bar was forcing them to purchase an unwanted insurance policy; its $78.00 per year cost was paid from Bar Association dues. Bar members were never informed of the particulars of the lawsuit and Federal Fudge José Antonio Fusté issued a GAG order prohibiting the disclosure of important aspects of the case to Bar class members.

The Puerto Rico Bar Association is not being allowed to inform and counsel Bar members about their right to opt out of the lawsuit. Thousands of lawyers are not even sure why they are a part of this lawsuit. It is believed that an English language notice on the right to opt out of the lawsuit may not be sufficient guarantee that Bar members will fully understand the ramifications of their actions. Many members of the Bar have limited English skills, particularly lawyers in the smaller and rural towns. The newly elected President of the now voluntary Puerto Rico Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico), Osvaldo Toledo, was jailed on Friday, February 11, 2010, at a federal detention center in Puerto Rico, where he remains on contempt of a court charges for refusing to pay a $10,000 fine imposed on him for having counseled Bar members who insist that they have a right to know the particulars of the suit and procedure for opting out.

Federal Judge José Antonio Fuste's GAG order extends not only to the President of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, but also board members, administrators, agents and servants. The Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico, William Ramírez, had previously been warned by the Bar that he may not be able to speak out against what is held to be an injustice and First Amendment infringement. Speaking out in defiance of the federal court order may result in the arrest of anyone covered by the court's GAG order and further fines imposed against the Puerto Rico Bar Association.

After studying the court's order, we at the ACLU do not, at this time, believe that the federal court order reaches class members or other members of the Bar, including the staff and cooperating attorneys of the ACLU in Puerto Rico. However, we do believe the order to be unjust and believe it should be set aside.

The ACLU will continue to fight for the right to free speech and peaceful assembly in Puerto Rico and fully intends to take on any challenges that it may face.

Bolivia’s Morales confronts general strike over food prices

2011-02-22T11:45:00.001-08:00

By Bill Van Auken

After five years in office, the government of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales faced a nationwide general strike, amid a growing popular rebellion against rising food prices.
All of Bolivia’s major cities—La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Oruro—were paralyzed last Friday, as workers marched in city centers and blockaded roads and highways to demand that the government substantially increase wages and take measures to combat rising prices and food shortages.
Long lines of workers marched through Cochabamba in a steady downpour, while thousands of factory workers, teachers, health care workers, other public employees and students took over the center of the capital of La Paz, punctuating their chanting of demands with explosions of dynamite.
Reelected in December 2009 by a landslide 62 percent majority, Morales has seen his popularity rating slide to barely one third. The country has been rocked by a series of escalating protests that began at the end of last year, with the government’s shock announcement of an end to fuel price subsidies.
The action sent gasoline prices soaring by 72 percent and diesel by 82 percent. The decision was rescinded in the face of violent protests, and now Morales is saying that he intends to introduce an end to the subsidies more gradually.
Despite this tactical retreat, the damage done by the brief price hikes proved to be sustained, unleashing an inflationary spiral that has seen the prices for virtually all basic foodstuffs climb between 10 and 50 percent.
Protests have escalated steadily as a result. Last month saw 5,000 people march through the southwestern town of Llallagua in two separate protests organized by miners and by the local farmers unions. Poorer peasants who had come in from the countryside for the demonstration looted stores, while police did not intervene.
Then on February 10, Morales was forced to flee the mining city of Oruro where he had gone to participate in a ceremony commemorating a colonial-era uprising. Miners, workers and the unemployed stormed the ceremony, tossing dynamite to protest deteriorating economic conditions. A presidential spokesman announced that Morales and other officials had left the city and returned to La Paz. “The government has decided not to respond to such shameful and painful provocations,” he said.
Bolivia’s unions issued a statement last week insisting that as a result of the inflationary spiral, the canasta familiar, or basic monthly expenses, for a Bolivian family, has risen to 8,300 bolivianos ($1,100)—approximately 11 times more than the present $96 monthly minimum wage in South America’s poorest country. They demanded that wages be increased accordingly.
Morales’ response only inflamed sentiments against the government. He called the demands “laughable,” insisting that the wages would be increased by only slightly more than 7 percent, the official inflation rate. Bolivians maintain that this rate does not begin to reflect the real double-digit increases in prices of basic necessities.
“It makes me laugh when” they demand “a wage increase of 40, 50 or even 70 percent,” said Morales, who added that when he was president of Bolivia’s coca growers union, “our demands were always reasonable.”
Morales continued, “It is important to think first of the future of the fatherland before regional or sectoral interests,” effectively equating the demands of masses of Bolivian workers and poor for food with the reactionary agitation of ruling elites, like those in Santa Cruz, seeking secession from the country.
Pedro Montes, the president of the COB (the Bolivian Workers Federation, the country’s main trade union), publicly acknowledged that the union leadership had been forced to call the general strike out of fear that the mass spontaneous protests were becoming uncontrollable.
“We can’t control the protest of the workers over the rising cost of living they are experiencing,” said the COB leader. “That’s why they are going into the streets to protest and express their discontent over hunger, misery, unemployment and over having nearly empty stomachs.”
In earlier protests, particularly in the volatile town of El Alto, outside of La Paz, populated largely by impoverished workers who have emigrated from the countryside, popular anger was turned against the COB itself because of the union leadership’s support for and close integration into the Morales government. Union offices were attacked by workers hurling bricks and stones.
It was in El Alto that the mass uprising of 2003 that toppled US-backed President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was centered. That struggle, in which 63 Bolivian workers were shot to death by troops, began over a corrupt deal to sell off the country’s gas resources to the US and Chile. It laid the basis for Morales’ rise to the presidency two years later.
Hailed as the first indigenous president of the country, Morales came to office as the candidate of the Movement towards Socialism, or MAS. Since his election, he has regularly proclaimed his opposition to capitalism and his commitment to a “communitarian socialism”.
His vice-president, Álvaro Garcia Linare, a leftist professor and former guerrilla who comes from Bolivia’s upper middle class, has been somewhat more circumspect, declaring the government’s aim to be the creation of “Andean-Amazonian capitalism,” meaning state promotion of capitalist development.
In reality, the country’s social structure has remained little changed, while its economy continues to be dominated by multinational corporations centered on the extraction of Bolivia’s mineral wealth under some of the most favorable conditions for foreign capital existing on the continent.
In the first years of Morales’ presidency, an unprecedented rise in raw material prices made possible some minimum social assistance programs, but the impact of the world capitalist crisis and resulting downturn in foreign investment and production have created the conditions for new social explosion.
Morales recently reappointed all but three of his cabinet ministers—rejecting demands for the sacking of those most responsible for the drastic fuel price increases last December—and has attempted to portray his government as essentially stable.
There are growing signs of divisions, however, as popular unrest mounts. The Bolivian president’s former spokesman and close political associate, Alex Contreras, denounced Morales for his economic policies in statements to the Bolivian media.
“The president, with these measures, appears to be ruling in the interests of the agro-industrial sector, the multinational enterprises and the black-marketers, who speculate in and profit basic foodstuffs like sugar, rice, flour and others,” Contreras said.
Gonzalo Flores, one of Bolivia’s representatives to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, blamed the government’s policies for the food crisis, which he said had resulted in “a large part of the population not having access to sufficient food to maintain a healthy life.” He said that up to 25 percent of Bolivia’s children suffered from stunted growth because of inadequate nutrition.
Meanwhile, Morales’ erstwhile supporters in the COB and in the peasants’ union CSUTCB have called attention to the fact that the ruling party, the Movement for Socialism, has become increasingly dominated by political operatives drawn from the parties of the Bolivian right, including members of such fascistic forces as the Santa Cruz Youth Union.

Resettlement Plan Excludes Almost 200,000 Families

2011-02-17T21:17:00.001-08:00

By Jane Regan

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 14, 2011 (IPS) - One year and one month after Haiti's horrendous earthquake, the world's eyes are focused elsewhere.

Aside from a few updates on ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, Haiti has fallen from the headlines.

Gone are the foreign reporters and news crews pumping out anniversary stories.

Long-forgotten are the one-year reports from United Nations agencies, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and watchdog groups, full of self-congratulations or hand- wringing over the lack of progress on Haiti's reconstruction. [See sidebar]

But there has been a kind of progress.

NGOs and the "humanitarian industry"
"In the language of NGOs, Haiti is a 'humanitarian hot spot,' because the NGOs go where the donors go," journalist Linda Polman told a group of reporters in Petion-ville, Haiti recently.

"That's why all these organisations are here. They're waiting for the billions… Haiti is just one station on the trip NGOs make. They ask people for money because they say they are going to help… You have to ask them questions. You have to make sure they spend that money on you."

The Dutch author of "The Crisis Caravan - What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid" took time out from her investigation into Haiti aid to urge Haitian journalists at Radio/Tele Metropole to dig into NGOs and the "humanitarian industry".

"NGOs are part of an international, multinational, multi-billion-dollar industry," she said. "Donor countries give over 130 billion dollars a year."

And that figure doesn't even take into account private donations.

According to Polman, about 37,000 NGOs, mostly from Western countries, work in poor countries. There are probably about 2,000 foreign NGOs in Haiti by her reckoning. And while NGOs say they come to poor countries to "help", that is not the only motivation, she said.

"This is a business, and sometimes they make decisions that are not moral," she noted.

In addition to being in business, they also do foreign policy work. In her book, Polman writes how, in 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attack, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told NGO leaders that "American NGOs… NGOs are a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team."

Polman pleaded with journalists to investigate the foreign NGOs in Haiti which – according to many journalist and watchdog groups – are not delivering the quality and quantity of assistance needed.

"Western journalists come and go and that is why it is up to you. Ask the NGOs questions. And if you don't understand, ask and ask again, because it's your money."

*Author Linda Polman's visit to Radio/Tele Metropole was part of an ongoing training organised by the Knight International Journalism Fellow in Haiti.

Haitian authorities – or, to be more precise, those who have authority in Haiti, but who are not necessarily Haitian – actually do have a plan for Haiti's homeless.

The ambitious 30-page "Neighborhood Return and Housing Reconstruction Framework (version 3)," obtained last month by Haiti Grassroots Watch, outlines plans to rebuild neighbourhoods with better zoning and better services, help homeowners rebuild safer homes, or relocate homeowners to new homes in less precarious locations.

However, the Framework leaves out Haiti's largest group of earthquake victims: the poorest of the poor. The renters.

"With a few exceptions, the reconstruction is not going to make people homeowners who were not homeowners before," Priscilla Phelps, senior advisor for Housing and Neighbourhoods for the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), told IPS and Haiti Grassroots Watch in January.

That means 192,154 families – more than half of the 1.3 million internally displaced persons tallied last fall – will be left out in the cold. Or, in the case of Haiti, out in the sun, the rain and the dust.

According to the Framework, "[r]eturn and reconstruction will not change the tenancy status of earthquake affected households: the goal is to restore owners and renters to an equivalent status as before the earthquake, but in safer conditions."

For home- and land-owners, things are moving forward, albeit very slowly.

Humanitarian agencies have over 100 million dollars to build 111,240 "transitional shelters" or "T-Shelters" – small huts, usually 18 square metres. As of Feb. 1, only about 43,100 had been built, due to the rubble choking poor neighbourhoods and Haiti's convoluted land ownership situation. (Most donors want to be sure on land titles before building a T-Shelter.)

Agencies and construction firms also have at least 174 million dollars pledged of the 350 million dollars needed - in 2011 alone - for repairing or rebuilding homes and neighbourhoods. As of Feb. 1, of the approximately 193,000 homes needing to be repaired or rebuilt, only 2,547 had been repaired and 1,880 rebuilt.

But for the hundreds of thousands of former renters living hunched under tents in camps with few or no services, with an average of 392 residents per latrine, there is no shelter – transitional or permanent – on the horizon. Because they are supposed to rent.

Sanon Renel, of the Housing Reflection and Action Force coalition (Fòs Refleksyon ak Aksyon sou Koze Kay - FRAKKA), which is mobilising with unions and other groups on the housing issue, is outraged.

"This is pure and simple exclusion. You could even call this an official policy of apartheid," Renel told IPS.

In addition to losing all their belongings, many of Haiti's displaced also lost jobs, as well as the huge sums they had paid out for school tuitions and rent prior to the earthquake. In Haiti, one rents six, 12 and even 24 months at a time. Renel noted that it will take years for families to save that up again.

"These people are factory workers, day labourers. Many are former peasants forced into the city because their land has given out, or because they can't make ends meet. They are the eternal victims of an economic system that protects big landowners and rich capitalists," said Renel.

A typical example of "reconstruction"

The way the housing issue is being handled offers a typical example of Haiti's "reconstruction".

The Framework "is intended to signal what the approach is going to be," according to the IHRC's Phelps, who likely helped author the plan and who recently co-wrote 'Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing After Natural Disasters' for the World Bank.

But the document has never been approved by the government of Haiti. Not by the parliament, not by President René Préval, and not the Inter-Ministry Commission on Housing, which groups together five ministers.

Nor has the document ever been held up to public scrutiny or discussed at fora where local urban planners, construction firms or other stakeholders – like FRAKKA and the homeless people themselves – could perhaps make their opinions known.

Nevertheless, the Framework is more than what the "approach is going be".

De facto, it is the plan. Because NGOs are moving forward, according to Jean-Christophe Adrian of UN-HABITAT, which chairs the "Shelter Cluster" of the 200 or so NGOs working on the housing issue.

"The document represents the consensus," Adrian explained.

Phelps notes that the Inter-Ministry Commission on Housing has "seen it and made remarks," but they have never openly approved or disapproved of it, nor has it been made public.

In fact, national government officials have only gone public on one housing project – a plan for 3,000 to 4,000 apartments in the Fort National neighbourhood overlooking Haiti's National Palace.

"It's a project of public housing high-rises, respecting building norms for earthquake zones, which will house many hundreds of families," Jacques Gabriel, Minister of Public Works, told Agence France Presse in January.

But when Minister of Social Affairs Gérald Germain and his bodyguards showed up to place the cornerstone on Jan. 12, they were chased away by angry, homeless protestors.

"We want explanations!" a man who identified himself as Leguenson told AlterPresse.

Haiti's homeless are not the only ones who want explanations. According to Phelps, the project does not yet have IHRC approval.

Nevertheless, not unlike the lack of coordination and communication sometimes apparent in other sectors, the first stone for the Fort National project was going to be placed even before it received the IHRC's green light.

Or perhaps the Haitian government has decided to skip the IHRC? But according to a decree, it is "responsible for continuously developing and refining development plans for Haiti."

"There are still a lot of questions that have to be worked out," Phelps explained. "The proposal they have made is one that needs some vetting. It's quite expensive."

Shelter Cluster authorities are also sceptical. "Our experience shows us that, in all countries, these types of projects end up benefiting the middle classes. They don't benefit the poorest people," Adrian said.

With authorities bickering, with no high-rise in sight, and with construction and reconstruction only planned for the homeowners, 13 months later, Haiti's poorest earthquake victims are left exactly where they were on Jan. 13, 2010 - in tents and under tarps, living in subhuman conditions, under constant threat of eviction, facing a depleted housing stock with no savings.

2011-02-16T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ecuadoreans Plan to Pursue Chevron in Other Countries
By SIMON ROMERO and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

CARACAS, Venezuela — Armed with a $9 billion ruling against Chevron in Ecuador but little chance of collecting it there, representatives for Ecuadorean villagers said Tuesday that they were looking at waging legal battles against the company in more than a dozen countries where it operates, hoping to force Chevron to pay.
Enlarge This Image

Dolores Ochoa/Associated Press
Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer representing the Ecuadorean villagers at a news conference in the capital, Quito, on Tuesday.
Related

Ecuador Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion (February 15, 2011)
The latest salvo, coming only a day after an Ecuadorean judge ordered Chevron to pay one of the largest environmental awards ever, suggests that the legal battle between villagers and oil executives, which began in 1993, is far from over.

The case stems from oil pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest, but Chevron does not operate there and has no significant assets in the country. It was Texaco, which Chevron acquired in a merger in 2001, that was accused of widespread environmental damage before pulling out of Ecuador in the early 1990s.

Chevron has much larger operations elsewhere in Latin America, and the plaintiffs’ strategy of pursuing the company across the region could open a contentious new phase in the case — one that would test Ecuador’s political ties with its neighbors and involve some of Washington’s most prominent lobbyists and lawyers.

Advisers to the plaintiffs said Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela would be obvious candidates to pursue Chevron assets, but they acknowledged it would not be easy. Venezuela, for instance, is a close Ecuadorean ally and its president, Hugo Chávez, is a frequent critic of the United States. But Chevron has extensive operations in Venezuela and enjoys warmer ties with Mr. Chávez’s government than just about any other American company.

The plaintiffs also face an uphill struggle collecting damages in the United States, at least immediately, given that a judge in New York this month temporarily prevented enforcement of the Ecuador awards. Still, legal advisers said they were prepared to try to collect damages in the United States as well.

A confidential memo prepared by the Washington law firm Patton Boggs recently released under court order laid out the plaintiffs’ strategy, which foresees using a European industrial espionage firm to investigate Chevron’s assets around the world.

“The fact that Chevron has agreed to ‘play ball’ in Venezuela, while the company’s peers have universally rejected the unfavorable contract terms imposed by the Chávez government, may portend difficulty there,” said the memo, code-named “Invictus.” “Nonetheless, the populist Chávez government remains a natural ally” of the plaintiffs.

In the memo, lawyers also identified the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, Angola, Canada and several other countries where Chevron has significant assets as potential targets. In the Philippines, it even suggested using the services of Frank G. Wisner, the retired diplomat and a foreign affairs adviser for Patton Boggs, who recently waded into the crisis in Egypt as an envoy for the Obama administration.

Citing the Invictus memo, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York argued that the plaintiffs were seeking to use a “worldwide, full-court press” to extract a settlement against a company of considerable importance in providing energy supplies to the United States economy.

Chevron said it did not intend to pay a dime. “We intend to resist enforcement anywhere where the plaintiffs seek to take what we perceive to be a fraudulent judgment,” said Kent Robertson, a Chevron spokesman.

Beyond the temporary protection issued by Judge Kaplan, Mr. Robertson noted a decision by a panel of international arbitrators in The Hague that granted the company a preliminary injunction that might also block enforcement of the judgment.

But Ecuadorean lawyers said they did not consider themselves under the jurisdiction of either the American court or the arbitrators.

Referring to the arbitration process, one of the lawyers, Pablo Fajardo, said, “This is part of the Chevron legal strategy to delay and obstruct.”

Duncan Hollis, associate dean of the Temple University law school, said it was logical for the plaintiffs to take their battle to other countries in the region because “there is some commonality in Latin American legal systems.” But, Mr. Hollis added, “there is no international law about how one court is supposed to enforce the judgments from another nation’s court.”

For now, the case moves forward in the Ecuadorean courts. Three judges will hear appeals from both sides. The Amazon coalition intends to appeal the amount of the damages, while Chevron will appeal the entire ruling.

“I don’t know if we will be broadcasting” our legal argument, Mr. Robertson said. But he added: “It is the illegitimate nature of the ruling. The scientific evidence demonstrates that this is a meritless outcome.”

The final appeal will go to a national appeals court, a process that could take months. Then the fight may move to several countries simultaneously. Advisers to the villagers and forest tribes said they hoped to extract Chevron money from many countries until they reach the final judgment total.

The ruling’s impact is already being felt in Ecuador and beyond as a cautionary tale of the environmental and legal aftermath of oil exploration. Alberto Acosta, a former oil minister in Ecuador, called the ruling “a historical precedent.”

It is “a reminder that we have to defend ourselves from the irresponsible activity of extraction companies, both oil and mining,” Mr. Acosta said.

Ugly showdown seems probable in Puerto Rico as student strike paralyzes university

2011-02-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

JUAN GONZALEZ

A showdown is looming in the student strike that has paralyzed all 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico for more than six weeks.

Late Tuesday, protest leaders rejected a 4 p.m. deadline from university President José Ramón de la Torre to cease their campus occupations and end the strike, which has kept 65,000 students out of classes since April 21.

De la Torre and Puerto Rico's Gov. Luis Fortuño warned the rebellious students they will seek court orders to have them arrested and removed.

The strike, one of the longest and biggest in modern U.S. history, has garnered considerable support from both the university's faculty and the Puerto Rican public.

Yet the mainland press ignores it.

Many island residents admire the way the students have resisted massive government cutbacks to one of their most revered institutions. This Great Recession, after all, has been a far bigger disaster for Puerto Rico than for rest of the nation.

Even before the Wall Street financial collapse, 45% of the island's population was living below the poverty level.

Since then, tourism and manufacturing, Puerto Rico's main sources of income, have been devastated, and so have government revenues. More than 20,000 public employees have been laid off the past year by Fortuño as he sought to close a huge deficit. The unemployment rate jumped to 17.2% in April, while the pension system for public employees is nearly bankrupt.

For generations, a University of Puerto Rico education was regarded as a sure way to escape poverty. Sixty percent of UPR's students, for example, have family incomes of less than $20,000 a year.

Since the university was largely funded through a 9.6% set-aside of all government tax revenues, it was able to maintain low tuition, about $2,000 annually, and even provide scholarships for standouts. It also enjoyed relative autonomy from the government.

But Fortuño's administration has promised Wall Street bondholders that it will make students pay a bigger share of the university's operating costs, downsize government and initiate more public-private partnerships.

As part of that plan, Fortuño wants to rewrite the higher education law.

Students oppose the reductions in scholarships as well as a new $1,200 student fee the university wants to impose. They fear that a new education law will usher in privatization efforts. Their supporters in the Puerto Rican legislature are urging instead new revenue streams, either through increasing the island's low corporate tax from 2.5% to 10% or through video lottery games, with the money earmarked for higher education.

Two weeks ago, the faculty senates of all 11 campuses met in their first-ever joint session and voted overwhelmingly to back the student demands. Many union leaders throughout the island have also expressed their support.

At first, the university's trustees negotiated with student leaders and it seemed that a deal might be reached. But in recent days, both sides have hardened.

In the midst of those talks, de la Torre suddenly announced a 24-hour ultimatum for the strike to end. At the same time, more radical students in the leadership vowed to peacefully resist any attempts to remove them.

Forty years ago, a similar protest at the UPR led to a tragic police invasion of the main campus in Rio Piedras. When the confrontation was over, 100 students had been injured. One, 21-year-old Antonia Martinez, was fatally shot in head by a police officer.

Unless cooler heads prevail soon, Puerto Rico's greatest university could once again spiral out of control.

Ecuador Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion

2011-02-16T06:44:00.000-08:00

Moises Saman for The New York Times

CARACAS, Venezuela — A judge in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean Amazon ruled Monday that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever.
Related

Times Topics: Ecuador | Chevron Corporation
The decision by Judge Nicolás Zambrano in Lago Agrio, a town founded as an oil camp in the 1960s, immediately opened a contentious new stage of appeals in a legal battle that has dragged on in courts in Ecuador and the United States for 17 years, pitting forest tribes and villagers against one of the largest American corporations.

The award against Chevron “is one of the largest judgments ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court,” said David M. Uhlmann, an expert in environmental law at the University of Michigan. “It falls well short of the $20 billion that BP has agreed to pay to compensate victims of the gulf oil spill but is a landmark decision nonetheless. Whether any portion of the claims will be paid by Chevron is less clear.”

Both sides said they would appeal the ruling, setting the stage for months and potentially years more of legal wrangling in the closely watched case, which has already been marked by claims of industrial espionage and fraud, and remarkably bitter disputes among the various lawyers involved. Legal experts said that the size of the award and the attention the case has focused on environmental degradation were likely to encourage similar suits.

The 188-page ruling found Chevron responsible for damages of about $8.6 billion, and perhaps double that amount if Chevron fails to publicly apologize for its actions within 15 days. The judge also ordered Chevron to pay $860 million, or 10 percent of the damages, to the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group formed to represent the plaintiffs.

Pablo Fajardo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “triumph of justice,” but said it still fell short. “We’re going to appeal because we think that the damages awarded are not enough,” he said in a telephone interview. The plaintiffs were seeking as much as $113 billion, according to a report recently submitted to the court.

A Chevron spokesman, Kent Robertson, called the decision “illegitimate and unenforceable.” He said Chevron would appeal through the Ecuadorean legal system, and would not pay the damages.

“This is the product of fraud,” he said. “It had always been the plan to inflate the damages claim and coordinate with corrupt judges for a smaller judgment.”

He suggested that the timing of the ruling, a week after Chevron filed a lawsuit against the plaintiffs’ lawyers, was not coincidental. He said it was coordinated between the plaintiffs and the court, which had previously accepted an expert environmental opinion that Chevron contended was partly ghost-written by representatives of the plaintiffs, who include villagers and Indian tribes in northeastern Ecuador.

The plaintiffs have denied any collaboration with the judge and said they merely provided information for the expert’s report as the court encouraged both sides to do.

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, reported a net profit of $19 billion last year. In addition to its appeal in Ecuador, the company hopes to block enforcement of the judgment in American courts.

“It might as well be Monopoly money, given all the respect that Chevron will show it,” said Ralph G. Steinhardt, professor of law and international affairs at George Washington University Law School. “There is a legal regime for enforcing foreign judgments but there is a lot of discretion for U.S. judges to suspend the enforcement of foreign judgments.”

The decision was the latest installment in a legal soap opera in which Chevron and lawyers for Ecuadorean peasants have sued and countersued over oil pollution in Ecuador’s rain forest.

The origins of the case go back to the 1970s, when Texaco, which was later acquired by Chevron, operated as a partner with the Ecuadorean state oil company. The villagers sued in 1993, claiming that Texaco had left an environmental mess that was causing illnesses. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001, before the case was resolved.

Chevron has been playing hardball for at least the last two years. It produced video recordings from watches and pens wired with bugging devices that suggested a bribery scheme surrounded the proceedings and involved a judge hearing the case. The judge was forced to resign, although it was later revealed that an American behind the secret recordings was a convicted drug trafficker.

Chevron appeared to gain the upper hand again when it won a legal bid to secure the outtakes from a documentary about the case, “Crude,” in which Steven Donziger, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, is seen developing strategy and discussing the judicial system and how it operates. Mr. Donziger appeared boastful about meetings with judges and other Ecuadorean officials.

Last week, Chevron filed a suit against dozens of people involved in the case, charging that they conspired to extort the company for $113 billion by making up evidence and trying to manipulate the Ecuadorean legal system. At the company’s request, an American judge issued a temporary restraining order to block any judgment for at least four weeks. A day later, international arbiters ordered Ecuador to suspend the enforcement of any judgment.

Almost lost in the various disputes related to the lawsuit is the fact that Chevron and plaintiffs have agreed that oil exploration contaminated what had been largely undeveloped swaths of Ecuadorean rainforest. The plaintiffs claim that Chevron must be held responsible for damage where Texaco once operated. Chevron, however, argues that Texaco carried out a cleanup agreement with the Ecuadorean government and that much of the damage was done after Texaco left in the early 1990s, actions for which it should not be held responsible.

“The judge recognized the crime committed,” said Guillermo Grefa, head of a Quichua Indian community who claims that Texaco’s oil contamination created respiratory problems among his people. “For us, this is very little. For us, the crime committed by Texaco is incalculable.”

Simon Romero reported from Caracas, and Clifford Krauss from Houston. John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York, and Irene Caselli from Quito, Ecuador.

Struggle for Democracy and Public Education in Puerto Rico

2011-02-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

by Victor M. Rodriguez

"The epicenter of the struggle for the public university in Latin America is Puerto Rico." -- José Carlos Luque Brazán, professor and researcher of political science and urban planning at the Autonomous University, Mexico City1

The social conflict taking place at the University of Puerto Rico is polarizing this island to such an extent that this United States' possession, which used to be heralded as the "Showcase of Democracy" during the Cold War ideological struggles, is now sliding into a system of widespread civil and human rights violations. The University of Puerto Rico, for the first time in decades, is occupied by police: political demonstrations are banned; summary expulsions of student leaders are common; and hundreds of students have been arrested, beaten, and at times sexually assaulted or tortured. On February 9, after the riot squad violently intervened with students painting murals, 28 students were arrested, many were hurt and chaos ensued when pepper gas and batons were used to violently arrest students and bystanders. The police violence was of such magnitude that the faculty organization, the Puerto Rican Association of Professors, and the Brotherhood of Non-Faculty Employees called for a 24-hour strike, which was later extended. The university is closed and the president of the system, Jose Ramon de la Torres, after writing a letter requesting the removal of the police from the campus, announced he was resigning as president.

The coverage of this social movement by U.S. mainstream media is scant, and only Al Jazeera has begun to provide some international coverage. In addition, just as in Egypt, youth have created their own media in order to organize and tell the world what is happening in this territory of the United States. Hidden from the eyes of the world, and especially from the U.S. public, this island with 3.9 million inhabitants is experiencing the most intense struggle for democracy and public education since the 1960s. Since early April 2010, students of the most prestigious institution of higher education in the Caribbean, the University of Puerto Rico, have been involved in a struggle to preserve a system of public higher education. This is the system that provides 95% of the research and development in Puerto Rico.

Neo-Liberalism in Puerto Rico

Since his landslide election in 2008, Governor Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, has implemented a series of neo-liberal measures, which have polarized the island's population and increased economic inequality. Governor Fortuño is the first Puerto Rican governor who is an avowed member of the National Republican Party, despite the fact that the Republican Party as such does not participate in Puerto Rican elections. Despite his electoral promises, he has fired 30,000 public workers and reduced investments in social services and education. The unemployment rate in December 2010 was 14.7%, which is lower than it was at the beginning of the fiscal year (16.9% in July 2010), but the reason behind this decline is not an increase in jobs but the discouraged worker effect, that is, workers who are dropping out of the work force and either working in the informal economy or participating in social welfare programs. Puerto Rico moreover has one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world. The proportion of the able-bodied population who participates in the work force has declined dramatically. In July 1999, 47.8 per cent were in the labor force and in December 2010 it was 41.1 %. In contrast, the labor participation rate in the United States in January was 64.2%.

In addition, efforts to privatize segments of public services including education are being made through what the government call "private-public partnerships." These are ways of providing the private sector with public assets without the risks involved in the private market. Attempts to create these partnerships include the building of a gas pipeline through some of the most environmentally fragile areas of the island which are close to population centers. There is strong citizen opposition to this project, in light of the gas pipeline explosions in California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but the government is committed to its construction.

The privatization of higher education has involved another strategy to achieve the same objective. Funds for the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) since 1997 have been cut by $336 million. The university imposed an $800 fee hike on the students in order to solve the financial deficit of the system. What this increase will mean is that close to 10,000 students will not be able to attend the university. What seems to be behind the financial gutting of the university is the neo-liberal ideology supported by Governor Fortuño. From the academic year of 2001-02, to 2006-07, there was a dramatic decline in the proportion of public university students in the total university student population. In 2001-02, only 117,714 attended private universities while 73,838 attended the UPR. In 2006-07, 158,031 went to private universities and only 65,939 the UPR. In an island with a 47% poverty rate and a median family income of $20,425, a third of the United States median family income ($58,526), education is the only avenue toward upward mobility. And yet, the burden of educating the island's youth has been and will be further shifted to private universities, relying more on federal Pell Grants. So, by expanding the role of private universities the neo-liberals are transferring Puerto Rico's economic responsibility on United States' taxpayers.

Poll ratings of Governor Fortuño are extremely low, and yet he is steadfast in implementing draconian measures and supporting the repressive measures used against the university community, even though the Department of Justice sent investigators in response to a request by the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as other interested parties for an investigation of civil rights violation by the Puerto Rican Police Department. One reason behind his obstinate efforts may be that he is being courted by the National Republican Party as a way of attracting the Latino vote. Governor Fortuño attended a Heritage Foundation briefing in Simi Valley, California and a Koch brothers event in Rancho Mirage, California last month. At such venues he has been boasting of how he has established law and order in Puerto Rico. Most recently, on February 11, he was one of the speakers at the CPAC 2011 meeting in Washington, D.C., where he touted his neo-liberal policies. Toeing the Tea Party line, he spoke about reducing government, emphasizing higher bond ratings, but not about the collapse of the social fabric caused by his measures. Puerto Rico last year had 1,000 murders; this year, already in January, the homicide number in Puerto Rico reached more than one hundred. And yet the police are at the campus of the University of Puerto Rico, repressing freedom of expression. In the meantime, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States, the highest number since the great migration in the aftermath of World War II.

It seems that the only strategy of neo-liberals in Puerto Rico is to shirk the social and public responsibility to provide for the Puerto Rican population by transferring segments of the population to the United States.

Latin America: The Empire Strikes Back

2011-01-22T20:36:00.000-08:00

By Conn Hallinan

For the past decade, American policy vis-à-vis Latin
America has been relatively low-key, partly because of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and partly because
the region has seen an unprecedented growth in economic
power and political independence. But, with Republicans
taking over the House of Representatives, that is about
to change, and, while the Southern Cone no longer
stands to attention when Washington snaps its fingers,
an aggressive and right wing Congress is capable of
causing considerable mischief.

Rep. Lleana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), a long-time hawk on
Cuba and leftist regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia, is
the new chair of the powerful House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, and the rightist Rep. Connie Mack (D-
Fl) heads up the House subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere affairs. Ros-Lethinen is already preparing
hearings aimed at Venezuela and Bolivia, and Mack will
try to put the former on the State Department's list of
countries sponsoring terrorism.

Ros-Lehtinen plans to target Venezuela's supposed ties
to Middle East terrorist groups and Iran's nuclear
weapons program, and to push for economic sanctions
against Venezuela's state-owned oil company and banks.
"It will be good for congressional subcommittees to
start talking about [President of Venezuela Hugo]
Chavez, about [President of Bolivia Evo] Morales, about
issues that have not been talked about," she told the
Miami Herald.

The new chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and
Judiciary Committee have also signaled they intend to
weigh in on establishing a more hawkish line on Latin
America.

Unfortunately, it is the Obama administration that
created an opening for the Republicans. While the White
House came in pledging to improve relations with Latin
America, Washington has ended up supporting a coup in
Honduras, strengthening the U.S. military's presence in
the region, and ignoring growing criticism of its
failed war on drugs.

Recent disclosures by Wikileaks reveal the Obama
administration was well aware that the June 2009
Honduran coup against President Manuel Zelaya was
illegal; nonetheless, it intervened to help keep the
coup forces in power. Other cables demonstrate an on-
going American hostility to the Morales regime in
Bolivia and Washington's sympathy with secessionist
forces in that country's rich eastern provinces.

Many Latin Americans initially had high hopes the Obama
administration would bring a new approach to its
relations with the region, but some say they have seen
little difference from the Bush Administration. "The
truth is that nothing has changed and I view that with
sadness," says former Brazilian president Luiz Lula da
Silva. But things may go from bad to worse if the White
House is passive in the face of a sharp rightward turn
by Congress.

The Latin America of 2011 is not the same place it was
a generation ago. Economic growth has outstripped the
U.S. and Europe, progressive and left governments have
lifted 38 million people out of poverty, cut extreme
poverty by 70 percent, and increased literacy. The
region has also increased its south-south relations
with countries like China, South Africa and India.
China is now Brazil's number one trading partner. An
economic alliance-Mercosur-has knitted the region
together economically, and the U.S.-dominated
Organization of American States (OAS) finds itself
eclipsed by the newly formed Union of South American
Nations.

But many countries in Latin America are still riven by
wealth disparities, ethnic divides, and powerful ties
between local oligarchies and the region's curse:
powerful and undemocratic police and militaries. One
such military pulled off the Honduran coup, and police
came within a whisker of overthrowing Ecuador's
progressive president, Rafael Correa, in 2010.

One 2007 Wikileaks cable titled "A Southern Cone
perspective on countering Chavez and reasserting U.S.
leadership," pointed out "Southern Cone militaries
remain key institutions in their respective countries
and important allies for the U.S." The author of the
cable, then ambassador to Chile, Craig Kelly, is
currently principle Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State. Kelly strongly recommended increasing aid to
Latin American militaries to help them "modernize."

In many cases, rightists in Latin America share an
agenda with right-wing forces in the U.S. For instance,
Republicans played a key role in supporting the
Honduran coup and continue to strengthen those ties. In
a recent trip to Honduras, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca)
-a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee-brought together U.S. business leaders and
Honduran officials to discuss American investment.
Honduras was suspended from the OAS, and only a handful
of Latin American governments recognize the new
president, Porfirio Lobo.

It was the Obama Administration, however, who
recognized the government established by the coup, and
remains silent in the face of what Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch calls widespread
human rights violations by the Lobos regime, including
the unsolved murder of at least 18 opponents. U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is lobbying hard to
have Honduras re-admitted to the OAS.

A quick survey of Republican targets suggests troubled
waters ahead.

Chavez has won two elections and is enormously popular.
He has cut poverty, tripled social spending, doubled
university enrollment, and extended health care to most
of the poor. A U.S. engineered coup seems unlikely. But
a "supporter of terrorism" designation would cause
considerable difficulties with international financing
and foreign investment. Sanctions on oil and banking
would also disrupt the Venezuelan economy, in the long
run creating conditions favorable to a possible coup.

While it is hard to imagine what else the U.S. could do
to Cuba, Congress may try to choke off investment in
Cuba's growing oil and gas industries. Companies are
already jumping through hoops to avoid getting around
the current embargo. The Spanish oil company Repsol
and Italy's Eni SpA recently built an offshore oil rig
in China to dodge the blockade.

"It is ridiculous that Repsol, a Spanish oil company,
is paying an Italian firm to build an oil rig in China
that will be used next year to explore for oil 50 miles
from Florida," Sarah Stephens, director of the Center
for Democracy in the Americas told the Financial Times.
If the Republicans have their way, sanctions will be
applied to those oil companies.

Ecuador's Correa beat back a recent right-wing coup,
largely because of his 67 percent approval rating. He
has doubled spending on health care, increased social
spending, and stiffed an illegitimate $3.2 billion
foreign debt. But he has a tense relationship with
indigenous movements, which accuse him of trying to
marginalize them. While those groups did not support
the coup, neither did they rally to the government's
support. Those divisions could be easily exploited to
destabilize the government.

In the case of Bolivia, the Wikileak released cables,
according to Latin American journalist and author
Benjamin Dangl, "lays bare an embassy that is biased
against Evo Morales' government, underestimates the
sophistication of the governing party's grassroots
base, and is out of touch with the political reality of
the country."

The cables indicate the U.S. is relying on information
from extreme right wing and violent secessionist groups
in Eastern Bolivia, groups that receive financing and
training from the National Endowment for Democracy and
USAID. Both groups have close ties to American
intelligence organizations. Given Brazil's strong
opposition to any attempt to break up Bolivia, it is
not clear a succession movement would succeed. But
would Brazil-or Argentina, Uruguay or Paraguay-actually
intervene?

Paraguay is also a country deeply divided between left
and right, with a progressive president who warned last
year that a coup by the country's powerful military was
a possibility.

The Obama administration's acceptance of the Honduran
coup sent a chill throughout Latin America, and
certainly emboldened those who see tanks and caudillos
as an answer to the region's surge of progressive
politics and independent foreign policy. The recent
effort by Turkey and Brazil to broker a compromise with
Iran over its nuclear program did not go down well in
Washington. Neither have efforts to chart an
independent course on the Middle East by nations in the
region. Several countries have formally recognized a
Palestinian state, and Peru will host an Arab-Latin
America summit Feb. 16.

Latin America is no longer an appendage to the colossus
of the north, but its growing independence is fragile,
as the coups in Honduras and Ecuador suggest. The chasm
between rich and poor is being closed, but it is still
substantial. The economies in the region are growing at
a respectable 6 percent, but, because they are
relatively small, they can be more easily derailed by
internal and external crises. Even as its power wanes,
the U.S. is still the world's largest economy with the
world's largest military. This, plus anti-democratic
forces in Latin America, is fertile ground for
mischief, particularly if there is not strong
resistance on the U.S. home front.

Read Conn Hallinan's writings at
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

Leaked cable reopens Honduras debate

2011-01-19T21:02:00.001-08:00

By Kevin Bogardus

A State Department cable released by the website WikiLeaks has reopened the Washington debate over last year’s ouster of then-Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The leaked July 2009 cable, signed by the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, said the removal of Zelaya by the Honduran military “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” In stark language, the cable takes apart arguments made by defenders of Zelaya’s ouster, calling them fabrications or suppositions.

The cable has attracted the attention of the Obama administration’s critics on both the right and the left. For example, the cable has set off a new round of aspersions from the likely next chairman of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who said Llorens was “part of the problem, not the solution.”

“If I am fortunate enough to be the chair of the committee, we are going to continue to look into the actions of the ambassador in Honduras. I don’t think he played the appropriate role. The ambassador should not be on the ground trying to manipulate the outcome,” Mack told The Hill.

Mack and other Republicans have said Zelaya’s removal came about from his alleged power grab. Though Zelaya was shipped off to neighboring Costa Rica in the middle of the night by Honduran soldiers, GOP lawmakers have refused to call his ouster a coup. They say Hondurans chose to remove Zelaya through the actions of their legislative and judicial branches of government.

“There is no one with a straight face that can call this a military coup. It is disingenuous,” Mack said.

Others have disagreed, citing the leaked cable as further confirmation that the Honduran president’s ouster was an illegal coup.

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a liberal think tank, testified before Congress last year about Zelaya’s ouster.

“The cable confirms what we believed from the beginning — this was a coup, it was unconstitutional, and it has helped undermine the rule of law, political and human rights in Honduras, with problems persisting to this day,” Stephens said.

She said the Obama administration has distanced itself from its original take on Zelaya’s removal.

“The reporting in the cable is quite clear in terms of where the administration started out, and it is equally clear that over time the Obama administration’s position on Honduras deviated further and further from the analysis contained in it,” Stephens said. “Given the conditions on the ground in Honduras, and given the repercussions in the region, we continue to believe that standing firm against the coup was the right position at the beginning and the administration should have stuck with it more firmly over time.”

In June 2009, Zelaya was deposed by the Honduran military after it was alleged he wanted to remove the presidency's term limits to stay in power. Zelaya has denied those accusations.

Zelaya was never reinstated to power to finish out his last term, and has now been exiled to the Dominican Republic. Honduras held elections in November 2009 that saw Porfirio Lobo win the presidency.

President Obama first called Zelaya’s ouster “not legal” and said it would set a "terrible precedent" for the region, striking a tone similar to the leaked cable. But later the U.S. government recognized Honduras’s elections last year despite calls for the administration not to do so due to the controversy over Zelaya’s removal.

Though that approach was criticized by some on the left, it has won praise from one key member of the House: Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). Next Congress, Engel will likely be the ranking member of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over Honduras.

Calling it “masterful job,” Engel said the Obama administration took a pragmatic, “middle-of-the-road” position that put itself between both parties up on Capitol Hill.

“The Republicans were annoyed at the beginning that the administration called it a coup and Democrats were annoyed at the end — not all, but some — that they recognized the elections,” Engel said. “I think what we did keeps the United States’ influence in a positive way alive there.”

The Central American nation now has its own representation in Washington to handle its relations with lawmakers.

Honduras has recently contracted with law firm Lanny J. Davis & Associates, run by former Clinton White House special counsel Lanny Davis. Davis-Block, Davis's new strategic consulting firm founded with Josh Block, the former American Israel Public Affairs Committee spokesman, is also helping out on the Honduras account.

According to Davis, Honduras’s government would like to move past the leaked cable describing Zelaya’s ouster.

“We are not commenting on past analyses by the Ambassador. The facts speak for themselves,” Davis said. “It's time to look to the future, not the past. Honduras is and has been a loyal ally of the U.S. and a constitutional democracy, operating with separate branches of government under the rule of law.”

Davis is a columnist for The Hill and a contributor to The Hill's Pundits Blog.

In the meantime, the Obama administration will have to contend with the new Republican House next year.

In his interview with The Hill, Mack repeated his earlier calls for Llorens to step aside. The Florida Republican said it was too early for him to call for hearings in Congress’s next session on Honduras but that what happened there will be “on my plate” next year.

“We will have to see. I would like us to do another hearing,” Mack said.

REACHING OUT TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE

2011-01-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

Office of the Press Secretary

Today, President Obama has directed the Secretaries of State,
Treasury, and Homeland Security to take a series of steps to continue
efforts to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to
freely determine their country’s future.

The President has directed that changes be made to regulations and
policies governing: (1) purposeful travel; (2) non-family remittances;
and (3) U.S. airports supporting licensed charter flights to and from
Cuba. These measures will increase people-to-people contact; support
civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from,
and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from
Cuban authorities.

The President believes these actions, combined with the continuation
of the embargo, are important steps in reaching the widely shared goal
of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens. These
steps build upon the President’s April 2009 actions to help reunite
divided Cuban families; to facilitate greater telecommunications with
the Cuban people; and to increase humanitarian flows to Cuba.

The directed changes described below will be enacted through
modifications to existing Cuban Assets Control and Customs and Border
Protection regulations and policies and will take effect upon
publication of modified regulations in the Federal Register within 2
weeks.

Purposeful Travel. To enhance contact with the Cuban people and
support civil society through purposeful travel, including religious,
cultural, and educational travel, the President has directed that
regulations and policies governing purposeful travel be modified to:

· Allow religious organizations to sponsor religious travel to Cuba
under a general license.

· Facilitate educational exchanges by: allowing accredited
institutions of higher education to sponsor travel to Cuba for course
work for academic credit under a general license; allowing students to
participate through academic institutions other than their own; and
facilitating instructor support to include support from adjunct and
part-time staff.

· Restore specific licensing of educational exchanges not involving
academic study pursuant to a degree program under the auspices of an
organization that sponsors and organizes people-to-people programs.

· Modify requirements for licensing academic exchanges to require that
the proposed course of study be accepted for academic credit toward
their undergraduate or graduate degree (rather than regulating the
length of the academic exchange in Cuba).

· Allow specifically licensed academic institutions to sponsor or
cosponsor academic seminars, conferences, and workshops related to
Cuba and allow faculty, staff, and students to attend.

· Allow specific licensing to organize or conduct non-academic clinics
and workshops in Cuba for the Cuban people.

· Allow specific licensing for a greater scope of journalistic activities.

Remittances. To help expand the economic independence of the Cuban
people and to support a more vibrant Cuban civil society, the
President has directed the regulations governing non-family
remittances be modified to:

· Restore a general license category for any U.S. person to send
remittances (up to $500 per quarter) to non-family members in Cuba to
support private economic activity, among other purposes, subject to
the limitation that they cannot be provided to senior Cuban government
officials or senior members of the Cuban Communist Party.

· Create a general license for remittances to religious institutions
in Cuba in support of religious activities.

No change will be made to the general license for family remittances.

U.S. Airports. To better serve those who seek to visit family in Cuba
and engage in other licensed purposeful travel, the President has
directed that regulations governing the eligibility of U.S. airports
to serve as points of embarkation and return for licensed flights to
Cuba be modified to:

· Allow all U.S. international airports to apply to provide services
to licensed charters, provided such airports have adequate customs and
immigration capabilities and a licensed travel service provider has
expressed an interest in providing service to and from Cuba from that
airport.

The modifications will not change the designation of airports in Cuba
that are eligible to send or receive licensed charter flights to and
from the United States.

Million Plus Remain Homeless and Displaced in Haiti: One Year After Quake

2011-01-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

by Bill Quigley and Jeena Shah / January 12th, 2011

One year after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, more than a million people remain homeless in Haiti. Homemade shelters and tents are everywhere in Port au Prince. People are living under plastic tarps or sheets in concrete parks, up to the edge of major streets, in the side streets, behind buildings, in between buildings, on the sides of hills, literally everywhere.

UNICEF estimates that more than 1 million people – 380,000 of them children – still live in displacement camps.

“The recovery process” as UNICEF says, “is just beginning.”

One of the critical questions is how many people remain without adequate housing. While there are fewer big camps of homeless and displaced people, there has been extremely little rebuilding. The UN reported that 97,000 tents have been provided since the quake. Tents are an improvement over living under a sheet but they are not homes. Many families have lived many places in the last year circulating from rough shelters to tents to camps to other camps to living alongside other families.

It is important to understand that families may leave the huge unsupervised camps and still be homeless someplace else – like a tent in another part of the city or country. Moving from one type of homelessness to another cannot be allowed to be declared progress against homelessness and displacement.

The key human rights goal is housing, not moving out of the displacement camps.

One illustration of the housing challenge facing the Haitian people can be found in a recent report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM December report announced a reduction in the number of persons remaining in displacement camps. The IOM then wrongly concluded that the number of people displaced and homeless was reduced accordingly. Why is this conclusion wrong? Because the IOM report does not even try to track where displaced persons go after they leave a particular camp. They equate homeless families moving out of displacement camps as families finding housing.

These types of erroneous conclusions are not only misleading but threaten to hinder badly needed relief efforts one year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake.

Careful consideration of the IOM report provides an opportunity to examine some of the many important housing challenges still facing Haitians.

IOM Assertion: “We finally start to see light at the end of the tunnel for the earthquake-affected population…these are hopeful signs that many victims of the quake are getting on with their lives.” IOM reported there has been a 31% decrease in the number of internally displaced people living on IDP sites in Haiti since July.

Fact: Getting on with their lives? Of an estimated 1,268 displacement camps, at least 29% have been forcibly closed – meaning tens of thousands of people have been evicted, often through violent means. Many who are forcibly evicted from one site move on to set up camp for their families in another location, which is often more dangerous. This is not getting on with life; this is searching for less dangerous places for the family tent.

IOM Assertion: People with houses labeled red (uninhabitable or extremely dangerous) or yellow (in need of repair) have “chosen to return to the place of origin or nearby to establish a shelter.”

Fact: As of December 16, 2010, only 2,074 of the estimated 180,000 destroyed houses had been repaired and a small percentage of rubble had been cleared. Decisions by desperate homeowners to move back into still destroyed homes is hardly progress.

It is also not even possible for large numbers of people who were renters to return to their destroyed homes. The destruction of more than 180,000 private residences coupled with influx of international aid workers has made Haiti’s rental market soar. An estimated 80% of those rendered homeless by the earthquake were renters or occupiers of homes without any formal land title. Current rents are unreachable by the majority of displaced Haitians, many of whom lost their means of livelihood during the earthquake. The IOM admits “The lack of land tenure and the destruction of many houses in already congested slums left many of those displaced with few options but to remain in shelters.”

IOM Assertion: “Some households rendered homeless after the earthquake left congested Port au Prince all-together going home to the regions. Others sent their children to the countryside for a better life.”

Fact: Rural Haiti before the earthquake was home to 52% of the population, 88% of which was poor and 67% was extremely poor. Rural residents had a per capita income one third of the income of people living in urban areas and extremely limited access to basic services. Disaster response following the earthquake has not tackled the extreme structural violence that exists in rural areas, and Hurricane Tomas further destroyed livelihoods of rural communities. People moving from displacement camps in the city to living in a tent in the countryside have not really moved out of homelessness, they have just moved.

IOM Assertion: “Surviving in poor living conditions during the long hurricane season has persuaded many to seek alternative housing solutions.”

Fact: Homeless people are always seeking “alternative housing solutions.” Camp conditions even before Hurricane Tomas and the cholera outbreak revealed that displaced Haitians were in camps because they had no “alternative housing solutions.” According to a study conducted by CUNY Professor Mark Schuller before both Hurricane Tomas and the outbreak of cholera, 40% of displacement camps did not have access to water, and 30% did not have toilets of any kind. Only 10% of families even had a tent, many of which were ripped beyond repair during the hurricane season; the rest were sleeping under tarps or even bed sheets. A study conducted even earlier by the Institute of Justice & Democracy in Haiti found that 78% of families lived without enclosed shelter; 44% of families primarily drank untreated water; 27% of families defecated in a container, a plastic bag, or on open ground in the camps; and 75% of families had someone go an entire day without eating during one week and over 50% had children who did not eat for an entire day.

Human rights promise housing, not just forcing people away from displacement camps. Haiti needs practical and sustainable solutions for re-housing along with services and protections for the people still homeless.

One year later, it is critically important for the international community to assist Haitians to secure real housing. The million homeless Haitians and the hundreds of thousands who have moved out of the large homeless camps into other areas are our sisters and brothers and still need our solidarity and help.

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and a long-time Haiti advocate. Jeena Shah is a lawyer serving in Port au Prince as a Lawyers’ Earthquake Response Network Fellow with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com and Jeena at Jeena@ijdh.org Read other articles by Bill Quigley and Jeena Shah.

In Honduras, the Holiday Season Brings Repression

2011-01-12T14:51:00.000-08:00

by Dana Frank

As we settle into our warm winter naps in the United States, a new wave of military repression is sweeping through Honduras, directed at the campesino movement. In December troops moved in and once again attacked the poorest of Honduras' rural poor, who have been standing up for their rights with astonishing bravery since the June 28, 2009 military coup. Up here in the North we can turn cozily aware from their plight. But as we sleep, our tax dollars are at work funding the Honduran army, police, and ongoing illegitimate government.

For decades, the campesinos (peasants) of Honduras have been struggling for basic land rights, confronting a handful of elite oligarchs who have been gradually seizing their lands through extralegal means. And for decades, the campesinos have refused to starve, using collective action to demand meaningful land reform. The center of campesino struggle remains the Aguan Valley, in the Northeast corner of the country, where the country's richest and most powerful man (and the most important figure behind the coup), Miguel Facussé, has taken over much of the land in the lower Aguan Valley and planted it with African palms. He has his own private army, works closely with narcotraffickers in the region, and in many ways is more powerful locally than the Honduran national government.

Beginning last December, 2009, almost 10,000 campesinos, organized in the Movimiento Unificado de Campesinos de Aguan (the Unified Movement of Campesinos of Aguan, MUCA) and other groups have been staging "recuperations" of lands illegally seized by Facussé. The resulting repression has been brutal: in the past year as many as 20 campesinos have assassinated by police, the army, paramilitaries, and Facussé's private troops. In April, 2010, President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa sent in around 3,000 troops into the Aguan Valley to repress the campesino movement. Only after an international outcry did he pull out some of the troops and promise a small bit of land to the protesters.

Now a new wave of repression is terrorizing the region. On November 15, Facusse's hired assassins shot and killed five campesino activists in the Aguan Valley community of El Tumbador. The government has made no attempt to investigate the crimes. Completely thwarted on the legal front, on December 7, 2,500 organized campesinos from three different associations began a sit-in blockading the main highway running through the Aguan Valley, to demand an end to the ongoing militarization of the zone and justice for those murdered.

The night of Tuesday, December 14, the government announced it was going to forcibly remove the demonstrators from the highway at 6:00 the next morning. Somewhere between 800 and 1,000 troops poured into the area, surrounding the campesino community of Guadelupe Carney next to the highway. But just as the eviction was to begin, the protesters chose to voluntary leave the road.

When I arrived four hours later, the area remained completely militarized in a terrifying show of deliberate intimidation. On the way into the zone we passed two tear gas tanks containing tear gas and eight huge troop transport vehicles. As we entered the community we saw hundreds of police, army soldiers, special forces, private thugs, and troops in civilian clothes, walking in groups throughout the community and surrounding it completely. The residents told us they had not been allowed to leave since the evening before. I saw groups of officers search cars and houses, surround the local independent radio station, Radio Orquidea, for twenty minutes, and occupy the community-owned cafe. We could see snipers on the hillsides around the town. A helicopter circled round and round, low, with no apparent purpose except intimidation.

As time passed more and more troops began to show up and walk onto the grassy field in the center of town next to the church. They sat down with their backs against the few trees, sprawled across the lawn, or came in and out of a big grey-green military tent erected in the middle. Residents told me they'd seen several of the soldiers urinate in the church. That morning, I was told, the military had halted a bus of campesinos arriving to show solidarity, seized their cell phones, taken out the batteries, and hit two people.

The government's pretext for all this is to somehow show that the campesino movement is armed--and therefore justify the military occupation of the entire country. In a coordinated media campaign, it has alleged that arms are pouring in from Nicaragua and Venezuela and that human rights observers have come to the Aguan Valley only to lie about human rights abuses.

But the campesinos are unarmed. Desperate repeated searches of campesino homes, cars, and community buildings, the government has yet to find guns, and the protest movement remains astonishingly nonviolent after a year and a half of brutal repression. It's the government and its private allies that have the scary armaments. I saw hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons in the hands of the troops, in contrast to the campesinos' empty arms and empty stomachs. Moreover, the government is countenancing, indeed closely cooperating with an array of private armies that are proliferating in Honduras, especially Facusse's.

That same morning, on the opposite side of the country, in the community of Zacate Grande, the same array of private forces and government repression brutally attacked campesinos also challenging Facussé, in a campaign clearly coordinated with the actions in the Aguan Valley. Police, army soldiers, and the private police forces of the HSBC bank--suddenly claiming a different, unpaid mortgage on lands long owned by a local campesino family--attacked a group of campesinos refusing to leave their own land, launched tear gas and live bullets, and beat people brutally. Two people were hospitalized and twelve have been detained, including two journalists covering the attack.

Since the June 28, 2009 coup, as many as 200 people have been killed for their work opposing the regime, including trade unionists, gay rights activists, and ten journalists. Over 5,000 have been illegally detained. Women have been gang raped in custody, one of them gang raped again after she denounced it publicly. On September 15, in San Pedro Sula, the city's second largest city, troops tear gassed and invaded Radio Uno, an opposition Radio Station, and then broke up a concert, and tear gassed and beat up protesters at a large, peaceful demonstration by the opposition.

Yet in the entire year and a half since the coup, almost no one has been charged or prosecuted for any of this. Complete impunity reigns. In the words of Eduardo David Ardón, writing in the Honduran daily El Tiempo last week, "State terrorism has a green light, to exercise every kind of violence and commit crimes of every sort from right to left, without being judged or investigated." Meanwhile, five judges and magistrates who protested the coup remain fired, despite outcries by the international justice community.

And our United States government is paying the bills. U.S. aid to the Honduran military and ongoing coup government, only briefly and very partially curtailed after the coup, now flows freely. The Honduran military continues its training programs in Fort Benning, Georgia--where officers remain undisturbed in their classes the very week after the coop. The Honduran police also receive generous and regular training from the United States government, including a "rigorous, seven-month course" at the National Police Academy, according to a recent press release from the U.S. -Honduran Joint Task Force-Bravo. "The goal is to provide assistance to the academy on a more regular basis."

As the campesino movement illustrates, though, despite all this hideous repression the Honduran people are still pushing forward with their vision of a new Honduras based on social justice and democracy. The resistance movement, uniting the women's, gay, labor, campesino, indigenous, and Afro-indigenous movements, the human rights community, and the progressive wing of the Liberal Party, continues to strengthen itself, now building a neighborhood-by-neighborhood structure in preparation for a National Assembly on February 26.

In January, the opposition's Alternative Truth Commission (not to be confused with the government's bogus Truth Commission, which is going nowhere fast), is sending out a team of investigators to verify post-coup human rights violations throughout Honduras, collect new testimony, and correlate the information from all the country's human rights groups. In contrast to truth commissions launched in other countries, though, it is operating under very dangerous conditions, as the conflict is by no means resolved and the commission, despite a prestigious international composition, has no governmental powers.

Meanwhile, at home, a newly empowered congressional Right is ready to pounce. Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is about to control the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and her Cuban-American ultra-Right ally, Rep. Connie Mack, will head the Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs. They have already announced they plan hearings on Honduras with which to attack Obama from the Right.

As we awake from our holiday naps and begin the new year, Progressives need to demand, instead, that Congress challenge Obama from the Left, for his ongoing, overt support for the illegitimate coup regime in Honduras. But Congressmembers and Senators will only challenge the administration if we continue to build a grassroots movement, district by district, state by state, to pressure them from below--so that we can stop our US-funded military repression in Honduras, and help make it possible for the Honduran people to move toward the new, democratic society of which they dream.

Dana Frank is a Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America and Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism.

Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez

2011-01-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

By Eva Golinger

With so much misinformation circulating in different media outlets around the world about Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, it's time to set the record straight. Venezuela is not a dictatorship and President Chavez is no dictator.

Just last evening the Venezuelan head of state participated in a meeting with a group of housing activists, who not only criticized - live on television - government policies and inaction on tenant and housing issues, but also proposed laws, regulations and projects that were received with open arms by Chavez himself. And last week, the Venezuelan President vetoed a law on higher education that had been approved by the prior year's majority pro-Chavez legislature, calling for more "open and wide" debate on the subject, to include critics and those who had protested the bill. That is not the behavior of a brutal dictator.

As someone who has been living on and off in Venezuela for over 17 years, I can testify to the extraordinary transformation the country has undertaken during the past decade since Chavez first was elected in 1998. He has been reelected by landslide majorities twice since then.

When I arrived to Venezuela for the first time in 1993, the country was in severe turmoil. Constitutional rights had been suspended and a nationwide curfew was imposed. Repression was widespread, the economy was in crisis, several newspapers, television and radio stations had been shut down or censored, and the government had imposed a forced military draft targeting young men from poor communities. There was an interim president in power, because the actual president, Carlos Andres Perez - hailed by Washington as an "outstanding democrat" - had just been impeached and imprisoned for corruption. Perez eventually escaped confinement and fled to Miami, where he resided until his death last month, living off the millions he stole from the Venezuelan people.

Even though a new president was elected in 1994, constitutional rights remained suspended on and off for years, until the elections in 1998 that brought Chavez to power. Since then, despite a short-lived coup d'etat in 2002, an economically-shattering sabotage of the oil industry in 2003 and multiple attempts against his government during the following years, President Chavez has never once limited constitutional rights nor imposed a curfew on the population. He hasn't ever ordered a state of emergency that would limit rights or shut down any media outlets. He even issued a general pardon in 2007 giving amnesty to all those involved in the 2002 coup, with the exception of individuals directly responsible for crimes against humanity or homicide.

Under the Chavez administration, poverty has been reduced in half, universal, quality, free healthcare and education have been guaranteed for all Venezuelans, new industries have been created and more and more political power has been placed in the hands of "ordinary" people who were previously excluded by the elite that ruled the country throughout the twentieth century.

So why do so many newspapers and broadcast media classify him as a dictator?

You may not like Hugo Chavez's way of speaking, or the fact that he was born into poverty, comes from the military, is a leftist and doesn't fit the stereotypical image of a head of state. But that doesn't make him a dictator.

In Venezuela, more than 80% of television, radio and print media remain in the hands of private interests critical of the government. So, despite what some international press claim, there is no censorship or violation of free expression in Venezuela. Calls to overthrow the government or to incite the armed forces to rebel against the state, which would clearly be prohibited in most nations, are broadcast on opposition-controlled television channels with public concessions (open signals, not cable). Just last month, the head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, Fedecamaras, gave a press conference broadcast live on television and radio stations, during which he called the armed forces "traitors" who would "pay the price" if they didn't disobey government orders and "obey" the dictates of big business.

I can only imagine if a business leader in the United States were to go on television and call the US Army "traitors" if they didn't disobey the federal government. Secret Service would arrest the man immediately and the consequences would be severe. But something like that would never happen in the US, since no television station would ever broadcast anything that constituted a call to rebellion or disobedience against the government. That's illegal.

So, not only is there no censorship in Venezuela, there is an excess of "free" expression. One positive aspect of the permissive attitude assumed by the Chavez government with regards to media has been the proliferation of community and alternative media outlets throughout the nation, which have provided space and voice to those ignored by mainstream corporate media. During governments prior to the Chavez administration, community and alternative media were banned.

Recently, the Venezuelan legislature passed a law called the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Digital Media. The law does not censor internet or any other form of media. What it does do is disallow calls to assassinate the president or other individual, as well as prohibit incitement to crime, hate or violence on web sites operated from Venezuela. This is a standard in most democracies and is a sign of civility. The law also instills on media a responsibility to contribute to the education of citizens. Media have a huge power over society today. Why shouldn't they be responsible for their actions?

Another issue widely manipulated in mass media is the Enabling Act that was approved last month by the Venezuelan parliament. This law gives "decree" powers to the Executive to legislate on specific issues as stipulated in the bill. The Enabling Act does not usurp, inhibit or limit legislative functions of the National Assembly, nor is it unconstitutional or anti-democratic. The parliament can still debate and approve laws as usual within its authority. The Enabling law, which is permitted by the Constitution, was requested by President Chavez in order to provide rapid responses to a national emergency caused by torrential rainfall that devasted communities nationwide at the end of last year and left over 130,000 homeless. The law will not affect any constitutional rights nor impose a "dictatorship" on the country, it is merely a valid, legitimate response to an emergency situation that needs quick solutions.

And speaking of the Venezuelan legislature, there is a lot of deceitful information repeated and recycled in media worldwide about the composition of this year's new parliament. Venezuela had legislative elections in September 2010, and opposition - anti-Chavez - parties won 40% of the seats. Some say this is a majority, which is very strange. The pro-Chavez PSUV party won 60% of seats in the National Assembly, as the Venezuelan legislative body is called. That's 97 out of 165 seats, plus 1 more which was won by the pro-Chavez PCV party, for a total of 98.

On the other hand, the opposition bloc won 65 seats represented by 13 different political parties that don't necessarily agree on most issues. Two other seats were won by a third, independent party, PPT. So, the PSUV party won 97 seats in parliament and the next party in line is Accion Democratica (AD) with 22 seats. Who has the majority?

In 2005, the opposition parties boycotted the electoral process, and lost the near 50% they had in parliament from the year 2000. Now, their bloc has been reduced to 40%, yet they claim to have "grown" in numbers. This perspective has been reiterated in mainstream media, despite its erroneous and manipulative nature.

The opposition bloc has already announced it will seek foreign intervention to help overthrow the government. Not only is this illegal, it's incredibly dangerous. Many of the candidates and most of the parties that conform the opposition in Venezuela have already been receiving millions of dollars annually in funding from several US and international agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), both financed with US taxpayer monies. The stated purpose of this funding has been to "promote democracy" in Venezuela and help build the opposition forces against Chavez. This is a clear violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and a waste of US taxpayer dollars. US citizens: Is this the way you want your hard-earned money to be spent?

This week, opposition leaders will meet with their counterparts in Washington. They have already said their mission is to seek more aid to help remove President Chavez from power. Unfortunately, their undemocratic actions have already been welcomed in the US Capitol. Representative Connie Mack (R-FL), now head of the House Sub-Committte on Foreign Relations for the Western Hemisphere, announced on the first day of Congress that his one goal this year is to place Venezuela on the list of "state sponors of terrorism". And Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), now head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has backed that objective, even going as far as to publicly state she would welcome the "assassination of Fidel Castro or any other repressive leader" such as Hugo Chavez.

On January 1, President Chavez held a brief, informal and amicable encounter with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brasilia, during the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's new president. No agreements were reached, but the exchange of hands and smiles stabilized an escalation in tensions between both nations, which had produced a diplomatic crisis at the end of last year. But upon her return to Washington, Clinton was severely criticized by media, particularly The Washington Post, which accused her of being too "soft" on Venezuela.

The Washington Post's calls for war against Venezuela are dangerous. Remember, conditioning of public opinion is necessary to justify aggression against another nation. The campaigns of demonization against Saddam Hussein, Iraq and Islam were essential to initiate the wars in the Middle East which have yet to cease. Is the public willing to be influenced by media that have a political (and economic) agenda that seeks to oust a democratically-elected and popularly supported government just because they don't like its policies?

With the recent tragic events in Arizona it should become even more evident that media have power and influence over individual actions. Hate speech, demonization campaigns, manipulative and deceitful information are dangerous and can lead to abominable consequences, including war.

It's time to stop the escalating aggression against Venezuela and accept the facts: Venezuela is not a dictatorship, and while many of you may not like Hugo Chavez, a majority of Venezuelans who voted for him do. And in this scenario, they're the ones who matter.

Life for dictator of Argentina's dirty war Jorge Videla

2010-12-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

THE principal dictator of Argentina's "dirty war", Jorge Videla, has been sentenced to life in prison.
The conviction was Videla's first in 25 years for crimes against humanity. Relatives who packed the courtroom held up grainy black-and-white pictures of the victims and shouted "murderers". Most of the two-dozen former military and police officials tried with Videla, including retired general Luciano Benjamin Menendez, also received life sentences.
Videla, an 85-year-old former army general who ruled the military junta between 1976 and 1981, had acknowledged his actions, but denied they were human rights violations, insisting he was an unjustly convicted "political prisoner".
The judges found Videla "criminally responsible" for the deaths of prisoners who were transferred from civilian jail cells to a clandestine prison where they were repeatedly tortured and interrogated before being killed.
Videla told the court Argentine society had demanded the crackdown to prevent a Marxist revolution and complained that "terrorists" now ran the country.
Videla must serve his sentence in a civilian prison, the judges decided, ruling out the privileges he enjoyed after he was first convicted of crimes against humanity in 1985, as Argentina struggled to return to democracy. Videla served just five years of a life sentence in a military prison before former president Carlos Menem granted him and other junta leaders amnesty.
After a concerted campaign to reform a judicial system packed with dictatorship-era judges, the Supreme Court overturned those amnesties in 2007, and President Cristina Fernandez has encouraged a wave of new trials of former military and police figures involved in the clandestine torture centres, where thousands of the regime's opponents disappeared.
The sentencing judge, Maria Elba Martinez, described Videla as "a manifestation of state terrorism". Some of his co-defendants received lesser terms, and seven minor defendants whose cases were joined to Videla's were found not guilty.
The 31 victims in this case - many of them university students with links to armed leftist revolutionary movements - were taken to a centre in Cordoba and tortured, including by electric shock, rape, simulated asphyxiation with water and nylon bags, and mock executions. They were left naked in cold, wet cells throughout the winter, and were told their families would be killed if they did not confess, said survivors. Menendez told the court it was historically revisionist to present armed leftist groups as passive victims with no responsibility for criminal acts. The Montoneros, a Peronist urban guerilla group of the 1960s and 70s, and the People's Revolutionary Army were committing violent acts before the coup, he reminded the judge.
"They were combatants who took on certain risks," Menendez told the court. "It's not a crime against humanity to fight an armed combatant." Videla and Menendez claimed they had to act as they did in order to prevent what they considered would be a greater tragedy - the transformation of Argentina from a conservative Christian society to a Marxist state.
About 13,000 people were killed or disappeared during the dirty war, which ran from 1976 to 1983, according to a government count. Human rights groups put the figure at 30,000.

Dissidents have little support in Cuba: WikiLeaks

2010-12-23T15:13:00.000-08:00

By Jeff Franks

(Reuters) - Despite years of U.S. political and financial support for Cuban dissidents, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana said opposition leaders are largely unknown, badly divided and unlikely to ever run the country, according to a secret diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks.

U.S. Interests Section chief Jonathan Farrar said the dissidents deserved backing as the "conscience of Cuba," but Washington "should look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot likely successors to the Castro regime."

"We see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans," Farrar said. Without changes, he said, "the traditional dissident movement is not likely to supplant the Cuban government."

The cable, published on Thursday by Spanish newspaper El Pais, is one of 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables Wikileaks has begun issuing on the Internet and provided to a number of media outlets.

Farrar's comments, made in a cable dated April 15, 2009, raise questions about the wisdom of the United States' longtime policy of supporting Cuban dissidents as an alternative to the Communist government that has ruled the island since a 1959 revolution put Fidel Castro in power.

Despite claims they are supported by thousands of Cubans, Farrar said "informal polls we have carried out among visa and refugee applicants have shown virtually no awareness of dissident personalities or agendas."

He described the dissident movement as largely ineffectual, due to factors including internal conflict, outsized egos, preoccupation with money, outdated agendas and infiltration by the Cuban government.

"The greatest effort is directed at obtaining enough resources to keep the principal organizers and their key supporters living from day to day," Farrar wrote.

MONEY AND MISTRUST

He told of one political party organization that told him "quite openly and frankly it needed resources to pay salaries" and presented him "with a budget in hopes the (interests section) would be able to cover it."

"With seeking resources as a primary concern, the next most important pursuit seems to be to limit or marginalize the activities of erstwhile allies, thus preserving power and access to scarce resources," he said.

Cuba views dissidents as mercenaries in the pay of the United States and allied with anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Farrar said dissidents get "much of their resources" from exile groups, but also look upon the exiles with suspicion.

"Opposition members of all stripes complain the intention of the exiles is to undercut local opposition groups so that they can move into power when the Castros leave," he wrote.

Dissident leaders tend to be "comparatively old" and out of touch with a Cuban society less concerned with freeing political prisoners than "having greater opportunities to travel freely and live comfortably," Farrar wrote.

He said a new generation of "non-traditional dissidents," such as internationally known blogger Yoani Sanchez, will likely have more impact in post-Castro Cuba, but that "the most immediate successors to the Castro regime will probably come from within the middle ranks of the government itself."

Farrar's cable was written before President Raul Castro, in apparent response to international pressure and dissident activities, agreed in July to release political prisoners.

So far, more than 50 have been freed, with almost all going to Spain in an agreement with the Spanish government.

Long-time dissident Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights, told Reuters he did not feel out of touch with younger Cubans, but said there was an occasional "generational rupture" among Cuba's opposition.

Still, he admitted, "There comes the moment when we must retire from the scene. That appears to me convenient from all points of view."

(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes and Esteban Israel; Editing by Todd Eastham)

Wikileaks Cables Reveal Two-Faced Politics by US

2010-12-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

By Ángel Páez

LIMA, Dec 16, 2010 (IPS) - "It’s not surprising for the United States to cooperate with military or government officials in Peru about which it has information linking them to serious crimes," said activist Ricardo Soberón, referring to contradictions revealed in cables released by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

Soberón, with the non-governmental Centre for Research on Drugs and Human Rights (CIDDH), says "since 1987, the U.S. Department of State has been concerned about the risk of corruption among the Peruvian military in drug trafficking zones, but that concern has not been shared by the Pentagon (Department of Defence), which was more interested in expanding its missions in the Andes region, without regard to the costs."

"The leaked cables reflect a deep political contradiction between Washington’s institutional diplomacy, and the military diplomacy characterised by the promotion of strategies like (the U.S.-financed counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy) Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative (a multi-billion dollar U.S. counter-drug assistance programme for Mexico and Central America), hot pursuit across borders, or the ‘hammer and anvil’ tactic in the Colombian armed conflict," he told IPS.

"The revelations by the cables represent a continuity of these dichotomies in the discourse and practices of U.S. agencies with different objectives and interests in the region," he said.

A Mar. 12, 2009 cable sent by then-U.S. Ambassador in Lima Michael McKinley, which was released by WikiLeaks and published by the El Pais newspaper in Spain, says army commanders fighting remnants of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist rebels received "lucrative payoffs from drug traffickers."

The sources cited by the document referred to drug traffickers operating in league with Sendero insurgents in the Apurimac and Ene River Valley (VRAE) region, and contended that "the army -- for fear of disrupting these drug trafficking networks and losing access to payoffs -- is unwilling to commit the large force needed to pacify the VRAE."

But at the same time, the U.S. embassy has pressed for Washington to respond to requests by Peru’s army brass for increased military aid to squelch Sendero, according to seven confidential cables dated 2009, which were among the thousands of documents released by Wikileaks.

Despite McKinley’s serious allegations of drug corruption against Peruvian army officers fighting in the VRAE, Peru’s main cocaine-producing region, just eight months later, on Nov. 25, 2009, the ambassador himself asked the chief of the U.S. Southern Command for greater aid to the Peruvian army in its fight against Sendero.

The cable, addressed to Commander Douglas M. Fraser, who was preparing to visit Lima in the first week of December 2009, stated that "Your visit affords an opportunity to underscore USG (U.S. government) interest in supporting the GOP's (government of Peru) efforts to combat these threats in the several discrete areas where we are best positioned to help.

"The key word, however, is ‘supporting’," the ambassador stressed. "In this context, the GOP needs to develop a more effective political/military strategy for turning the tide against a reemerging SL (Sendero Luminoso) increasingly intertwined with drug trafficking."

According to other cables from McKinley, the equipment sought by the Peruvian armed forces included helicopters with electronic surveillance system capabilities, technology to detect and destroy the insurgents’ home-made explosive devices, and infrared cameras and night vision equipment.

Peru received 56.4 million dollars in military and police aid in 2006, making it the second biggest recipient in Latin America after Colombia, which received nearly 582 million dollars, according to Just the Facts, a joint project of the Centre for International Policy, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and the Washington Office on Latin America that offers "a civilian’s guide to U.S. defence and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean".

For the 2011 budget, Washington has set the aid for Peru at 44.7 million dollars, a substantial reduction. This South American country is now in third place for such funds in the region, after Colombia (351 million dollars) and Mexico (147.9 million dollars).

"We don’t tell the United States how it should fight in Afghanistan," said retired admiral Jorge Montoya, a former commander of Peru's joint chiefs of staff. "In any case, if the United States wants to intervene in the war against Sendero Luminoso, it should make that clear. They only cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.

"The military combat Sendero Luminoso with all the available resources, which often fall short, and in terrible, adverse conditions, and we are going to defeat them with our own means. We don’t need intervention by the U.S. military," he told IPS.

Montoya, who is now an adviser to Defence Minister Jaime Thorne, said he shared the U.S. concern for the results of the conflict.

"It is a very complicated war against a fanatical ideological organisation that operates in a remote geographical area with which it is highly familiar because it has been there for years. But as far as I know, the United States has not set a deadline, and shouldn't, because we are a sovereign country."

In the Mar. 12, 2009 cable, McKinley also notes that under the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), government officials cooperating with the United States in the fight against drugs at the same time received payoffs to cooperate with drug traffickers.

"Former President Alberto Fujimori's (1990-2000) intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, for example, collaborated with top army and other security officials to develop a web of protection for favoured drug traffickers while cooperating with U.S. officials to combat others," McKinley wrote.

He did not mention that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed an anti-narcotics unit organised by Montesinos in the notorious National Intelligence Service (SIN), despite reports of the involvement by Fujimori’s eminence grise in corruption, drug trafficking and human rights violations

One of the most powerful Peruvian druglords of the 1990s, Demetrio Chávez, testified in court that he paid 50,000 dollars a month in bribes to Montesinos and several army officers.

Nevertheless, the Peruvian courts have not yet managed to specifically find Montesinos -- who is in prison on numerous human rights and corruption charges -- guilty of drug trafficking. Nor has any member of the military high command from the years when Montesinos was the power behind the throne been sentenced.

"It is pitiable that Peruvian democracy has not yet been able to convict Montesinos for his ties with drug trafficking," José Robles, a former army officer who is an analyst of military affairs at the non-governmental Freedom and Democracy Institute (IDL), told IPS.

"However, we cannot generalise about cases of corruption that may exist," he added. "The majority of military personnel have returned to their roots, to the training they received. Those who believe that just because someone wears a uniform, he will behave in a ‘Montesinista’ fashion, are mistaken."

US helped subvert Colombia’s congress on military ‘escalation’ deal, cable shows

2010-12-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

By Stephen C. Webster

A year before the United States and Colombia announced an enhanced military cooperation agreement, the US embassy in Bogotá was working with the administration of Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez to dodge congressional approval of the deal, which saw US troops stationed in the nation and inflamed regional tensions.

The revelation was made in a confidential US diplomatic cable composed in Nov. 2008, given to secrets outlet WikiLeaks and republished on Dec. 18. It was forwarded with priority to US embassies in Brasilia, Caracas, Lima, Panama, Quito and to officials in Washington, DC and the US Southern Command.

The document specified that by renaming the multilateral agreement, "a major escalation in US engagement" would become "simply an extension of our existing cooperation."

The deal to station US troops in Colombia was announced in the summer of 2009 and finalized in October. Then-President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has since been succeeded by Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's former secretary of defense, who took office in August.

Amid negotiations with US officials, the Colombian administration issued a counter-proposal which the US embassy in Bogotá analyzed to make recommendations for Washington strategists. The document it produced noted that the administration wanted to avoid "use of the word' base'" in describing US installations. They also insisted upon finding a way to "place the agreement under the umbrella of existing bilateral and multilateral accords to avoid the need for Colombian congressional approval."

In order to do that, Colombian officials engaged in wordplay, renaming a US proposal for a "Defense Cooperation Agreement" to the much-less descriptive "Supplemental Agreement for Cooperation and Technical Assistance." The rephrasing shows that both US and Colombian officials knew their deal would not fall within the boundaries of standing agreements without significant alterations to its framing.

The US embassy at Bogotá concurred with the suggested changes, noting that a less descriptive title would shift the troop deal from "a major escalation in US engagement" to "simply an extension of our existing cooperation."

"[Tying] the agreement to existing bilateral and multilateral agreements does not impact U.S. interests and is important to the GOC's capacity to conclude an accord. If we can get the access and authorities we need by changing the title, we recommend changing the title."

Sure enough, it worked: Colombia's defense minister said in July, 2009 that no congressional approval was needed for the administration to allow foreign troops.

The Colombian administration also asked for the US to build strategic air defense installations, but US officials noted that could cost billions of dollars and should only be considered if it's absolutely necessary.

When the US announced its deal with Colombia, officials said it was only to operate drone aircraft in the region, to aid the US war on drugs and help protect Colombia from terrorism.

Venezuela, which shares a border with the South American nation, took the agreement as a sign that Colombia was preparing for war. Tensions have run high between the two nations ever since.

The prior president of Colombia has been dogged by protesters ever since leaving office. Critics charge he presided over one of the nation's worst periods for human rights, during which labor leaders and thousands of civilians were slaughtered by former government paramilitary groups.

Human Rights Watch claimed in a report earlier this year that when the prior government displaced tens of thousands of soldiers between 2003 and 2006, their ties to the administration did not really end.

In his inaugural address, Colombian President Santos said his nation would have peace "by reason or force."

Another diplomatic cable released last week revealed that Colombia's last administration also pushed the US to engage in a public campaign to discredit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is One More Threat against Afro-Colombian Communities

2010-12-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

“We have to stand for human rights, and that should be part of the trade equation.”
President Obama.

These words expressed by President Obama during his electoral campaign have become a
rhetoric that could cost Colombia’s Afrodescendants the legal achievements they have
won in their struggle for self-determination and recognition of their rights. It could also
cost them the ancestral territories they have defended for centuries. That is, if President
Obama insists on Congressional approval of the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia.

The struggle of Afro-descendant communities for their ancestral lands and economic,
environmental and cultural rights has led to deaths of more than 47 leaders, massacres of
dozens of innocent Afro-descendants, internal displacement of more than 1.5 million
people, the loss of their control over their collective territories, and acceleration of these
communities’ impoverishment.

The port of Buenaventura and Northern Cauca zone where development-driven economic
policies were imposed against these communities’ will has created serious social and
environmental problems. Such policies have generated food and humanitarian crises
throughout the territory-region of the Pacific Coast and parts of the Caribbean. They
have also led to the illegal, and often violent, expropriation of territories for the large-
scale cultivation of oil palm and other large-scale economic projects in the collective
territories of Alto Mira and Frontera (Nariño) and Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó (Chocó).

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is just one more mechanism that will
endanger the rights of Afro-descendant and indigenous communities in Colombia. As we
have previously stated, the approval of the US-Colombia FTA will bring about conditions
that will violate the economic, environmental, territorial, and intellectual property rights
of these communities. It will exacerbate the racial, economic and environmental
injustices that have affected these populations for centuries.

We remind President Obama and the legislators who favor the FTA in the United States
that the Afro-descendant communities continue to face violence due to the presence of
illegal armed groups and actors that form part of the internal armed conflict in Afro-
Colombian territories. For the past two years, paramilitary groups known as the Black

Eagles, Rastrojos, and New Generation have systematically threatened Afro-Colombian
leaders and their organizations. Internationally recognized Afro-descendant organizations
including AFRODES and the Black Communities’ Process (PCN) are currently military
objectives for these groups. In the port of Buenaventura alone, the Human Rights
Ombudsman’s office documented 357 forced disappearances in the last three years (an
official statistic that does not reflect the actual number of forced disappearances in the
city), and an average 500 violent deaths a year for the last five years. This discriminatory
violence does not simply respond to a lack of economic opportunities, instead it responds
to the interests of different economic and political sectors in the territories and resources
of the region.

In the territory-region of the Pacific, the violence and implementation of Plan Colombia
are responsible for the impoverishment of the Afro-Colombian population in the last ten
years. 72% of Afro-descendants have lost their means of self-sustenance (one of which is
the land that is their primary source of work). 78% of internal displacement between
2002 and 2009 came from the collective territories of Afro-descendants and has left
96.5% of the forcibly displaced persons in conditions of extreme poverty, 78.4% of
which live in conditions of indigent poverty. Forced displacement, as indicated by the
Colombian Constitutional Court in Order T-025 of 2004 and Orders 004, 005, and 092 of
2009, is caused by discriminate violence against the communities, armed confrontation,
and military actions of counter-insurgency, fumigations with glyphosate on subsistence
crops of the communities, racial discrimination and the exclusion of black people from
spaces and critical actions in decision making. We remind President Obama and the
legislators that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was formulated and will be
applied in an environment of discriminate violence, violation of rights and without the
previous consultation with the communities whose territories, resources, and rights will
be directly affected by it.

President Obama has argued that in order to achieve peace, economic stability is
required. He has used this argument in favor of the Free Trade Agreements with South
Korea, Panama, and Colombia. In the reality of Colombia and the Afro-descendant
communities, peace would require the government of Colombia to recognize the
existence of paramilitary groups and the impact of their actions on democracy and the
possibility for peace. The government of Colombia would also have to decisively
guarantee justice and reparation for the victims of their actions. It would also require that
the Colombian government guarantee forcibly displaced, expropriated and impoverished
communities conditions for restitution, reparation and return to their territories in a way
that would reestablish their lives under dignified conditions. It also requires the creation
of differential attention policies for internally displaced Afro-descendents so that they can
recuperate their possessions and sources of work and employment (which include
recuperation of their lands), and that they are reintegrated into their productive
livelihoods with conditions of competition and equality that correlates with the rest of
society. This requires respect for their right to free and informed previous consultation as
obliged by Convention 169 of the ILO, the Colombian Constitution, and Law 170 of
1993.

We, the communities and organizations that struggle for our territorial, economic and
political self-determination, find that the Colombian government does not have any
political will to respect to the rule of law or the rights that are due to us. The Colombian
government has been characterized by its inability to implement regulations such as
Order 005 of 2009, which obliges the government to define appropriate prevention and
attention plans for Afro-descendant communities that are vulnerable to forced
displacement. The Colombian government violates the rights to free and informed
previous consultation and consent. Our last experience with this issue has been during
the formulation of the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo), where
the Colombian government deliberately has limited the obligations of a transparent
previous consultation process to bureaucratic meetings where the direct voice of the
communities that will be affected by those decisions has not been represented. Likewise
the FTA was formulated behind the back of these communities making it a new
mechanism of expropriation and violation of rights.

The grassroots Afro-Colombian communities defend a Life Project (Proyecto de Vida),
based on principles of equality, sustainability, self-determination and self-affirmation,
that the US-Colombia FTA threatens, as there are not democratic conditions in Colombia
for the economic, political and social participation of our people. We make it clear that
despite President Juan Manuel Santos’ rhetoric, his decisions and actions against the
rights of our communities as Minister of Defense during President Uribe’s
administration, do not give us any hope that conditions will get better during his
administration. His policy in regards to mining, the Land Law and the poorly named
consultation process on the National Development Plan are concrete examples.

Therefore, the organizations and communities that struggle for the protection of our
ancestral territories, the resources within the territories and our rights to them,
reiterate our opposition to the current U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, as it is
not a choice that favors sustainable development in the future and favorable
advancement for our communities, in full exercise of our constitutional and human
rights.

We ask that the United Status Congress condition any future discussion of the FTA with
Colombia in compliance with the recommendations that all sectors of the national and
international social movements have presented in addition to the observations presented
last year to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

We make a similar appeal to civil society in the United States to demand their
representatives to publicly oppose the FTA with Colombia until the Colombian
government can demonstrate concrete results in transforming the human rights situation
in Afro-descendant communities.

With our traditional affirmation of life and joy, hope and freedom,

Black Communities’ Process (PCN)∗
National Coordination
International Working Group

Chile lawyer seeks arrests in folk singer's death

2010-12-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

By EVA VERGARA
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 8:25 PM
SANTIAGO, Chile -- A Chilean government lawyer is seeking to arrest four retired army officers for the killing of renowned folk singer Victor Jara during the 1973 coup.

The Interior Ministry's Human Rights Program submitted a formal request for their detention to Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar on Tuesday, according to an official familiar with the case. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to avoid influencing the magistrate's decision.

The case targets retired officers Edwin Dimter, Hugo Sanchez and Raul Jofre, and ex-prosecutor Rolando Melo, the official said.

Jara, a folk singer, theater director, communist and outspoken supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, was detained in a stadium along with 5,000 other leftists when Gen. Augusto Pinochet took power in a military coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Pulled from the crowd, Jara was tortured and shot to death by the military as a message to the rest.

The killing turned Jara into an international symbol of resistance to the Pinochet government, which lasted until 1990.

Some witnesses have accused Dimter of being a military officer long known only as "The Prince," who led torture and killings at the stadiums and is believed responsible for Jara's death.

Dimter has denied killing Jara and sued a journalist who wrote an article identifying him as "The Prince."

So far the only person to be prosecuted for Jara's killing is former conscript Jose Paredes Marquez, 56, who proclaims his innocence.

In an interview with the AP last year, Paredes said all conscripts were carrying machine guns and Jara's body would have been torn apart by such a weapon.

An autopsy from 2009 found that the folk singer died from dozens of gunshot wounds all over his body, and the singer's widow, Joan Jara, has said she had no difficulty recognizing his remains.

Tuesday's petition seeking the arrest warrants was filed by lawyer Cristian Cruz of the Human Rights Program.

Cruz and a colleague were recently laid off, effective Jan. 1, by the center-right government of Sebastian Pinera, which cited budgetary pressures.

Amnesty for Brazil Dictatorship Is Challenged

2010-12-17T11:02:00.001-08:00

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — A human rights court said that a Brazilian amnesty law covering crimes during the country’s 21-year dictatorship was invalid and that the country was responsible for the forced disappearance of at least 70 peasants and militants who were part of a resistance movement.

The ruling was announced Tuesday by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; the court adheres to the American Convention on Human Rights, to which Brazil is a signatory.

While Argentina and Chile have begun more vigorously investigating and prosecuting human rights violations committed during those countries’ dictatorships, successive Brazilian governments have refused to investigate and find those responsible for crimes committed during the dictatorship that ended in 1985. And Brazil’s Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the amnesty law, which protects military officials from prosecution for abuses committed during the military regime.

But the Inter-American Court, based in Costa Rica, found that Brazil was responsible for the actions of state agents who carried out disappearances of members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement.

The court said Brazil must conduct a criminal investigation into the Araguaia case, bring the guilty parties to justice, search for those who have disappeared and provide medical and psychological treatment to their surviving relatives. It also said 42 direct relatives of the victims should receive $45,000 each in compensation for their suffering.

“This is a turning point in the search for truth and justice in Brazil,” said Viviana Krsticevic, the executive director of the Center for Justice and International Law, a human rights group involved in the case. “Brazil, unlike other Latin American countries, has not found a way to investigate or even partially punish those responsible for the most egregious human rights violations committed during its dictatorship.”

The responsibility for deciding how to deal with the Inter-American Court’s decision will fall to the president-elect, Dilma Rousseff, a former resistance fighter who was imprisoned and tortured by the military regime. Ms. Rousseff, who takes office on Jan. 1, vowed in the campaign to bring human rights violators from the dictatorship to justice.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government did little to break the pattern of earlier governments in not going after those responsible for the dictatorship’s crimes, reflecting how the military remains an influential political actor in Brazil, Ms. Krsticevic said. His government supported the decision in April by the Supreme Court not to investigate the anti-guerilla military operation in the Araguaia region in that period, as requested by families of the victims. The court cited the 1979 amnesty law in its decision.

In its ruling on Tuesday, the human rights court said, “The provisions of the Brazilian Amnesty Law that prevent the investigation and sanctioning of severe human rights violations are incompatible with the American Convention, have no legal effects and cannot continue to stand in the way of investigating the facts” of the Araguaia case.

On Wednesday, Paulo Vannuchi, Brazil’s departing minister for human rights, called the court’s decision “very important to continuing to develop human rights” in Brazil.

“We need to find the bodies of those resistance fighters and return them to their families,” Mr. Vannuchi said. “This is indispensable to talking about democratic reconciliation, about being one united country.”

Myrna Domit contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil.

Uribe confirms Wikileaks: he was prepared to cross into Venezuela territory

2010-12-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) confirmed the contents of a confidential US State Department confidential cable exposed by Wikileaks, according to which he contemplated sending troops across into Venezuelan territory to capture and arrest FARC guerrilla leaders.

In his Twitter Uribe wrote: “Reply to Wikileaks: I proposed it and I did it: to protect Colombians you must capture the terrorists where ever they are”, although he did not give details of any such actions.

According to the cable Uribe in early 2008 spoke of sending troops into neighboring Venezuela to capture Colombian FARC leaders he suspected were hiding there, the U.S. envoy in Bogota said in one of the cables

Uribe, who left the presidency in August after two four-year terms, mounted a determined effort to crush the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has battled a succession of Colombian governments since the mid-1960s.

The Jan, 18, 2008, cable tells of a meeting held the day before among Uribe, US Ambassador William Brownfield, and the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

Uribe said “he was prepared to authorize Colombian forces to cross into Venezuela, arrest FARC leaders, and bring them to justice in Colombia,” Brownfield reported to the State Department.
The meeting took place less than two months before Uribe ordered an attack on a clandestine FARC camp just inside neighboring Ecuador, which killed more than two dozen people, including rebel No. 2 Raul Reyes and several civilians.
Two days later, Ecuador broke relations with Colombia and the rupture lasted until the end of last month, when Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and Uribe's successor, Juan Manuel Santos, agreed to fully reestablish bilateral ties.

According to another cable published over the weekend by the Spanish daily El Pais, Uribe told visiting U.S. lawmakers in 2007 that leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was a Hitler-like threat to South America.

Uribe's January 2008 conversation with the U.S. officials also touched on Chavez, who has not undertaken any offensive military action since taking office 11 years ago.
Uribe thinks “the best counter to Chavez ... remains action - including use of the military,” Ambassador Brownfield said in his cable to Washington.

During his second term, and especially during his last few months in office, Uribe repeatedly complained that several FARC leaders were hiding in Venezuela and that the neighboring country was not cooperating with Colombia to capture them.

Those accusations led Chavez in July to break relations with Colombia, but ties were reestablished on August 10 at a meeting of the Venezuelan leader with President Santos.

The Murder of Walter Trochez: Political Violence and Impunity in Honduras

2010-12-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

Today marks the one year anniversary of the assassination of Walter Trochez, a human rights, LGBTQ and democracy activist in Honduras. His death, like those of many other activists, LGBTQ leaders, journalists, unionists and teachers has been nominally investigated by a police force that itself has been implicated in violence against civilians since the coup on June 28, 2009. Despite the efforts of the U.S. State Department, multinational corporations, the Government of Honduras and their lobbyists to portray the current situation as sporadic violence, attributable to generic 'crime' within a post-election return to normalcy, it is clear that targeted bloodshed and a culture of impunity has taken hold.

Trochez was abducted on December 4, 2009 by four masked men in civilian clothes who beat him and ordered him to give up the names and addresses of political activists. According to Amnesty International they told him "Even if you give us the information we're going to kill you, we have orders to kill you." Trochez was able to escape at that time but was later shot to death by gunmen in police uniforms, according to witnesses. This style of abduction, assault, interrogation and homicide is reminiscent of the brutal tactics of Battalion 3-16, an intelligence unit within the Honduran Army that was notorious for their death squad tactics and use of torture, which was later found out to have received training in the United States. COFADEH (The Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras) and the journalist Jeremy Kryt have denounced what they see as a new wave of state sponsored death squads.

Walter Trochez was a well known activist who worked to build coalitions between the National Resistance Front and the LGBTQ community. At 27-years-old, he was the General Coordinator for the Sexual Diversity Advocacy Group and a co-founder of the Committee of Auditors, an organization that worked to end violence and discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS. Following the coup he began compiling information on the murders of LGBTQ resistance members which he saw as part of a continuum of homophobic violence. His work was a powerful indictment of those who participated in the coup and its brutality. Trochez's voice still resonates in a vibrant and committed resistance movement which has actively and intentionally integrated feminist and queer spaces.

Despite demands for a full independent investigation by Amnesty International, PFLAG, Human Rights Watch, Rights Action and other organizations, the Honduran government only partially bowed to calls to open an inquiry to Trochez's murder under the Attorney General's Office, although not an independent one. The Honduran Police have affirmed the beginning of an investigation and have denied any law enforcement involvement or collusion in the murder. A secretive organization that employs violence and coercion investigating itself is a hallmark of impunity and is something that should concern all who value human rights.

In August of 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report based on the testimonies of over one hundred survivors of violence in Honduras. Testimony in the report suggests police participation in shootings, beatings, arbitrary use of tear gas, sexual assault and rape. More than a year later, many more people have been killed and injured. Luis Rubí, the Attorney General, has responded to calls for UN investigations by denying their necessity, claiming that the state's own institutions are strong enough to investigate themselves. This lack of oversight has extended to the Truth Commission, created pursuant to the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, in which those who plotted, authorized and carried out the coup are now charged with conducting a probe into illegal actions.

The recently leaked State Department cable "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," is clear in describing the removal of President Zelaya as illegal. The conclusions were ignored by the State Department that instead began pressing for normalization of relations with the coup government. Only 142 days after the coup had been declared illegal by the highest U.S. representative in Honduras, Walter Trochez was murdered; his name added to a still growing list of victims of political violence targeted at those who stand against the coup and the corrupted political process that followed. The murderers might have been Honduran, but they were assisted by lobbyists in Washington who helped pave the way for diplomatic normalization. Reckless policies have a human cost and have resulted in unnecessary deaths. Those in the United States and elsewhere who assisted in solidifying the coup must be held accountable.

Mourning and nation building are inextricably linked. By remembering Walter Trochez we add our voices to the calls of the resistance for a re-founding of Honduras on the basis of human rights, dignity and accountability. As the protest signs say: "The victims have names, so do the murderers."

This article was researched and co-authored by Joshua Birch

Private, Opposition TV Continues to Dominate in Venezuela, New Paper Finds

2010-12-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

by Dan Beeton

Washington, D.C.- A new issue brief looking at data on Venezuela TV audiences contradicts the widely believed -- and widely reported -- claim that the Chávez government dominates the television media. In reality, the paper finds the opposite is true: the state share of television audience is very small -- currently only 5.4 percent --while private, opposition-owned channels overwhelmingly dominate the television audience, with 61.4 percent watching privately owned TV channels, and 33.1 percent watching paid TV.

“Statements claiming the Venezuelan government ‘controls’ or ‘dominates’ the media are not only exaggerated, but simply false,” CEPR Co-Director and lead author of the paper, Mark Weisbrot, said.

These claims appear regularly in the major U.S. media and are almost never challenged. For example, in a description of Venezuela’s elections last September for the National Assembly, the Washington Post referred to the Chavez “regime’s domination of the media . . . .” In an interview on CNN, Lucy Morillon of Reporters Without Borders stated, “President Chavez controls most of the TV stations.”

The brief, “Television in Venezuela: Who Dominates the Media?”, from the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., analyzes data from AGB Panamericana de Venezuela Medición S.A., a local affiliate of Nielsen Media Research International, for the years 2000-2010 and also finds that state television audiences have increased during times of political turmoil, such as during the failed April 2002 coup and the 2002-2003 oil strike.

“The most likely explanation for these spikes in state television viewers is that more people are interested in the news during these times, and so more want to get both sides of the story,” Weisbrot said. But even in these few brief spikes of state TV audience – lasting for no more than two or three months – the state TV audience share has never reached 10 percent, even for one month in the past decade.

The paper notes that the primary means through which the government seems to get its message out is through President Chávez himself, in the “cadenas”, or official speeches, that private broadcast TV channels are required to broadcast. In 2009, according to data from AGB Panamericana de Venezuela Medición S.A., these cadenas amounted to an average of about 24 minutes per day. While this has the potential to get the government’s message out more than the current share of state TV programming, it is difficult to measure its impact without data on how many people watch these speeches.

Leaked cable reopens Honduras debate

2010-12-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

Memo: Haiti leader sought to 'orchestrate' vote

2010-12-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- A leaked memo by a U.S. ambassador to Haiti said President Rene Preval's primary concern ahead of last weekend's election for his successor was to ensure the winner would not force him into exile.

The June 2009 memo sent under the name of then U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson was released Wednesday by Wikileaks along with an earlier cable about Preval.

The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince said it could not comment on the documents' authenticity.

The memo, which shows an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Preval administration and Haiti in general, has surfaced at an awkward moment. Votes in the disputed election are now being counted.

It says that Preval's "overriding goal is to orchestrate the 2011 presidential transition in such a way as to ensure that whoever is elected will allow him to go home unimpeded. Based on our conversations, this is indeed a matter that looms large for Preval."

The document could feed opposition-stoked rumors that Preval rigged the election to elect his preferred successor, state-run construction company chief Jude Celestin. That perception has fueled violent clashes between opposition-candidate supporters and U.N. peacekeepers.

Preval's Unity party denied it perpetrated fraud and accused Celestin's rival candidates of trying to foment a coup d'etat.

The memo, dated seven months before an earthquake destroyed most of Haiti's capital, paints the now 67-year-old president as isolated, independent, "wary of change and suspicious of outsiders." It calls his political decisionmaking "erratic," says he neglected his health after a bout with protstate cancer and had returned to drinking.

But it also characterizes Preval as "Haiti's indespensible man" and sole influential politican.

"Managing Preval will remain challenging during the remainder of his term yet doing so is key to our success and that of Haiti," the memo said.

It said his main concern was life after the presidency, a natural worry in a country where six presidents have fled or been driven into exile since 1986 - in Jean-Bertrand Aristide's case, twice - and another was imprisoned.

It noted Preval "angrily denied charges that he manipulated the electoral process" for the delayed 2009 legislative elections while rejecting that he was responsibile for the electoral commission's exclusion of the still exiled Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. That exclusion carried over to the current election.

On Sunday, nearly every opposition candidate joined together while polls were open to accuse Preval of stealing the election for Celestin and called for the vote to be thrown out. Hundreds attending their mid-day news conference chanted "Arrest Preval!"

The two leading contenders reversed their position Monday. But one, musician Michel Martelly, played on Preval's fears by telling him through a news conference: "Haiti does not want you anymore." Martelly dodged Haitian reporters' questions if he was calling for Preval to be exiled.

A joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community observer mission say the election appeared to be valid, though it confirmed instances of fraud, voter intimidation and the inability of untold thousands to cast ballots because of confusion on the voter rolls.

A delegation of U.S. Congress members in Haiti for the vote asked the U.S. government to withhold its endorsement of the elections until the fraud claims can be investigated.

U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed Preval on Wednesday for the electoral problems, saying he had ignored urged reforms.

"As a result, the elections have been fraught with numerous reports of irregularities and fraud," Lugar said.

Leaks from Wikileaks expose U.S. intervention in the Honduras coup d'état

2010-12-06T07:02:00.001-08:00

Jean-Guy Allard

• THE 2009 coup d'état in Honduras was "illegal and unconstitutional," as Cuban-American Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Tegucigalpa, was forced to admit. Llorens is also a former collaborator of Otto Reich, whose role in the events remains to be seen. A report from Llorens to the State Department is among the U.S. documents leaked on November 28 by Wikileaks, a website on the Internet dedicated to leaking secret information.

Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, knew that the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and unconstitutional.

The document, signed by Llorens and sent to the State Department, also acknowledges that Zelaya's letter of resignation letter was a "fabrication," without giving details of the evidence confirming that. The U.S. ambassador confirmed that "none of the arguments mentioned" by the coup leaders to justify the kidnapping and deportation of the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya, have any validity under the Honduran Constitution, while some are clearly false and others are "mere suppositions."

It shows how the accounts of Zelaya's arrest by the military demonstrate that he was never legally served with an arrest warrant, "that the soldiers gained entry by shooting the locks off, and essentially kidnapped the president."

Llorens makes no mention whatsoever of the complicity of the U.S. military forces present in Honduras in the operation carried out by elite troops from the Salvadorian army to fly the head of state out of the country. Eva Golinger, the Venezuelan-American lawyer and researcher, has demonstrated that, in the weeks following the coup, the Soto Cano Air Base which the United States maintains in Honduran territory played a fundamental role in overthrowing President Manuel Zelaya.

The document is one of hundreds of thousands of secret dispatches from the State Department leaked to the Spanish El País daily, The New York Times, The Guardian in the United Kingdom, the French Le Monde and the German Der Spiegel magazine, publications which are not known for criticizing the U.S. government.

In a tragicomic sounding paragraph, Llorens notes that "according to the logic of argument 239" invoked by the coup leaders, "Micheletti himself should be forced to step down because, as president of Congress he considered legislation to have a fourth ballot in the November 2009 elections for voter approval of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution."

Any member of Congress who debated the proposal also should be removed from office, and the presidential candidate of the National Party, Pepe Lobo, who made the idea his, should be disqualified from taking public office for 10 years", he adds.

LLORENS, REICH, ROS-LEHTINEN AND CO.

In his report, Llorens takes refuge behind Honduran legal experts whom the embassy consulted in order to understand the arguments wielded by the coup supporters and their opponents.

It is a fact that many other documents, which are not "confidential" like this one, but "Top Secret", were exchanged between Washington and its embassy in Honduras during the events of 2009.

Hugo Llorens' close relationship with U.S. foreign policy wolves no doubt explains far better than his confidential report the rapid turnabout in the diplomacy of Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In a statement on November 28, the ultra-right wing Cuban-American Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who represents the Republican Party on foreign policy issues, described the revelation of these sensitive State Department documents by the Wikileaks website as "irresponsible."

The Miami congresswoman has reason to be concerned: she flew to the support of the dictator Roberto Micheletti shortly after the coup d'état that led to the expulsion of the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya.

"I am with the president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, because he is the president of this country," the spokeswoman for the extreme right in the U.S. Congress affirmed during a press conference together with Micheletti in the government house in Honduras occupied by the dictatorship.

Llorens had advance notice of the coup. That was revealed a few days before his death by Roland Valenzuela, a former member of Zelaya's administration, in an interview broadcast by a radio station in the city of San Pedro Sula.

Valenzuela recounted in detail how, on June 10, 2009, Roberto Micheletti, at that time president of the National Congress, before seizing power on the 28th of that same month, drafted the decree which would remove Zelaya from office.

He explained how a USAID contractor, Jacqueline Foglia Sandoval, was pointed to as "the person in charge of coordinating and executing the coup d'état."

A few days after his statements, Valenzuela was murdered in a public place by the businessman Carlos Yacamán, who was arrested on Wednesday, September 8 —not by the FBI, but by immigration authorities—in Miami, where he had taken refuge. Despite an official application for his extradition by the San Pedro Sula District Attorney's Office, Yacamán remains under the protection of U.S. authorities.

Ambassador Hugo Llorens, who admitted after his report that he had participated in meetings in which coup plans were discussed before the kidnapping of President Zelaya, is a Cuban-American "terrorism" specialist. He was director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington when the coup d'état against President Hugo Chávez took place.

Llorens directly reported to Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the highly controversial Elliot Abrams.

Otto Reich is one of the most influential characters within the Miami mafia and in June of 2009, he was personally put in charge of protecting the Micheletti gang, together with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Translated by Granma International .

Cuban Medics A Big Force on Haiti Cholera Frontline

2010-12-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

By REUTERS

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - They don't send out press releases, don't have public information officers and their contacts are not widely publicized by the huge international humanitarian operation helping cholera-hit Haiti.

But when the United Nations appeals for more doctors and nurses to combat the deadly disease that is killing dozens by the day, it is to Cuba's medical brigade that U.N. officials are likely to turn to first.

With a tradition of service in the world's poorest and most forgotten states, the Cubans are a major frontline force in the multinational response to the raging epidemic, which has killed at least 2,000 people and probably more, since mid-October in the impoverished country.

While many Western aid workers crowd Haiti's capital, where more than 1.3 million vulnerable homeless survivors of the January 12 earthquake are crammed into tent camps, Cuba's medics are seeking out cholera victims in hard-to-reach rural hamlets.

A Cuban-led team trekked this week to one such settlement -- the dirt-poor mountain village of Plateau in Haiti's cholera-ravaged Artibonite department, where they set up an emergency makeshift cholera treatment centre on the benches of a Protestant church.

"We don't look for publicity but we do look for the people," Dr. Lorenzo Somarriba, coordinator of the Cuban Medical Brigade in Haiti, told Reuters at the brigade's headquarters in a Port-au-Prince suburb.

"The Cuban doctors are working in the most difficult places. It's our policy to concentrate on areas outside the national capital," he said, a fact acknowledged by both Haitian and foreign health authorities.

STRENGTH ON THE GROUND

A small Cuban flag sits on the table in front of Somarriba, while pictures of former President Fidel Castro and guerrilla icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, himself a doctor, adorn the walls.

Plateau represents the 39th cholera treatment location set up and run by the Cubans across much of Haiti's daunting geography, from the coast to the denuded mountains of the interior where poor, illiterate peasants are helpless victims of a deadly diarrheal disease they have never known before.

These locations are carefully marked on a map of Haiti in the Cuban brigade's headquarters and Somarriba, a Cuban vice minister of health, reels off figures and statistics like a general marshalling his forces in a military campaign.

The Cuban-led medical brigade in Haiti is 908 people strong, Somarriba said. It includes Cuban-trained professionals from 19 other countries -- mostly Latin American, Caribbean and African nationals who serve under the Cuban flag.

It is the largest medical contingent in Haiti from any one nation, treating 30 percent to 40 percent of the cholera patients.

The Cuban contingent consists mostly of doctors and nurses but also includes technicians and logistics experts. They have warehouses, a fleet of trucks, and planes that fly in supplies and personnel from the communist-ruled island to the west.

The scale, organisation and experience of this presence make Cuba the country that Haiti's government and its relief partners seek out when they need to ramp up the struggling response to the unchecked epidemic.

"They (the Cubans) are available, they are trained up, they have resources in place," said Nyka Alexander, spokeswoman in Haiti for the World Health Organisation.

"We know the terrain. We have people who speak Creole and the people know us," says Somarriba, citing the 12-year presence of a Cuban medical brigade in Haiti. Cuban medics first came to help after Hurricane George in 1998.

The United Nations' top humanitarian official, Briton Valerie Amos, said during a visit to Haiti last month that the country needed an urgent surge of foreign medics -- at least 1,000 nurses and 100 more doctors -- if it was to have any hope of curbing the death rate of the raging epidemic.

Britain's government said days later it would fund 115 doctors, 920 nurses and 740 support staff from the region to set up 12 treatment centres and 60 subsidiary units in Haiti.

FIRST TO RESPOND

U. N. officials said Cuba was the first to offer more personnel. "There is a call for everybody but the response came first from the Cubans. They are going to send 300 additional doctors," Edmond Mulet, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, told Reuters.

Somarriba said the Cuban medical reinforcements were ready in Havana and would be flown in.

He said that besides its own resources, the Cuban brigade was receiving significant contributions for its work from the Panamerican Health Organisation/World Health Organisation, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF and the World Food Programme.

Cuba also had been working since 2007 with socialist ally and oil producer Venezuela to create a health service network across Haiti. Havana already had helped Haiti after the devastating January earthquake, with a medical response reaching a peak of more than 1,700 personnel in March.

Somarriba said Cuban doctors and nurses already in Haiti had treated the first cases of the cholera outbreak on October 15 in Mirebalais in the Centre Department, raising the alarm about severe diarrhoea later confirmed to be cholera.

In centres run by the Cuban brigade, less people were dying from cholera, Somarriba said. The mortality rate there was under 1 percent, below the national average of 3.5 percent.

He quickly added: "We should avoid competition, comparison. We should all just be helping ... we'll be helping Haiti and all of the Americas because of the risk of this spreading."

They may not have the public relations punch of many international charities but the Cubans have a powerful cheerleader in former President Fidel Castro, who has recounted their exploits in statements on Cuban government websites.

"Haiti needs to be rebuilt from its foundations, with the help and cooperation of everyone," Castro said.

Ecuador, Colombia Reestablish Diplomatic Ties

2010-11-29T19:29:00.000-08:00

GEORGETOWN – Presidents Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador announced here Friday the reestablishing of full diplomatic relations between their two countries that were broken off in March 2008.

“We have taken the decision to fully reestablish diplomatic relations between Ecuador and Colombia, and to that end we will name ambassadors who will be posted, with all certainty, before Christmas,” Santos said in a joint statement with Correa.

The two leaders talked to reporters after taking part in the summit of the 12-member Union of South American Nations, or Unasur.

In that meeting they decided to renew the diplomatic ties that Ecuador broke off in March 2008 after Colombia bombed a camp of the FARC guerrilla group on Ecuadorian territory.

Killed in the bombing raid were 26 people including the No. 2 of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Raul Reyes.

“We have decided to normalize diplomatic relations,” Correa told the press. Also present were Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño and Colombian counterpart Maria Angela Holguin.

The ministers have been negotiating the renewal of full diplomatic ties for several months and took a key step recently with Holguin’s visit to Quito, during which Colombia handed over to Ecuador all the information it had requested.

The Quito government received additional classified information about the bombing of the FARC base.

Honduran Military Forces to Expel Farmers

2010-11-29T19:28:00.000-08:00

TEGUCIGALPA - Honduran armed forces begin a military campaign Saturday in the Bajo Aguan rural area to expel farmers from their lands, with the pretext of stopping alleged armed groups.

Deputy Security Minister Armando Calidonio made the announcement Friday in San Pedro Sula, and as a pretext for the operations he showed some photos of armed minors.

The El Aguan Farmers Movement (MCA) and the National People's Resistance Front (FNRP) have denied the existence of such groups and the occurrence of armed clashes. There have been murders, massacres, but farmers have been the only victims, the FNRP denounced on its website.

The military actions will continue in the area, and any person carrying a gun will be detained, Calidonio warned.

The actions are part of the second phase of a plan that includes the eviction of farms in dispute, said Rene Maradiaga Panchame, the second director of the National Police.

The World Rainforest Movement (WRM) yesterday joined the denunciation by the regional office of the International Union of Food Workers of the assassination of Honduran farmers.

The WRM asked all the mass media in Honduras and the rest of Latin America to publish the regional office's denunciation, in which it demands the end of the killings of farmers and that the murderers be punished.

Venezuelan Parliament Holds Special Session

2010-11-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

By James Suggett

The Venezuelan government held a special event in the National Assembly on Tuesday to express its opposition to a recent meeting held in the U.S. Congress between U.S. legislators and members of Latin America's right-wing elite.

The November 17th meeting in question was titled "Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights and Inter-American Security" and was held at the U.S. Congressional Visitors Center in Washington.

The agenda included a discussion of whether Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua "constitute a threat to U.S. interests and inter-American security," and whether the U.S. is "equipped to respond." Venezuela's "21st Century Socialism" and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a fair trade bloc based on solidarity and social development, were highlighted as examples of the "erosion of democracy" in the region.

In Tuesday's event in Caracas, which was titled an "Act in Defense of National Sovereignty," President Hugo Chavez called the Washington meeting an act of imperialist aggression against Venezuela. "We are here to defend our homeland as humans. We are defending our right to follow our own path," Chavez told the National Assembly.

The president's Council of Ministers, the heads of all five branches of the government, legislators, the high military command, and several state and local officials, ambassadors, and community representatives attended Tuesday's event.

U.S.-Venezuelan lawyer and investigative journalist Eva Golinger also spoke about the U.S. government's funneling of millions of dollars to "psychological operations," or propaganda campaigns to slander governments with policies that are not in line with U.S. interests.

Golinger said these campaigns are designed primarily by the Pentagon and the State Department with the collaboration of local media outlets, journalists, and other parties. According to Golinger, in 2011 the Pentagon slotted U.S.$384.8 million for psychological operations through the U.S. Southern Command and the Congress approved U.S.$768.8 million for the State Department to create a special propaganda division. Funds are also channeled through the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Organization for International Development (USAID), reported Golinger.

President Chavez called on the National Assembly to pass a law to stop this money from reaching Venezuelan civil society groups. "It is beyond belief, even though we have our constitution, that we allow political parties, non-governmental organizations, and counter-revolutionary individuals to continue to be financed with millions from the [United States] empire and that they make use of it with full freedom to violate and destabilize," said Chavez.

"I am sure that the Venezuelan government I head -- under the constitution -- is not going to continue allowing this," he said. "A very severe law should be passed to impede Yankee financing."

Legislator Saúl Ortega, from the Foreign Relations Committee of the National Assembly, said on Tuesday that two law proposals are already in the works with the aim of "putting controls on these non-governmental organizations that receive financing for destabilizing actions," and for the "control of foreign agents."

Several Venezuelan opposition groups including Súmate, which has acknowledged receiving NED funding, are suspected of involvement in subversive actions, including demonstrations that culminated in the military coup d'état that temporarily ousted Chavez from power in April 2002.

Some domestic organizations that are not explicitly aligned with any political party or movement have expressed concern that if a new law bans all foreign funding without distinguishing the origin or the purpose of the funds, groups providing social services and engaging in human rights advocacy could have their efforts weakened.

Another point of discussion during Tuesday's special session was Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of opposition television station Globovision that aided the April 2002 coup d'état by broadcasting manipulated images and suppressing news before, during and after the coup events.

Zuloaga, who is wanted in Venezuela for money laundering and hoarding of marketable vehicles at his private residence, attended the Washington meeting. He told reporters outside the U.S. Congressional Visitors Center that Venezuela is a "threat to the United States."

Chavez referred to Zuloaga during Tuesday's event, saying, "Venezuela's bourgeoisie has to learn that it won't just get away with having one of its representatives go off to the U.S. Congress to attack Venezuela, while keeping a TV station here."

Also during the event, Chavez told the National Assembly that in order to "defeat the imperial threat," it must "radicalize the revolution" by embracing "extreme left" policies in order to counter the "extreme right" policies of legislators who were newly elected in September and will be sworn in early next year.

National Assembly President Cilia Flores called on Venezuelans to organize similar events around the country to express opposition to U.S. interference in Venezuelan affairs.

In a related event this week, President Chavez said he would welcome U.S. President Barack Obama to Caracas for a diplomatic visit. "We would sit, talk, and eat arepas [a Venezuelan staple food]; I would take you to the streets of Caracas," he said. "I would give you my hand one more time and suggest that you honor your promises to your people," said Chavez.

He also urged Obama to "ignore the stereotype. Don't pay attention to the lie-filled reports that say we are a threat."

In April 2009, during Obama's first trip to Latin America as president, Chavez gave him Eduardo Galeano's book, Open Veins of Latin America, and the two countries expressed their willingness to revamp previously severed diplomatic relations. But relations currently remain stalled, as Venezuela has rejected Washington's ambassador nominee Larry Palmer.

Palmer heads the U.S. government-funded Inter-American Foundation, which specializes in channeling money to non-governmental organizations. He also made controversial remarks in a Senate hearing earlier this year in which he alluded to Venezuela's alleged ties to armed insurgent groups that the U.S. deems "terrorists," prompting the nominee's rejection by Venezuelan authorities.

Media Distortions Legitimize Honduras Regime

2010-11-25T10:17:00.000-08:00

by: Michael Corcoran, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

Honduras held elections on November 29, 2009, that were deemed illegitimate by most of the international community and resulted in the presidency of Porfirio Lobo, a conservative politician and agricultural landowner. [I] The election occurred just months after the illegal coup overthrowing President Manuel Zelaya and, as a result of a significant boycott, only included candidates who supported the coup. [II]

At the time of the elections, the US mainstream media had an atrocious record of reporting on the coup itself, as well as on the elections that followed, helping to legitimize a startling attack on Honduran democracy. [III]Despite the illegal nature of the coup and numerous accounts of human rights abuses against supporters of Manuel Zelaya - including violence against protesters, mass arrests and crackdowns on press freedom - the US media portrayed the events in a way that painted Zelaya as a villainous follower of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and legitimized those who ousted him, in part by ignoring their many crimes and abuses. [IV]

Unfortunately, in the year that has followed these two troubling events, little has changed: the Lobo regime has continued the human rights abuses that have plagued the country for more than a year, while the media has downplayed, distorted or ignored the crimes of his regime. The press also continues to amplify calls for the international acceptance of the new leadership, despite continuing reports of abuse. As a result, the US media remains an active participant in an attack on Honduran democracy that has continued for almost a year and a half.

Ignoring the Documentary Record

Since the June 2009 coup and throughout Lobo's tenure, widespread human rights abuses such as the targeted killings of journalists, the removal of opposition judges, mass arrests, beatings and torture have been thoroughly documented by human rights organizations. Amnesty International's finding indicated the extent and brutality of abuses against opposition forces in the country:

"Hundreds of people opposed to the coup were beaten and detained by the security forces as protests erupted during the following months [after the coup]. More than 10 people were reportedly killed during the unrest. The police and military also widely misused tear gas and other crowd control equipment. Human rights activists, opposition leaders and judges suffered threats and intimidation, media outlets closed and journalists were censored. There were also reports of security force personnel committing acts of sexual violence against women and girls. Judges viewed as critical of the coup suffered a series of arbitrary transferrals and unfair disciplinary proceedings. Members of the organization Judges for Democracy, which promotes principles of fairness and transparency, formed the vast majority of those targeted." [V]

"President Lobo has publicly committed to human rights, but has failed to take action to protect them, which is unacceptable. He needs to show he is serious about ending the climate of repression and insecurity in Honduras - otherwise the future stability of the country will remain in jeopardy," said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International's Americas deputy director, in a statement released in June 2010. [VI]

These serious accusations have been largely ignored by the United States mainstream press, leaving the American public in the dark about the true color of a regime that now has the support of US diplomats. Amnesty International released three reports about various abuses to the public and to journalists between August 2009 and June 2010, yet none received any notable mainstream media attention in the United States. [VII] One such report, written by a delegation sent to the country, even gave chilling firsthand testimony from those who were abused; nonetheless, the US press still did not take notice. "We were demonstrating peacefully. Suddenly, the police came towards us, and I started running," said a 52-year-old teacher named "Fernando," who was quoted in an August 2009 report. "They grabbed me and shouted 'Why do you [all] support Zelaya's government? Whether it's by choice or by force, you have to be with this government.' They beat me. I have not yet been informed as to why I am here detained."[VIII]

Human Rights Watch, the largest human rights organization based in the United States, has released 20 publications — a variety of reports, press releases and statements — documenting a wide range of abuses in Honduras between the date of the coup and September 10, 2010. [IX]

Amazingly, elite national publications in the United States have paid no attention to these reports. The New York Times has published 53 articles about Honduras since the coup in mid-2009, and Human Rights Watch was only mentioned in one of them — a September 29, 2009 article about two media stations being closed down. In the entire year since Lobo was elected, the Times has not issued an article about a single one of the 20 Human Rights Watch publications about abuses by the regime.[X] Amnesty International, likewise, has only been written about once in the Times, where it was briefly mentioned in a September 3, 2009 article. [XI]

The reason for ignoring the reports cannot possibly be because the Times editors consider Human Rights Watch reports about Latin American leaders to lack news value. When Human Rights Watch issued a report about Venezuela president Hugo Chavez – who, unlike Lobo, is opposed to the favored neoliberal economic policies of the US government - the Times dutifully published a full article about the report, titled "Report Accuses Chavez of Abusing Rights." [XII]

But the Times, it seems, is rather selective when it comes to reporting on the alleged abuses of world leaders - ignoring them when they are done by allies who share the economic worldview of the United States, and amplifying accusations against those who oppose the Washington Consensus. In fact, even when the Times did manage to mention the accusations against Lobo, they did so in the softest possible terms. Since Lobo's presidency began, the Times has mentioned human rights abuses in Honduras twice on their news pages. Once was in a June 6 article titled, "Latin America Still Divided Over a Coup in Honduras."[XIII] The only direct mention of human rights abuses was buried 20 paragraphs deep into a 25-paragraph story and merely said, "Human rights groups complain of arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings of government opponents over the past year. And seven journalists have been killed in the country in recent months, although it has not yet been determined how many of those attacks have political links." It is interesting that the Times chose to emphasize how politically divided the nation is without mentioning the harrowing data about post-coup Honduras - such as the more than 600 cases of cruel and unusual punishment, at least 23 politically motivated killings and the removal of judges critical of the coup - all of which could help provide readers important context to political realities in the country. [XIV]

The other mention was on July 27, 2010, when the Times covered a report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which expressed concern over journalists' deaths. But this report also failed to document the extent of the ongoing troubles in Honduras.[XV] Tellingly, in the online version of the article, the term "human rights violations" was hyperlinked to a previous Times article. The link takes readers to a nine-month-old article about abuses following the coup that took place before Lobo's presidency, as if to underscore how little attention the Paper of Record has paid to Lobo's abuses in the last year. [XVI]

The Washington Post likewise painted the massive violence, not as an egregious abuse of power, but rather as an example of "how difficult it is to bridge regional divisions." [XVII]

The Times' editorial page has failed to publish any editorials or op-eds condemning the human rights abuses, (as they do when Iran or Venezuela are accused of abuses), though opponents of Zelaya were given ample space in op-ed pages when the political crisis first began. [XVIII]

Pushing for International Legitimacy

While critics of the Lobo regime have been largely ignored by the media, those who wish to see the regime granted international legitimacy have been given a considerable platform in the US press. The Washington Post, for example, quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the Organization of American States (OAS) to recognize the new regime in Honduras, citing "strong and consistent commitment to democratic governance and constitutional order," from President Lobo. [XIX] The Post article, amazingly, did not bother to mention Lobo's human rights record at all, and only acknowledged that within the OAS "a majority of ministers opposed even adding the question of Honduras to the agenda." Readers were left to figure out for themselves why there was opposition to accepting Honduras into the OAS.

In fact, when the Unites States publicly came out in favor of the return of Honduras to the OAS, the mainstream media gave the development a massive degree of coverage. In addition to the Post, Reuters, the Miami Herald, The New York Times and CNN all covered US expressions of support for the new Honduran government. [XX] Readers in the U.S. were able to read plenty of praise and support for Lobo's government, but almost no substantial critiques.

The push to recognize the fraudulent regime was not surprising to those who followed the US media coverage of the November 2009 elections, which, despite voting irregularities, reports of voter intimidation and a lack of any monitoring or recognition by the bulk of the international community, were portrayed as a triumph for democracy in the country.

Despite numerous reports of widespread abuses on election day, The Washington Post called the election "mostly peaceful." [XXI] Bloomberg reported that Lobo was "elected president in a peaceful vote," to "overcome a five-month political crisis" and quoted political analyst Heather Berkman: "Honduras is definitely getting toward the end of the crisis." [XXII]The New York Times said in an editorial that there was "wide agreement" that the election "was clean and fair," despite having declared weeks earlier that "an election run by the coup plotters won't be credible to Hondurans - and it shouldn't be to anyone else." [XXIII]

This glowing portrayal of events, propagated by virtually all mainstream US media outlets, conflicted dramatically with reality. Amnesty International released several reports of voter intimidation and other problems during the elections. Almost every foreign government and election-monitoring agency in the world refused to accept the results of the election.[XXIV] Many media also misreported the turnout figures, relying on the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal's grossly exaggerated numbers of about 61 percent when in fact turnout was actually below 50 percent.[XXV] But by the time the truth came out, these false numbers had already been used to justify recognition of the sham elections by the United States and the US media. The "turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election," the US State Department said in a statement. "This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country."[XXVI]

In fact, US media coverage has served to help legitimize the plotters and beneficiaries of the 2009 coup from the very start. When Zelaya was forced out of office, the US media painted him as a "a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela," who was ousted by the US-backed Honduran military, which was "acting to defend the law" after "months of tensions over [Zelaya's] efforts to lift presidential term limits" - efforts that "critics said [were] part of an illegal attempt by Mr. Zelaya to defy the constitution's limit of a single four-year term for the president."[XXVII] Opinion writers asked, "Who Cares About Zelaya?" who was merely a "a typical Honduran politician" with a "lust for power," whose "goal seemed to be a change from our democratic system into a kind of 21st-century socialism … a Hugo Chavez-type of government."[XXVIII]

Erasing the Coup

Since the toppling of Zelaya and now throughout Lobo's presidency, the US media has provided a narrative that has helped enable the democratic crisis in Honduras. An article in Reuters from earlier this year recently observed, quite accurately, that "Honduras is trying to erase memories of the coup," citing how "a Supreme Court judge cleared military leaders of any wrongdoing … after prosecutors accused them of abuse of power for rousting Zelaya from his bed at gunpoint." [XXIX]

Indeed, if the illegitimate Honduran government is trying to erase memories of the illegal coup and further tighten its control over the nation, it has no stronger ally than the US media.

REFERENCES:

[I] "Nations Divided on Recognizing Honduran Elections," CNN.com, November 30, 2009; "Carter Center Statement on the Honduran Elections" The Carter Center, November 25, 2009.

[II] "Obama says coup in Honduras is illegal," Reuters, June 29, 2009.

[III] Michael Corcoran. "A Tale of Two Elections: Iran and Honduras," NACLA Report on the Americas 43, no. 1 (March/April 2010).

[IV] Ibid

[V] "New Honduras President must order investigation into rights abuses," Amnesty International. January 26, 2010.

[VI] Ibid

[VII] Data is from a search on AmnestyInternational.org

[VIII] "Honduras: Photos and testimony of protestors shows extent of police violence," Amnesty International, August 19, 2010.

[IX] Data is from a search of HRW.org

[X] Data is from a Lexis-Nexis search

[XI] Ibid

[XII] Simon Romero. "Report Accuses Chavez of Abusing Rights," The New York Times, September 18, 2010.

[XIII] Marc Lacey. "Latin America Still Divided Over a Coup in Honduras," The New York Times, June 6 2010.

[XIV] Data on cruel and unusual punishment is from the Center for Prevention and Treatment of Torture, as cited by Adrienne Pine. "Honduras: 'Reconciliation' vs. Reality," NACLA Report on the Americas 43, no. 1 (March/April 2010).

[XV] Elizabeth Kaplan, "Honduras Faces Criticism Over Journalist Killings After a Coup," The New York Times, July 27, 2010.

[XVI] Article links to Elizabeth Kaplan, "Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse," The New York Times, October 5, 2010.

[XVII] Glenn Kessler. "Clinton Urges OAS to Let Honduras Rejoin," The Washington Post, June 7, 2010.

[XVIII] For examples of anti-Zelaya op-eds see: Roger Marin Neda, "Who Cares About Zelaya?," The New York Times, July 7, 2009.

[XIX] As quoted in: Glenn Kessler. "Clinton Urges OAS to Let Honduras Rejoin," The Washington Post, June 7, 2010.

[XX] "U.S. says time for OAS to readmit Honduras," Reuters, May 6, 2010, Mark Landler; "Clinton pleads case for Honduras," The New York Times. June 7, 2010, Jim Wyss; "OAS inches toward readmitting Honduras," Miami Herald, June 9, 2010; "Latin leaders seek unity in regional summit," CNN World. February 22, 2010.

[XXI] Mary Beth Sheridan, "Hondurans Go to Polls, Hoping to End Crisis," The Washington Post, November 30, 2009.

[XXII] Helen Murphy and Eric Sabo, "Lobo Wins Honduran Presidency After Peaceful Vote," Bloomberg.com, November 30, 2009.

[XXIII] "The Honduran Conundrum," The New York Times (editorial), December 5, 2009; "Coup, Uninterrupted," The New York Times (editorial), November 7, 2009.

[XXIV] For abuses in election see: "Independent Investigation Needed Into Honduras Human Rights Abuses," Amnesty International, December 3, 2009; for lack of acceptance from international agencies see: Alyssa Figueroa "Honduras Down the Memory Hole," Extra!, August 2010.

[XXV] Mariano Castillo, "Honduran Election Turnout Lower Than First Estimated," CNN.com, December 22, 2009.

[XXVI] Ian Kelly, "Honduran Election," U.S. Department of State, November 29, 2009.

[XXVII] Elizabeth Malkin, "Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup," The New York Times, June 29, 2009.

[XXVIII] Roger Marin Neda, "Who Cares About Zelaya?" The New York Times, July 7, 2009.

[XXIX] Sean Mattson and Gustavo Palencia, "Honduran Zelaya flies into exile, ending crisis," Reuters. January 27, 2010.

The Snakes Sleep: Attacks against the Media and Impunity in Honduras

2010-11-25T10:12:00.000-08:00

Written by Sandra Cuffe

In Honduras, there is a particular quote by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano that has been adopted into the country's rich lexicon of idioms: “Justice is like snakes. They only bite the barefoot.”

Of the thousands of human rights violations committed in Honduras since the coup in June 2009, in most cases the only serious investigations have been carried out by the grassroots organizations involved with the Human Rights Platform and the resistance movement. Very few charges have been laid against the human rights violators who ordered and carried out illegal detentions, kidnappings, beatings, torture, rape, and extrajudicial executions.

At the international level, however, there have recently been positive signals that spark the hope that justice may one day be served. Last week, the International Criminal Court announced that preliminary investigations are underway to determine whether or not the Court has jurisdiction over a case related to Honduras. Essentially, the Court is investigating whether or not war crimes and/or crimes against humanity have been committed in Honduras since the coup on June 28, 2009.

Also earlier this month, Honduras faced its Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations, a process that each UN member State undergoes every four years. Tellingly, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia did not attend because they do not recognize the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who was elected President in November 2009 in highly controversial elections that many contend were simply the prolongation of the illegitimate rule of the civic and military authorities that coordinated the overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, El Salvador and Ecuador explicitly clarified that they do not recognize the government of Honduras, but intervened in the Review process nonetheless in order to support the human rights of the Honduran people.

At the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, several concerns were voiced about the impunity surrounding human rights violations in general, and the murder of journalists in particular. Nine journalists have been murdered in Honduras in 2010 to date. According to the “Death Watch” compiled by the International Press Institute (IPI), Honduras is now the second most dangerous country for journalists, second only to Mexico. Prior to 2010, the countries with the most murders of journalists were mainly countries officially deemed to be in conflict, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Somalia. When the Honduran population of less than eight million is taken into account, the statistics are exponentially more serious.

According to the IPI's research, from 1997 when the Institute started the “Death Watch” until the coup, only seven journalists were killed. At the Universal Periodic Review, UN member States demanded investigations and justice in the cases of the nine journalists killed in 2010 alone. While the final report will not be adopted until the Human Rights Council meets again to discuss the case in March 2011, the Honduran government stated its acceptance of the 129 recommendations during the Review process earlier this month. In the case of the journalists, however, the promise to investigate and to prosecute those responsible did not come without a rebuttal.

“In none of the cases investigated have the victims or their families alleged political motivations, nor have the investigations turned up evidence that such a pattern exists,” said Honduran Vice President Maria Antoineta Guillen de Bogran during the Review.

Earlier this year, in an interview with the Tribuna newspaper on May 3rd, Honduran Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez went even further, stating: “I guarantee that in all of the cases [of the journalists' murders], there is no connection to indicate that it is due to their work as journalists. That is to say that there is no person or people trying to silence journalists; it is simply that, just as other people, after their work as reporters, journalists spend their time on their own personal situations.”

Of course, as murdered journalists themselves, Gabriel Fino Noriega, Joseph Hernandez Ochoa, David Meza Montesinos, Nahum Palacios, Jose Bayardo Mayrena, Manuel Juarez, Jorge Alberto Orellana, Luis Arturo Mondragon, and Israel Zelaya Diaz are not able to contest the statements by Vice President Guillen and Security Minister Alvarez. In most cases, however, journalists who have been threatened, kidnapped, beaten, and tortured have demonstrated the clear connection between their work as critical journalists supporting or reporting on the resistance movement and the human rights violations they have endured.

In the case of direct attacks against media outlets, the evidence is clear. Most of the violent assaults against radio stations and the confiscation of equipment took place either on June 28th, 2009, the morning of the coup, or three months later, on September 28th, 2009, after a specific executive decree including more curfews and martial law also addressed media outlets. The decree established a State of Emergency and restricted several basic rights and freedoms, including the freedom of expression, giving authorities the green light to “halt the coverage or discussion through any media, be it verbal or printed, of demonstrations that threaten peace and public order” or that compromised the “dignity” of government authorities or decisions.

“The decree [defined] the framework of a military dictatorship,” asserted well-known radio journalist Felix Molina.

"Honduras had not seen - not even during the dirty war of the 1980s, when the military governed with a civilian facade - something like what we saw the morning of June 28th 2009, which was repeated the morning of September 28th 2009, exactly three months later. The arrival in person of soldiers to a media outlet. Confiscation. Well, on June 28th, there was no confiscation of equipment, but in September, Channel 36's equipment was destroyed and confiscated and completely confiscated from Radio Globo," explained Molina after the military assault on Radio Globo and Cholusat Sur, the only radio and television stations, respectively, with nation-wide coverage to clearly identify with the resistance movement against the coup.

"In the 24 hours after the publication of the decree in the official newspaper, the army invoked it to take away equipment and take two media outlets off the air... And we could have expected anything to happen, but as a journalist, I would have never expected that a media outlet be physically dismantled by the army, and yet that is what we saw at dawn on September 28th," said Molina.

On June 28th, in the hours after the Honduran army sprayed the house of elected President Zelaya with bullets and forced him onto a flight to Costa Rica, several radio stations around the country reporting the urgent news were targeted by the armed forces and forced off the air. That same morning, a nation-wide consultation was to have taken place for people to express their support or opposition for a fourth ballot box in the 2010 elections concerning a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution. The initiative was supported and coordinated both by Zelaya and much of the Honduran social movement. Many of the media outlets that would later support the coup either simply did not report anything that morning, or reported the official version of events involving Zelaya's resignation and voluntary departure. Electrical power blackouts also occurred in much of the country.

One of the radio stations attacked and forced to stop broadcasting on June 28th 2009 was Radio Juticalpa, located in the state of Olancho, home to both ousted President Zelaya and current controversial President Lobo. When station director Martha Elena Rubi arrived before dawn, she found the windows and walls of the studio shot up from outside. The shells inside the studio were all from M-16s, the assault rifles assigned to the Honduran army. Witnesses also identified the armed forces as responsible for the violent attack, but Rubi went ahead and broadcast the news of the coup.

“We thought that this time, if we informed the people of what was really going on, we would help neutralize it. So, knowing that I was going to do this work, what they did was that when I got here, at about five thirty or five o'clock in the morning, [they thought that] I would realize that they had shot up the station and that I would be afraid and not even go on air,” said Rubi.

“I knew they were going to come,” added Rubi, “so I had little time to tell people the truth, and for the town to realize the way in which they were trying to silence what we were, in an impartial way, saying: the truth. So I knew that I was racing against the clock and I committed to getting people to wake up to reality. About two or three hours later, they came with orders for me to shut down the station.”

There was a power blackout in Juticalpa, but Radio Juticalpa had a solar plant and therefore became the only radio station on the air in the entire region. When the heavily armed soldiers were approaching, Rubi stopped her news coverage and switched to music. However, the station was forced off the air for the rest of the day. Luckily, Rubi and her colleague Andres Molina were able to prevent the army from confiscating their equipment.

Likely due in large part to the persistence of Honduran human rights organizations and mounting international pressure, Colonel Rene Javier Palao Torres and sub-official Juan Alfredo Acosta Acosta were charged with Abuse of Authority for the assault on Radio Juticalpa and sentenced to prison in Juticalpa, Olancho. The military officials appealed the verdict, however, and the sentence was overturned earlier this month by the Court of Appeals.

The number of cases in which charges have not even been laid is unfortunately far greater than those that have at least made it to court. Flying in the face of the statements by Vice President Guillen and Security Minister Alvarez, one such case is the kidnapping and torture of 29-year-old Delmer Membreno on September 28th 2009, the same day as the military attacks on Radio Globo and Cholusat Sur. A former photographer for the Tribuna newspaper and the Spanish News Agency, the resistance-supporting El Libertador newspaper photographer Membreno was forced into a vehicle by armed men in Tegucigalpa.

"They put a balaclava over my head, they handcuffed me, and they burned my body. They hit me, and they uttered threats against the newspaper I work for: El Libertador," said Membreno, with the bruises and burn marks still visible on his face and body.

"They beat me. They burned my body with cigarettes. Here [on my arm], my face, and my chest. They ripped my shirt and left me without shoes... 'Cry, cry! Why aren't you crying, you commie?' That's what they said... They said that the director better be careful, that they were following him, and that what they had done to me was nothing in comparison to what they were going to do to him," narrated the wounded photographer.

When the torture of Membreno took place, there had already been so many cases of human rights violations against journalists and media outlets that the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) had petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for precautionary measures specifically for a long list of journalists and media outlets that had been attacked. From July 2009 on, the IACHR granted precautionary measures to a long list of journalists and media outlets; however, during two separate IACHR hearings that took place one month ago in Washington DC, evidence began to pile up that Honduras had not been carrying out the measures.

On July 24th, 2009, the IACHR granted precautionary measures to television journalist Nahun Palacios, the news director of Aguan Television on channel 5 in Tocoa, Colon, in the Aguan Valley. Palacios had immediately and publicly voiced his opposition to the coup and reported on the mobilizations against the coup and in support of the fourth ballot box and the Constituent Assembly. Only two days after the coup, on June 30th, soldiers raided Palacios' home, intimidated his family, held his children at gunpoint, and seized his vehicle and some work-related equipment.

Despite the IACHR precautionary measures granted the following month, Palacios never received any communication from the State, let alone any effective protection. Eight months later, on March 14th, 2010, 34-year-old Nahun Palacios was traveling home when his vehicle was intercepted and gunned down with AK47s, automatic weapons that are illegal but easily acquired in Honduras. Two unknown men fled the scene, leaving Palacios dead in the street, his body and vehicle riddled with dozens of bullets. Another passenger in the car was seriously injured and died later in the hospital.

As in many of the other murders of journalists this year, all of which remain unsolved, police did not carry out a proper investigation at the scene of Palacios' murder. After failing to gather sufficient evidence from the body back in March, the police exhumed Palacios' body in August, further upsetting his distraught relatives who still wait for justice eight months later, despite the State's international assurances that they are carrying out investigations and precautionary measures.

Nahun Palacios' murder in March 2010 was only one of five journalists killed that month. Due to the overwhelming impunity in the country, others have been forced to flee into exile. Many have also remained in Honduras, carrying out their vital work despite the ongoing threats and attacks.

"They can intimidate. You know, yes, of course there is fear, but I don't think that it will stop us from informing the people of the truth," said Delmer Membreno after his kidnapping and torture.

The announcement of the International Criminal Court about its preliminary investigations into possible war crimes or crimes against humanity in Honduras, as well as the ongoing pressure within the United Nations and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, would not be possible without the work of the innumerable committed Honduran journalists, media outlets, and human rights organizations from day one.

For now, back in Honduras, however, the snakes of justice are far from trying their fangs out on the high-ranking military, police and political leaders behind both the coup and outrageous human rights violations. Justice may simply be sleeping like so many court cases in the country. Or perhaps Zelaya and democracy were not the only ones forced into exile at gunpoint on June 28th, 2009.

Sandra Cuffe is a writer and activist of no fixed address. After living and working in Honduras for four years from 2003 to 2007, she returned five days after the coup, and stayed through April 2010, collaborating with COFADEH and other local organizations.

World Bank-Funded Biofuel Corporation Massacres Six Honduran Campesinos

2010-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

By Annie Bird

Approximately six months ago, campesino farmers in Trujillo, Colon organized in the Campesino Movement of the Aguan, the MCA, were awarded provisional title to a farm which neighbors their community, as part of a long standing negotiation with Dinant Corporation, a biofuel company, whose land claims are illegitimate.

Since that time, the small farmers worked the land. In recent weeks they had noticed incursions into their land by armed security forces employed by the biofuel company, Dinant.

On Monday, November 15, the farmers went to their fields but were then attacked by Dinant security. Six were killed in the massacre and two more are in critical condition.

The massacre occurred the same day that the de facto Honduran president Pepe Lobo had planned to meet with the director of the US government development fund, the Millennium Challenge, in Denver to ask for funding for so called "renewable energy" - in Honduras, principally biofuels and dams.

World Bank And Other "Development" Groups Share Responsibility for the Massacre

The "renewable energy" plan Lobo is shopping around may be the result of an Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) funded technical support grant (T-1101) to the de facto government ushered in after the June 28 military coup. In November 2009, under a coup government and amidst grave human rights violations, the World Bank's (WB) International Finance Corporation gave Dinant Corporation a $30 million loan for biofuel production, and now shares responsibility in the massacre.

Policies supposedly intended to stop climate change are in reality fueling climate change. The world must invest in a renewable way of life, not destructive "renewable energy". Scientists have analyzed that biofuel industry together with the climate change prevention mechanisms currently promoted could actually result in the destruction of half of the planets forests.

In the same way that massacres cannot be stopped when justice systems are destroyed by military coups, the destruction of our planet cannot be stopped when the systems of governance have been hijacked by corporations who can buy off, or that failing, militarily intervene in nations attempting to build just forms of governance. Human rights and the environment cannot be separated.

US Military Base Bought for Agrarian Reform And Stolen for Agribusiness

During the past decade, campesinos in Honduras have challenged a series of illegitimate land titles obtained by agro-businessmen in a massive former US military training center known as the CREM.

On this land, over 5,000 hectares, the US military trained military forces from across Central America, particularly the Contra paramilitary forces attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Once the CREM center's operations ended, the Honduran government bought the land from a US citizen through the Honduran land reform program.

However, instead of being sold to small farmers, as the government was obligated by law to do, the land was illegally divided up between several large landholders as a result of corruption and fraudulent titling processes. A coalition of land rights organizations in Honduras organized in the Campesino Movement of the Aguan, the MCA, to challenge the illegal titles. Little by little the land titles were awarded to groups of campesinos organized in the MCA.

The titling process has been slow and marked by violent attacks by the large landholders who have influence in the government, police and military forces. Among the last of the CREM lands to remain in the hands of agribusiness interests is the farm called El Tumbador, approximately 700 hectares controlled by the Dinant Corporation, property of Honduras' most powerful agro-businessman, Miguel Facusse.

A biofuel businessman with interests in several corporations, Miguel Facusse is infamous for the use of fraudulent methods, including intimidation and violence, to obtain lands throughout the country.

The World Bank Backs The Corrupt And Violent Dinant Corporation

Since the military coup in June 2009, Honduras has been ruled by illegitimate, repressive regimes.

In November 2009, the WB extended a loan of $30 million to Dinant for its biofuel production in that region, despite a widely documented history of violence and corruption by the biofuel company. The WB failed in its human rights obligations in this case and shares responsibility for this massacre.

Given the conditions in Honduras, the WB must suspend both private and public sector funding to Honduras, and freeze funding of biofuels in the region. The biofuel industry in Central and South America violently displaces small farmers and contributes to global warming.

Another multinational public fund that finances international private investment, the Interamerican Investment Corporation, has also recently funded Dinant.

"Greenwashing" And Corporate Welfare - the Hijacking of Climate Change Funds

Biofuels are one of the fastest growing industries, a sector that sees high levels of investment from venture capitalists. This massive growth has been stimulated by taxpayer dollars pouring into renewable energy through many funding agencies, but particularly the IADB, the WB, and carbon emissions trading markets.

The trade in carbon credits was created as an element of the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997. It attempts to implement a market based system to curb global warming by levying penalties against heavy polluting industries that produce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon burning energy generation plants. But those penalties can be paid off, or offset, by the purchase of carbon credits.

Carbon credits are given to industries that undertake activities that reduce emission of gases that generate climate change, and those can then be sold on the market to companies that generate global warming.

The system is riddled with problems, beginning with the fact that the big money to be made in "green" industry creates a big incentive to greenwash, to disguise polluting activities as activities that do not pollute in order to cash in on climate change funds.

This is the case with biofuels.

Biofuels Could Destroy Half the World's Forests

Even as governments pour taxpayer money into biofuels, it is being demonstrated that biofuel production contributes significantly to global warming, through the destruction of wetlands, displacement of small farmers and food production, often to cut forests, direct clear cutting of forests for biofuel production, and even cutting forests to generate wood pellets that make ethanol.

One study published in Science magazine in October 2009 analyzed regulation set up in the Kyoto Accords which promotes the use of biofuels, but finds that these measures could result in the loss of up to half of the world's forests.

As the negative impacts were beginning to be felt, though the extent is only beginning to be understood, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and others committed to market incentives for polluters, set up the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil.

This body certifies palm oil as having been 'sustainably' produced. In May 2010, WWF signed an agreement with Miguel Facusse's Dinant Corporation to begin the process of certifying Dinant palm oil. The WB, in November 2009, shortly after disbursing Dinant's loan, froze palm oil funding while it created its palm oil strategy, expected to be completed in March 2011.

US Corporations Could Make $27 Trillion Off "Lesser Developed Countries" Conversion to Biofuels

By the time these impacts were being seen, big corporations, with their lobbies, were drooling over the potential profits. The WWF is strongly committed to paying off big business to reduce emissions. A recent WWF study urges taxpayer money be poured into renewable energy in "lesser developed countries" (LDCs) in order to stimulate job growth in the United States.

Governments are committing to insuring that a certain percentage of fuel consumption be converted to biofuel consumption around the world but especially in "LDCs." This will generate a huge market for technology to convert engines and other existing infrastructure, which according to WWF could represent a $27 trillion dollar market for US corporations.

Faced with the powerful corporate lobby corrupting and pressuring governments around the globe, and sometimes promoting military interventions to back their interests, changing policies to really fight climate change as opposed to subsidizing corporations seems a quixotic dream, as was seen in the failed summit on climate change in Copenhagen last year.

At the 16th international summit on climate change in Copenhagan, nations agreed to set up an, as yet, unclear mechanism called the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which would focus on curbing deforestation. Paradoxically, incentives for forest preservation are still banned, and the potential for biofuel stimulated deforestation of half of the world's forests is still not addressed.

It is important to remember that the WWF and others who believe in and promote environmental market economics have promoted a system of biosphere privatization which allows degrading activities to be carried out by private companies that subsidize non-governmental organizations that manage the biospheres, while ignoring the rights of campesino communities and indigenous peoples.

Governments Should Invest in the Poor, Not in the Super Rich

The international community's failure to substantively address climate change is a result the unwillingness to acknowledge and name the economic and political policies and actors that are responsible for climate harm.

The "free" market cannot correct the damage it has done, further investing in the same actors and under the same policy framework that generated climate change cannot reverse it.

To reverse climate change, the wealthiest nations and people of the world must change how they live. Indigenous and campesino communities have more sustainable ways of life, have learned to live in a sustainable way with the resources they produce. But they are being displaced and massacred to usher in the concentration of land and wealth, the genocide of a sustainable way of life.

Rather than subsidizing corporate mass destruction, the nations of the world must invest in a different way of life, and hold accountable those that destroy human life and destroy our only and irreplaceable, planet.

*************
(Annie Bird is co-director of Rights Action, annie@rightsaction.org, www.rightsaction.org. Feel free to re-publish this article, citing author & source)

UN Worries Its Troops Caused Cholera in Haiti

2010-11-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Nov. 19, 2010

It began as a rumor that farmers saw waste from a U.N. peacekeeping base flow into a
river.

Within days of the talk, hundreds downstream had died from cholera. The mounting
circumstantial evidence that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti was
largely dismissed by U.N. officials.

Haitians who asked about it were called political or paranoid.

Foreigners were accused of playing "the blame game." The World Health
Organization said the question was simply "not a priority." But this week,
after anti-U.N. riots and inquiries from health experts, the top U.N. representative in
Haiti said he is taking the allegations very seriously.

Haiti: The Road to Recovery

"It is very important to know if it came from (the Nepalese base) or not, and
someday I hope we will find out," U.N. envoy Edmond Mulet told The Associated Press.
The answer would have implications for U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world, he
said. It would affect the relationship between the U.N. and Haiti: If its peacekeepers
misled, it could lose credibility for tasks such as helping oversee next week's election.
It could affect the job of U.N. humanitarian workers, who work separately from the
peacekeepers. It would help answer scientific questions: Is the source still out there?
How does this cholera strain spread? Does it pose a threat to the region, including the
southern United States? When riots broke out across northern Haiti this week, the U.N.
blamed them on politicians trying to disrupt the upcoming vote.

But observers say the U.N.'s early stance fanned the flames. "If the U.N. had said
from the beginning, 'We're going to look into this' ... I think that, in fact, would have
been the best way in reducing public anger," said Brian Concannon, director of the
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. "The way to contribute to public anger
is to lie."

Before last month, there had never been a confirmed case of cholera in Haiti, and now
there are more than 1,100 dead and experts say hundreds of thousands will ultimately fall
ill as the disease haunts Haiti for years. In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention said cholera was "extremely unlikely to occur" in Haiti.

There were no cholera bacteria there. Most foreigners were relief workers with good
sanitation who come from countries where cholera is not an issue.

Then it did happen. Even more surprisingly, it did not first appear in a major port, an
earthquake tent camp or an area where foreigners are concentrated, but instead along the
rural Artibonite River. Speculation keeps returning to that river and a base home to 454
U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal. They are perched on a babbling waterway called the Boukan
Kanni, part of the Meille River that feeds into the Artibonite.

People living nearby have long complained about the stink in the back of the base and
sewage in the river. Before the outbreak began they had stopped drinking from that
section of the river, depending instead on a source farther up the mountain. The latest
Nepalese deployment came in October, after a summer of cholera outbreaks in Nepal.

The changeover at the base, which guards the area south of the central plateau town of
Mirebalais, was done in three shifts on Oct. 9, 12 and 16.

The U.N. says none of the peacekeepers showed symptoms of the disease. But 75 percent of
people infected with cholera never show symptoms but can still pass on the disease for
two weeks - especially in countries like Nepal where people have developed immunity. The
CDC has said the strain of cholera in Haiti matches one found most prevalently in South
Asia. "It very much likely did come either with peacekeepers or other relief
personnel," said John Mekalanos, Harvard University microbiology chair. "I
don't see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably
accidental introduction of the organism occurred."

Haiti runs on rumors, like a 10 million-player game of broken telephone.

Last year it was the local woman said to have given birth to a fish. This year it was
cholera - all too true, even if the news came from the same places: in a group taxi, from
a cousin, from the guy on the next farm over.

On Oct. 20, the news crackled over Haitian radio: 19 people had died after fever,
vomiting and severe diarrhea at a hospital in St. Marc near the mouth of the Artibonite
River. Most were children.

A day later, the disease was confirmed to be cholera. Tele-djol - "the mouth
channel" - lit up. Some said helicopters had dropped a black powder in the river, or
that they heard poison was poured into a dam in the Dominican Republic. Others said the
epidemic was linked to the Nepalese base. The rumors were easy to ignore. Mulet said the
U.N. did not address them right away because it did not know the situation would turn
into a crisis. "It was such a minor thing, like we have every day," Mulet said.
"We didn't know this was going to be an epidemic." But the rumors got stronger
in the mouths of politicians.

Even the health minister, whose government depends on the U.N. for protection, told the
nation it was suffering from an "imported disease." On Oct. 26, U.N. spokesman
Vincenzo Pugliese put out a short statement saying that the base's septic tanks are built
to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, that the waste is dumped 820 feet (250
meters) from the river, and that the U.N. unit for environmental compliance periodically
checks waste management.

Sanitation at the base is handled by a private company, Sanco Enterprises SA, which won
the contract over the summer by underbidding a rival.

The U.N. said the septic tanks were to be emptied once a week. But when the AP visited on
Oct. 27, a tank was clearly overflowing. The back of the base smelled like a toilet had
exploded. Reeking, dark liquid flowed out of a broken pipe, toward the river, from next
to what the soldiers said were latrines.

U.N. military police were taking samples in clear jars with sky-blue U.N. lids, clearly
horrified.

At the shovel-dug waste pits across the street sat yellow-brown pools of feces where
ducks and pigs swam in the overflow. The path to the river ran straight downhill.

The U.N. acknowledged the black fluid was overflow from the base, but said it contained
kitchen and shower waste, not excrement.
The U.N. said it is up to the private contractor and local mayor to ensure its dump sites
are safe.

Sanco Vice President Marguerite Jean-Louis said it is up to the mayor and the U.N.
Mirebalais Mayor Laguerre Lochard,
who is running for Senate on Sunday, said he complained several times to the U.N. that
the site was not safe but never received a response.

Jean-Louis said her company emptied the septic tanks
on Oct. 11, after the first shift of Nepalese troops arrived, and did not return again
until after the outbreak began.

At some point in mid-October, neighbors said a new Sanco driver they did not recognize
came one day and dumped outside of the usual pits.

Sanco returned to the base after the AP had been there for hours. There was more waste
than usual, Jean-Louis said, possibly because the soldiers overlapped during their
rotations.

Following protests at the base days later, the U.N. opened the compound to the AP. The
Nepalese soldiers acknowledged, after repeated questions and revised statements, that the
base had undergone an extensive clean-up and that they had replaced the broken pipe.

Aboveground pipes from uphill latrines ran over a drainage canal to the river. The U.N.
spokesman acknowledged what looked like human waste at the bottom. The U.N. is now
reviewing all sanitation systems at its military, police and civilian installations,
officials told the AP this week. The U.N. said none of the Nepalese soldiers had shown
signs of cholera, which some news outlets misreported as saying the soldiers had
specifically tested negative for it. Pugliese confirmed on Oct. 30 that they had not been
tested for the disease. The U.N. also tested environmental samples the soldiers took from
the base. It says they came out negative at an independent laboratory in Santo Domingo.
But the Santo Domingo lab, Cedimat, has been under contract to MINUSTAH, the U.N.
mission's name in French, since 2004, said Dr. Maximo Rodriguez, the doctor whose name
appears on the tests.

Rodriguez is a general medicine doctor whose specialty is treating obesity. Cedimat is a
patient-treatment facility.

In fact, the test results were written on forms meant for people: The results provided to
the AP by the U.N. had the "patient's" name listed as "Minustha Minustha
(sic)" - age 40, male.

Rodriguez said "any well-equipped laboratory" can do tests for cholera.

But epidemiologists say examining environmental samples for cholera takes extra
expertise, because the disease can be hard to isolate.

"A positive test is informative, a negative test doesn't really prove
anything," said Dr. Arthur Reingold, chairman of Global Public Health and Infectious
Diseases at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health.

He is an adviser to the World Health Organization and a former CDC epidemiologist.

The idea that cholera was imported to Haiti by the U.N. carries unique implications.

For decades, and especially since the Jan. 12 earthquake, Haiti has depended on foreign
governments,
aid groups and the U.N. for everything from rebuilding to basic services. The U.N. has
had five peacekeeping missions in Haiti since 1993, the current one arriving six years
ago. Some Haitians see the peacekeepers as the only hope for security in a nation where
towns are ruled by drug lords and coups d'etat are more common than elections. Others
resent heavily armed foreign armies on their soil and see the soldiers as a threat to
national sovereignty and pride. The peacekeepers have saved lives in floods and defeated
kidnapping gangs.

They have also killed people in protests and accidents and had an entire unit dismissed
for paying for sex, many with underage Haitian girls.

Earlier this month, Dr. Paul Farmer, who founded the medical aid group Partners in Health
and is U.N. deputy special envoy for Haiti, called for an aggressive investigation into
the source of the cholera, saying the refusal to look into the matter publicly was
"politics to me, not science."

The CDC acknowledges politics played a role in how the investigation unfolded.
"We're going to be really cautious about the Nepal thing because it's a politically
sensitive issue for our partners in Haiti," said CDC commander Dr. Scott Dowell. The
CDC agrees that the movement of pathogens from one part of the world to another is an
important public health issue. Its scientists are working on samples of bacteria from 13
infected Haitians to sequence the cholera strain's genome, the results of which will be
posted on a public database.

But the U.S. government agency has several caveats. First, it has not taken environmental
samples or tested the Nepalese soldiers. Second, it will not go public with its analysis
until all its studies are complete. And third, it may not get enough information to say
exactly how cholera got into the country. "The bottom line is we may never
know," Dowell said. The WHO has repeatedly said the same. "At some time we will
do further investigation, but it's not a priority right now," WHO spokeswoman Fadela
Chaib said this week. But Mulet now says Farmer was right all along, and that he is
consulting with experts, including a French epidemiologist who met with him this week to
discuss how to investigate the Nepalese base. "We agree with him there has to be a
thorough investigation of how it came, how it happened and how it spread. ... There's no
differences there with Dr. Paul Farmer at all." As recently as Nov. 10, the
mission's spokesman told Haitian reporters that the U.N. was not undertaking any other
investigations because the concerns were not "well-founded." The head of the
mission said that is not the case today. "One thing I can assure you: There has been
no cover up - there has been no cover up from our side - and we have done everything we
can to investigate," Mulet said. "Eventually we will find out what happened and
how it happened."

US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries

2010-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

By EVA GOLINGER, November 19th 2010

Members of the extreme Latin American rightwing, many of whom have participated in coups d’état and acts of destabilization and terrorism, held a meeting last Wednesday in Washington with high-level representatives of the US Congress. The event is evidence of an escalation in US aggression toward the region.

The new conference room in the US Congressional Visitors Center hosted a meeting titled “Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights, and Inter-American Security,” last Wednesday, November 17.

The subjects discussed during this spectacle hosted by the US Congress evidence an escalation in aggression against countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – all members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) – and included “debates” centered around three primary questions:

Are democracy and human rights in danger under the “21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia?
Does the ALBA Alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and inter-American security?
Is current US policy toward the region equipped to respond to the erosion of democracy and the pernicious influence of such hostile actors as Iran, foreign and domestic terrorist groups, and narcotics traffickers?
The event was sponsored by the US Congress and counted on the participation of those who head the House Foreign Affairs Committees, including Elliot Engel, New York democrat and current chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Connie Mack, Florida republican and incoming chairman of the same committee; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida republican and soon to be chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Ron Klein, Florida democrat and member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

The presence of democrats as well as republicans at this event opposing ALBA nations is clear evidence that Washington’s aggressive policies towards Latin America are bipartisan and official state policy of the United States government.

Members of the Latin American extreme rightwing participated in Wednesday’s event, alongside these congressional representatives, as “experts” on what they consider to be a “threat” to their regional influence and power.

From Venezuela, Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Venezuela’s Fox News affiliate, Globovision, a rabid anti-Chavez television station, gave a speech calling on Washington to respond to the “threat” posed against US interests by the government of Hugo Chavez. Zuloaga fled justice earlier this year after he was indicted by a Venezuelan court for money laundering, fraud, and illegal speculation of consumer goods. He has since requested refuge in the US and has stated he will not return to Venezuela to face the charges against him.

From Bolivia, members of the separatist terrorist groups in Santa Cruz, such as Luis Nuñez, the president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and Javier El-Hage, representing the nefarious Human Rights Foundation, Bolivia Chapter, participated in the event, calling for a more strident policy against the government of Evo Morales. Despite its noble name, The Human Rights Foundation is an organization created by a Venezuelan anti-Chavez activist, Thor Halvorssen, which is dedicated to attacking the government of Hugo Chávez and has called for US military intervention in Venezuela.

Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), an entity run by media owners from Latin America, also participated in the event, reinforcing ties between mass media and right-wing politics in the region. Other notable participants included former USAID director for Latin America, Jose Cardenas; ex-US Drug Czar, John Walters; Joel Hirst from the powerful Council on Foreign Relations, a “shadow” government in Washington; Otto Reich, former US Ambassador to Venezuela (who freed terrorist Orlando Bosch from a Venezuelan prison cell in 1989) and ex-Sub-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs during the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela; and Roger Noriega, also a former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs under the George W. Bush government and a former US Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).

All of these people have a history of hostility and aggression against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and have promoted, supported, and financed coups d’etats in Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras and Ecuador over the past decade, as well as perpetual attempts to undermine peace and stability in Cuba.

Representatives from neocon parties and organizations in Ecuador were also present, such as rightwing attorney Edgar Teran, and congressional representative Enrique Herreria. Former president and coup leader Lucio Guitierrez, implicated in last month’s attempt to overthrow and assassinate Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, was a star guest at Wednesday’s political gala. Guitierrez also called on US officials to take a firmer stance against the “threat of socialism of the 21st Century in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.”

Additional sponsors of this hostile event included FUNDAPREFC, a Venezuelan organization based in Miami, created by a self-exiled Venezuelan lawyer, Yuri Lopez Perez, who defends the Caracas police commissioners sentenced for multiple homicides that occurred during the April 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela.

Several conservative think tanks from Washington and Miami also were present at the gathering.

The InterAmerican Institute for Democracy, founded in Miami by Argentine Guillermo Lousteau Heguy, whose board members include the Cuban terrorists Carlos Alberto Montaner and Armando Valladares, was another sponsor. Curiously, this Institute held an event titled “Breakfast with Lucio Guitierrez” on September 23, 2010, just one week before the attempted coup d’etat against President Rafael Correa in Ecuador that was led by Guitierrez himself.

Other hosts included US organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Center for Security Policy and the Hudson Institute; four right-wing “think tanks” which have dedicated themselves to attacking Venezuela during most recent years, publishing “reports” on the alleged “threats” from the Hugo Chevez government, and channeling millions of dollars to destabilizing sectors within the Venezuelan opposition.

At the conclusion of Wednesday’s meeting, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen declared that Washington “should work closer with regional allies to confront the danger against democracy in Venezuela” and other countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador. Representative Connie Mack went further in his call to action, remarking, “Now that republicans have a majority in Congress…we should confront Hugo Chavez directly.”

This event is proof that following the US legislative elections of November 2, during which reactionary republicans obtained a resounding congressional majority, Washington’s policies toward Latin America will be far more aggressive and dangerous in the months to come.

Terrorists and coup-plotters from all over Latin America to meet at U.S. Capitol building in Washington

2010-11-19T08:19:00.000-08:00

By Jean-Guy Allard

Translation: Machetera

Almost all those scheduled to attend a meeting that will take place this Wednesday, November 17th, in a hearing room at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C., have been linked with terrorism and in many cases coups d’etat and assassination attempts in Latin America.

Apparently this news was not meant to be revealed and was accidentally leaked to the Argentinean news agency Télam last Friday. The details were later confirmed by some Bolivian participants as well as other sources.

The list of the main participants whose names were leaked comprise a real who’s who of those who want to manipulate the destiny of Latin America according to the ideas that fit their neo-fascist profile.

Here they are:

1. The Cuban-American congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whom House Republicans have chosen to lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Everyone knows how this Miami daughter of an old apologist for the dictator Fulgencio Batista was elected years ago after a noisy campaign to free the Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, and how she has shown her solidarity with other murderers of the same stripe; Luis Posada Carriles and Eduardo Arocena. Ros-Lehtinen has gone so far as to call publicly for the assassination of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and to turn Cuba into “another Iraq.”

2. Connie Mack, another Miami scorpion, who for his part controls all Latin American policy for the Republicans. Among other misdeeds, Mack also was a furious defender of Bosch, at the side of Ros-Lehtinen and George Bush’s son, Jeb Bush, now being proposed by his father to succeed Barack Obama.

3. Otto Reich, the former U.S. Ambassador in Caracas, where he managed to get Bosch out of prison in order to later “insert” him into the United States despite his long terrorist history. In addition to having been sent as a Special Envoy for Latin America by the ex-President George W. Bush, Reich is notorious for his behind the curtain manipulations of not only the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela but the 2009 coup in Honduras, doing more than anyone else to legitimize it. Recall that this same Reich managed the misleading office of “public diplomacy” during Ronald Reagan’s regime, fighting the Sandinistas with a battery of lies.

4. Roger Noriega, the Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during the W. Bush regime, and an eminent member of the Cuban American mafia. Noriega is so tied to the ultra-rightwing Bushes that he was also the U.S. representative before the Organization of American States. Not only a friend of Reich’s, but also of Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Roger Pardo-Maurer, he was part of the “team” that managed Oliver North during the badly named “Iran-Contra” operation. This “super-agent” for the CIA has even been suspected in the murder of the Maryknoll missionaries William Woods, Yado Ite Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel, in El Salvador, along with Cuban Americans located in Miami and the then CIA ambassador for Venezuela in El Salvador, Leopoldo Castillo.

5. Surprise! Amongst such eminent specimens of Washington’s ultra-rightwing fauna, Alejandro Aguirre, no less, will appear! The departing president of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and son of an admitted CIA agent, Aguirre heads the Diario Las Américas in Miami, and preaches “freedom of the press” while leading this cartel of communications moguls who jealously guard the informationa monopoly they impose on the entire continent. He was one of those who, along with Ros-Lehtinen, approved most highly of the Roberto Micheletti coup in Honduras and who repeated more than anyone else that there was NO attempted coup d’etat in Ecuador.

6. Then we have the Venezuelan camp, headed by Guillermo Zuloaga, the president of the Venezuelan television network, Globovision, putschist extraordinaire, involved in every kind of conspiracy, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice for a long list of crimes and a guest of the Obama administration in Miami, sanctuary of terrorists, corrupt politicians, murderers and torturers from all over Latin America. No doubt he will be accompanied by several examples of this squalid kind of refugee now making their homes in Florida.

7. José Cardenas, the former assistant administrator for USAID (fronting for the CIA) in Latin America, where he succeeded the Cuban American swindler Adolfo Franco, who forcefully diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars to an entire group of parasites in the “Anti-Castro” industry.

8. From Bolivia, the president of the opposition Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, Luis Núñez, and from the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), Javier El-Hage, both part of a conspiracy to assassinate the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, in April, 2009, through a terrorist commando operation led by the mercenary Bolivian-Hungarian Eduardo Rózsa Flores. The HRF was directed from New York by the Cuban American terrorist Armando Valladares, the same who later showed up in Tegucigalpa and who will surely be on hand this week at the Capitol.

A Long Guest List That Leads All the Way to Peña Esclusa

According to the Télam notice, the ex-U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, Jaime Daremblum will also be on hand, now from the Hudson Institute; Joseph Humire, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation; Jon Perdue, from the Fund for American Studies; and John Walters, the former director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy.

All are identified in Washington as part of the most recalcitrant extreme rightwing. Perdue, the pseudo-intellectual was a defense witness for the Argentine lieutenant Roberto Guillermo “El Ñato” Bravo, the author of the Trelew Massacre, who was freed from an Argentinean extradition request thanks to a judge in Miami.

Upon analyzing the brief published notice, observers note that in light of the web of names already on the list, many other names ought to be there as well; logically these would even include people linked to Alejandro Peña Esclusa, the head of the fascist brotherhood UnoAmérica, currently under arrest in Caracas for possession of 900 grams of military-grade C-4 explosive.

Still unknown are which participants will come from Ecuador, from mutilated Honduras, from Nicaragua. And from Costa Rica, where what may turn out to be the first act in another plot is already underway. Topping off the aberrant proceedings, the meeting will be held under the title “Anger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights and Inter-American Security.”

Meetings of those who partake in the use of violence against the progressive leaders and countries on the continent have taken place on various occasions in Miami, but this appears to be the first time that such a large number of individuals linked with the use of terror will come together on U.S. territory. Even more incredibly, within Washington itself, news of the meeting was held in the highest secrecy despite the fact that it will take place in the very meeting rooms of the House of Representatives for a country that every year, publishes an official list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” as a means to sanction whoever opposes its attempts to dominate the world.

Jean-Guy Allard (1948, Shawinigan, Quebec) is a French Canadian journalist who as editor and reporter worked for Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec from 1971 to 2000. He retired to Cuba, and now who writes for Granma. He has written several books, including one on Robert Ménard and Reporters without Borders, and one on Luis Posada Carriles. He lives in Havana and is an expert on the Miami Mafia. Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

Haiti cholera toll at 800, U.S. risk seen low

2010-11-13T10:38:00.001-08:00

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The death toll in Haiti's cholera epidemic climbed on Thursday to 800, according to an American medical expert, but U.S. health authorities said the risk of widespread transmission to the United States was low, given good sanitation there.

Fatalities from the diarrheal disease have risen steadily since the start of the outbreak more than three weeks ago in the poor Caribbean nation, which is struggling to recover from the effects of a devastating January 12 earthquake.

Ezra Barzilay, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the emergency in Haiti created by the epidemic was worsening.

"As of November 8, we had about 640 deaths. Today we are at 800," he said in a call from Haiti to participants at a medical conference in Biloxi, Mississippi.

"The situation here is more dire every day. Haitians are in line (for treatment). Hospital beds are gone. Hospitals are completely overrun," he said, adding local medical staff were being forced into choices over which patients they treated.

Haiti's health ministry said on Thursday that up to Tuesday, November 9, confirmed deaths from cholera totalled 724, with 11,125 hospitalized cases registered. Ten deaths had been recorded in the capital Port-au-Prince, where authorities fear contagion in crowded camps housing earthquake survivors.

Neighbouring Dominican Republic was on high alert to prevent possible transmission. In the United States, just two hours flying time away from Haiti, authorities said there was a possibility of a few cholera cases emerging through travel links. But the risk of widespread transmission was low.

"Good sanitation which includes plumbing, separation of fecal wastes and similar measures, and access to safe drinking water in the United States would work against widespread transmission," CDC spokesman David Daigle told Reuters.

On its website, the Florida Department of Health said travel to and from Haiti had increased since the Haitian earthquake with travellers including relief workers and local Haitian residents visiting family in Haiti.

"Cholera does not spread easily in developed countries such as the U.S., but we want to be sure we do not miss any high-risk situations, like cholera in a food-handler, or clusters or outbreaks," the department said.

Florida has some 241,000 Haitian-born residents, 46 percent of the Haitian-born population in the United States.

Haiti's epidemic, which experts believe was worsened by flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas this month, has piled another humanitarian emergency on the Western Hemisphere's poorest state, whose capital was wrecked by the January earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people.

Presidential and legislative elections scheduled for November 28 in the Caribbean nation are set to go ahead.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince, Leigh Coleman in Biloxi, Maggie Fox in Washington; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Xavier Briand)

Certified Right-Wing Extremists Set to Take Control of House Foreign Affairs Panels

2010-11-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

By Alexander Main.

In the early years of the past decade, two hard-line Cold Warriors, closely associated with radical Cuban exile groups in Florida, occupied strategic positions in the U.S. foreign policy machine. Otto Reich, former head of the Reagan administration’s covert propaganda operations in Central America, and Roger Noriega, co-author of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, took turns running the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and held other influential administration posts such as ambassador to the Organization of American States and White House Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere.

During their years of tenure in the George W. Bush Administration, they led a zealous crusade against left-leaning governments in the region and, among other things, actively supported a short-lived coup d’Etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 and a successful coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004. Ultimately, their extreme views and outrageous antics on the international stage proved to be too much of an embarrassment even for the Bush Administration, and they both eventually were relieved of their government jobs well before the end of Bush’s term.

Now, as a result of the Nov. 2 elections, another duo of a similar ilk is poised to re-set the legislative agenda on Latin America in the House of Representatives. Cuban-American representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is expected to replace Howard Berman as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and eternally tanned Congressman Cornelius McGillicuddy IV -- otherwise known as Connie Mack -- is slated to take the reins of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere.

The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl has enthusiastically celebrated the ascension of these two South Florida legislators, heralding Ros-Lehtinen as a “champion of Cuban human rights” and stating triumphantly that “one big un-American loser” of the US legislative elections will be Cuban president “Raul Castro.” To see whether there is in fact cause to celebrate, let’s have a closer look at the track records of our two protagonists.

Let’s start with human rights “champion” Ros-Lehtinen who, as her web page biography explains, was “forced to flee with [her] family from the oppressive communist regime of Fidel Castro…” On certain issues – such as gay rights and immigration reform – she comes across as fairly levelheaded. When it comes to Latin America, however, she rarely fails to take a precipitous dive into the deep end.

She is, as one might expect given her background and Miami-Dade constituency, a staunch opponent of any relaxation of sanctions against Cuba, as are a number of her Cuban-American and cold warrior colleagues. But her deep hostility towards the Latin American Left has led her to take much more disturbing positions, including the defense of terrorists and coup d’Etats. If you think I’m exaggerating, please examine some of the evidence, all of which is on the public record:

* As the New York Times noted in July 1990, Ros-Lehtinen, together with Senator Connie Mack (Rep. Mack’s father) and Jeb Bush “lobbied hard” in favor of the release of rightwing Cuban Orlando Bosch, a convicted terrorist that US officials believe to be responsible for dozens of bombings including the 1976 bombing of an airliner that killed 76 civilians. In a reversal of prior policy, the U.S. Justice Department released Bosch in Miami, where he remains free to this day.

* In April 2002, as a coup was unfolding in Venezuela, she referred to air force colonel Pedro Soto, who had been among the first officers to call for a coup against the democratically-elected government of Hugo Chavez, as a “great patriot.” Colonel Soto remains exiled in Miami.

* As the Miami Herald reported in 2005, Ros-Lehtinen and two of her Florida colleagues lobbied on behalf of another Cuban terrorist – Luis Posada Carriles – who was imprisoned in Panama for his role in a plot to kill Fidel Castro. Carriles, who is also believed to have been the mastermind of the 1976 airliner bombing, was released by the Panamanian government and is now in exile in… Miami.

* In 2006, she openly called for the assassination of Fidel Castro in an interview. Her exact words: "I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro…”

* Three days after the military coup that overthrew the democratic government of Honduras, Ros-Lehtinen delivered a letter to President Obama expressing support for the coup regime and criticizing the administration for endorsing OAS and UN resolutions condemning the coup “all for the sake of consensus.”

* Ros-Lehtinen has continued to lobby tirelessly for the Honduran regime, hosting coup government delegations in Washington and standing in solidarity with 2009 coup leader Roberto Micheletti[i]. When, to the disappointment of progressives in Congress, the Obama administration decided to support the coup regime and throw its weight behind the controversial government of Porfirio Lobo, Ros-Lehtinen continued to lobby the State Department to do more to defend Lobo internationally.

Connie Mack is relatively young and has only been in office since 2005. Consequently, he has had less time to cozy up to terrorists and coup regimes. However, he has made impressive efforts to prove his extreme right-wing credentials. He has focused in particular on the grave “threat Venezuela’s Communist President Hugo Chavez poses to the U.S. and our allies in the region.”

* In March 2008, Mack and Ros-Lehtinen introduced House Resolution 1049 calling on the U.S. administration “to add Venezuela to the list of states which sponsor terrorism…” Realizing that such an initiative would have disastrous consequences for U.S. relations throughout the region, Republican Senator Richard Lugar put out a report criticizing the measure. In the end, Mack managed to muster the support of only 8 other representatives and the resolution was quickly shelved.

* Eager to outdo Ros-Lehtinen on Honduras, Mack engaged in his own intense campaign to support the coup regime, starting with a July 2009 resolution condemning the recently ousted democratic president Manuel Zelaya for having “trampled” his country’s constitution. He went on to write a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her not to accept Zelaya’s return to power and then led a Congressional delegation to Honduras and subsequently criticized the U.S. administration’s official condemnation of the coup.

* Never one to call it quits, in October of 2009 Mack introduced another resolution calling for Venezuela to be placed on the state sponsor of terrorism list and this time collected the co-sponsorship of 37 other Congressional members. It was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and promptly shelved by the Democratic Committee chair.

* Mack has also growled at Bolivia’s indigenous president Evo Morales who, he says, has, together with Chavez, “sought and won constitutional changers (sic) which quash their opposition and concentrate their power.” Similarly he put out a press release on Ecuador’s independence day last year that referred to Ecuadorian President Correa as “nothing more than a pawn for his fellow friend and thugocrat, Hugo Chavez.”

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, Mack and Ros-Lehtinen’s extremism isn’t limited to this hemisphere. Both representatives have warm relations with Israel’s right wing and are among Congress’ most strident hawks on Iran. Unsurprisingly, therefore, they have depicted the deepening of relations between Iran and various Latin American countries – in particular Venezuela – as a threat to “our critical security interests”. Last year Ros-Lehtinen introduced a 45-page bill “to enhance the security of the Western Hemisphere” that cited Iran 24 times. Mack, meanwhile, has said that "the growing influence of Iran in the Western Hemisphere reminds me of the relationship between Russia and Cuba when we dealt with the Cuban missile crisis." Indeed, if you replace “Iran” with “the Soviet Union” in the statements of the two Florida legislators you can quickly be transported to the Cold War era.

The real question, of course, is whether having these certified right-wing extremists heading up the Foreign Affairs Committee and Western Hemisphere Subcommittee will necessarily set U.S. policy towards Latin America on a more aggressive course. Without a doubt, Ros-Lehtinen and Mack will use their new powers as committee chairs to hold an increased number of Congressional hearings that target Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and other left-leaning countries. They will make certain that legislation that aims to ease travel restrictions to Cuba is stopped dead in its tracks. They are also likely to promote resolutions and legislation that seek to impose sanctions and interventionist measures against these countries to punish them for their alleged anti-democratic or anti-American actions. However, though moves such as these may make a lot of noise, more extreme legislative proposals will surely run into the brick wall of the Democratically-controlled Senate and, failing that, President Obama’s veto. Or will they?

Democratic leaders may have more nuanced rhetoric when it comes to relations with the rest of the region, but they have often stood idly by while the Obama administration has carried out aggressive, unilateralist policies reminiscent of the Bush era. Only two Congress members, Senators Patrick Leahy and Christopher Dodd (who is retiring from the Senate this year), voiced concern regarding an agreement with Colombia that would increase the U.S. military presence there and sparked outrage throughout the governments of South America. On the hemisphere’s most contentious issue of the past two years – the coup in Honduras – they have by and large not spoken out against the administration’s weak response to the coup, despite the alarm raised by their more progressive Democratic colleagues. The administration, meanwhile, was equipped with the convenient excuse that Republican hardliners were bearing down on them with relentless pressure and forcing their hand.

The danger therefore, more than the direct threat posed by Ros-Lehtinen or Mack’s legislative powers, may be the fact that their noisy rhetoric and zany capers will provide additional cover for both the administration and moderate Democrats to plow ahead with a hemispheric agenda which merely recycles the failed policies of the past administration. The Post’s Jackson Diehl can sleep soundly knowing that the South Florida pair will play an important role in keeping US relations with Latin America as poisoned as ever.

We Must Stop Climate Change and We Can Do it in Cancun

2010-11-04T13:38:00.001-07:00

By Claudia Salerno

Article published by AlterNet on November 3, 2010. If anyone wants to reprint it, please visit original Web site.

Venezuela’s lead negotiator on climate change writes that protecting the earth’s climate is quite achievable if there is the political will to do so.

As Venezuela’s lead negotiator on climate change, I recently participated in a preparatory round of negotiations in China leading up to the global summit in December in Cancun, Mexico. This summit will take up where the 2009 Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change left off.

Much has been said in the media about the meeting, and one thing is certainly true – there is plenty of frustration and uncertainty about the possibility of achieving an agreement on climate change by year’s end. But this does not mean it is impossible.

In fact, it is quite achievable if there is the political will to do so. Developed countries need only to commit to fulfilling their existing first period reduction obligations established by the Kyoto Protocol and pledge to substantially reduce and reabsorb their domestic greenhouse gas emissions in accordance to a second commitment period to be established in Cancun.

According to almost all scientific studies, we know that entire nation states like Tuvalu are destined to literally sink into the sea as a result of global warming. In South America, mountain tops where snow used to fall and glaciers form have gone barren. Even U.S. governmental agencies report that this past decade is the warmest one ever experienced by mankind.

We are approaching a critical time in human history, one where we can either move forward to reverse the effects of climate change or continue down a path that will soon become irreversible and destroy our planet. If global warming increases by more than two degrees Celsius in coming years, as will surely happen if no reasonable and fair agreement is reached quickly, there is a 50 percent chance that the damage caused will be irreversible.

Unlike what many suggest, China is not the problem. China, along with India and others, have made considerable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are already working to realize them. Other developing countries have done the same, although we only generate a virtual drop in the bucket of global carbon emissions. The key player missing here is the U.S.

I had the great opportunity this week to spend time with U.S.-based environmentalists, climate experts and policy makers while speaking at the Green Festival in Washington, D.C. and participating in a panel discussion at Boston College. It seems clear to me that the American people do not want a repeat of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, where a proposal made by a small number of powerful countries would have allowed for a disastrous 3-4 degree rise in temperature over the next 30 years. (Fortunately, Venezuela and some other countries opposed this proposal).

The American people want progress and they want action – and they want it this year. “How many climate catastrophes are acceptable before we act?” I asked during my talk. One responded, “Hurricane Katrina was already too much. We are still suffering from that.”

In the world of global negotiations, I can tell you, one more round of talks without real commitments will also be one beyond what our planet can afford. While it is absurd for us to believe that all the nations of the world will agree on everything, we must act on what we already agreed on in 1992 at the Framework Convention: developed countries’ greenhouse gas emissions must be significantly reduced. As President Obama said last year in Copenhagen, “It’s better for us to choose action over inaction.”

I truly hope the U.S. will act upon this sentiment in Cancun and join the rest of the world in fully committing to aggressive action to stop climate change. For the sake of humanity and our planet, nothing less will do.

Claudia Salerno is Venezuela’s Presidential Envoy for Climate Change.

22 activists killed in Santos' first 75 days

2010-11-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

By MANUELA KUEHR

A report by human rights groups on Thursday states that at least 22 activists were murdered in the first 75 days of the government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to press agency EFE.

The 21-page document "Words and Deeds. The first 75 days of the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the situation of human rights," details the death of five activists, seven indigenous leaders, a human rights defender, five trade unionists, two community educators and two members of the organization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans-gender individuals.

The report also documents the death of judge Pedro Elias Ballesteros Rojas who ruled on cases involving paramilitaries, and the murder of reporter Rodolfo Maya Aricape, who was a correspondent for an indigenous radio station.

The Interdisciplinary Group for Human Rights (GIDH) and other organizations in Washington presented these documents based on data from nearly 200 Colombian, European and North American human rights organizations to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Maria Victoria Fallon of the GIDH said that the report demonstrate a "continuity in another language" in the approach to human rights of the current and previous Colombian governments.

"There may be a change in style, but the situation must be seen in practice," Fallon added.

Fallon explained that the data in the reports refers to "registered cases" and that there may be more murders undocumented.

Referring to the report, the director of human rights in the Colombian Ministry of Interior and Justice, Maria Paulina Riveros, stated that the relevant government institutions will investigate the allegations "immediately."

Riveros added that "obviously we recognize that there continue to be very serious threats against human rights defenders, we say that progress is about to open the way to relevant consultation."

Santos assumed the presidency of Colombia on August 7, 2010.

Hondurans Denounce Return of Death Squads

2010-10-31T11:00:00.001-07:00

San Salvador, Oct 29 (Prensa Latina) Death squads have reappeared in Honduras since the June 28, 2009 military coup, and they are targeting teachers, human rights activist Berta Oliva charged in El Salvador.

Paramilitary groups like CAM (Comando Álvarez Martínez) are behind the selective murders of Honduran opposition activists, and teachers are their main victims, Oliva said, quoted by Co Latino newspaper.

Human rights violations, persecution and selective assassinations are everyday occurrences, showing that the military coup "continues," she said.

Ten teachers have been murdered this year for their clear opposition to the current government, a continuation of the coup regime, said Oliva, general coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Detainees in Honduras.

Oliva made her comments at the 7th Herbert Anaya Sanabria International Human Rights Congress in the Salvadoran capital.

Fifty-six human rights activisits have been threatened by different armed groups, she said, urging the Organization of American States to urge the United States not to support the Honduran military while human rights violations continue.

Honduran rural leaders who attended the human rights congress, said a campaign of persecution was being carried out against them to deprive them of their rights to the land.

Matías Valle Cárdenas, vice presidnet of the United Campesino Movement of Aguán, in the department of Colon, said 16 of his comrades had been murdered in the last 6 months.

22 activists killed in Santos' first 75 days

2010-10-29T18:34:00.001-07:00

Venezuela Welcomes Possible Cancellation of US-Colombia Military Accord

2010-10-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

By JAMES SUGGETT - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM

Mérida, October 26th 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – In response to reports that Colombia may not open seven of its military bases to United States military personnel as previously planned, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the decision reflects “rationality, common sense, and responsibility.”

The vice president of the Colombian Senate, Alexandra Moreno, told the news agency EFE last week that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos does not plan to present the US-Colombia military accord to the Colombian Congress for approval.

“The president has expressed to us that he will not process [the accord] in the Congress, that he will leave it aside, and we hope this policy continues,” said Moreno, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Colombian Senate. “The accord fell apart the moment the Supreme Court said it was imperative for it to be approved by the Congress and that has not been done, so there is no military cooperation accord in those terms at this moment.”

Following Moreno’s announcement, government officials declared that no final decision has been made about whether or not to present the military accord to Congress.

The accord was originally signed in October 2009 as an extension of previously existing military cooperation with the US, a status that allegedly meant it did not need congressional approval. In August, however, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that the deal constituted a new international treaty and thus had to be approved by the Congress before taking effect.

The deal, officially titled “Complementary Accord for Cooperation and Technical Assistance in Defense and Security between the Governments of Colombia and the United States of America,” would have granted US military personnel diplomatic immunity for their actions in Colombia, and permitted the US to increase its military presence and carry out military and espionage operations across the South American continent from seven Colombian bases.

The majority of South American countries opposed the deal, including Venezuela and Ecuador, which share lengthy borders with Colombia and have suffered the spillover effects of Colombia’s decades-old civil war, including the influx of millions of refugees, most of them poor peasants. Venezuela said the accord heightened the risk of US military interventions against governments that are politically at odds with Washington.

On Sunday, President Chavez applauded Santos’s decision. “The majority of the peoples of the region should breathe a sigh of relief. Rationality, common sense, and responsibility have prevailed,” he told the Venezuelan daily Ultimas Noticias.

“The previous government acted as part of the Pentagon’s war strategy,” Chavez added, referring to ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, whose administration signed the original accord without congressional approval.

Chavez and Uribe shared friendly economic relations, but diplomatic relations soured and were severed several times by issues such as a Colombian attack on rebels in Ecuadoran territory in 2008, the US-Colombia military accord in 2009, and Uribe’s recent accusations that Chavez supports the Colombian rebels.

When Santos took office in August, the two countries renewed diplomatic relations and held talks on economic policies and policies toward armed rebel groups. Chavez said on Sunday that during these talks, various officials from both governments discussed the possibility of Colombia not activating the accord with the US, but that “it was not a condition.”

Senator Moreno, in her interview with EFE, said if the military deal were to be presented to Congress, “the debate would be of a different character in the Congress, very distinct from the one that was carried out initially.”

Military accords with the US “have not had results,” and there is less support for them than in the past, said Moreno. She also suggested that Santos, despite having served as Uribe’s minister for defense, may bring a shift in policy away from Uribe’s military policy. “There has been a 180 degree turn by President Santos and the priority will no longer be war, conflict, and military issues,” said the congressperson.

President Santos met with US officials on Monday to renew what he called a “true strategic partnership.” He will travel to Venezuela this Friday to meet with President Chavez and discuss the continuation of bilateral accords in the areas of cross-border economic relations, infrastructure, and military policy in the border region.

Colombia Congress president backs drug legalization

2010-10-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

By ADRIAAN ALSEMA

Colombian Congress president Armando Benedetti says he is in favor of legalizing drugs, but adds Colombia should not take the lead in this because it would give the country a bad image.

"The problem is not whether or not to legalize the consumption and distribution of drugs, but the way the problem has been handled. The United States, Mexico, Argentina, Portugal, Spain and Germany have changed the way to counter the consumption and we're still in the age of the caveman while we have suffered and paid for this war more than anyone," Benedetti told newspaper El Espectador.

"The drug problem is global. We have paid the highest costs. The highest investments have been made and they were for nothing. We continue to be an important producing and distributing country in the world, occupy the third place in Latin America with consumption, and it seems we have taken the wrong corrective measures to control consumption," the coalition politician said.

Benedetti has long supported moves to legalize drugs.

"The fumigations didn't produce results and neither did Plan Colombia. I would be in favor of legalization. But we cannot say that. We would be the pariahs of the world," the senator told Colombia Reports a year ago.

Instead, Benedetti favors multilateral initiatives to legalize drugs, because "the problem is global and many countries are affected by the scourge of drugs," he told El Espectador.

The Congress president's position conflicts with that of President Juan Manuel Santos, who has called for a discussion on a "redesign" of the war on drugs if California decides to legalize marijuana in a referendum in November. According to U.S. deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, a legalization of pot in his country's richest state will not affect the U.S. federal government's policy on drugs.

However in 1998 Santos, in his capacity as head of the Good Government Foundation, co-signed an open letter addressed to Kofi Annan, then-U.N. secretary general, calling for "a frank and honest evaluation of global drug control efforts," as "we believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."

Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America

2010-10-27T15:06:00.001-07:00

By Mark Weisbrot

This column was published by The Guardian Unlimited (UK) on October 27, 2010. If anyone wants to reprint it, please include a link to the original.

The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner had to stand up not only to powerful moneyed interests but also to most of the economics profession, which was insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They proved wrong, and Kirchner was right.

Argentina’s recession from 1998-2002 was indeed comparable to the U.S. Great Depression in terms of unemployment, which peaked at more than 21 percent, and lost output (about 20 percent of GDP). The majority of Argentines, who had until then enjoyed living standards among the highest in Latin America, were pushed below the poverty line. In December of 2002 and January 2003, the country underwent a massive devaluation, a world-historical record sovereign default on $95 billion of debt, and a collapse of the financial system.

Although some of the heterodox policies that ultimately ensured Argentina’s rapid recovery were begun in the year before Kirchner took office, he had to follow them through some tough challenges to make Argentina the fastest growing economy in the region.

One big challenge came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fund had been instrumental in bringing about the collapse – by supporting, among other bad policies, an overvalued exchange rate with ever increasing indebtedness at rising interest rates. But when Argentina’s economy inevitably collapsed the Fund offered no help, just a series of conditions that would impede the economy’s recovery. The IMF was trying to get a better deal for the foreign creditor. Kirchner rightly refused the Fund’s conditions, and the IMF refused to roll over Argentina’s debt.

In September of 2003 the battle came to a head when Kirchner temporarily defaulted to the Fund rather than accept its conditions. It was an extraordinarily gutsy move – no middle income country had ever defaulted to the Fund, only a handful of failed or pariah states like Iraq or Congo. That’s because the IMF was seen as having the power to cut off even trade credits to a country that defaulted to them. No one knew for sure what would happen. But the Fund backed down and rolled over the loans.

Argentina went on to grow at an average of more than 8 percent annually through 2008, pulling more than 11 million people in a country of 40 million out of poverty. The policies of the Kirchner government, including the Central Bank targeting of a stable and competitive real exchange rate, and taking a hard line against the defaulted creditors – were not popular in Washington or among the business press. But they worked.

Kirchner’s successful face-off with the IMF came at a time when the Fund was rapidly losing influence in the world, after its failures in the Asian economic crisis that preceded Argentina’s collapse. It showed the world that a country could defy the IMF and live to tell about it, and contributed to the ensuing loss of IMF influence in Latin America and middle-income countries generally. Since the IMF was at the time the most important avenue of Washington’s influence in low-and-middle-income countries, this also contributed to the demise of United States influence, and especially in the recently-won independence of South America.

And Kirchner played a major role in consolidating this independence, working with the other left governments including Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Through institutions such as UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), MERCOSUR (the South American trading bloc), and numerous commercial agreements, South America was able to dramatically alter its trajectory. They successfully backed Bolivia’s government against an extra-parliamentary challenge from the right in 2008, and most recently stood behind Ecuador in that attempted coup there a few weeks ago. Unfortunately they did not succeed in overturning last year’s military coup in Honduras, where U.S. backing of the coup government proved decisive. But Argentina, together with UNASUR, still refuses to allow Honduras back into the OAS, despite heavy lobbying from Washington.

Kirchner also earned respect from human rights organizations for his willingness to prosecute and extradite some of the military officers accused of crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship – reversing the policies of previous governments. Together with his wife, current president Cristina Fernández, Néstor Kirchner has made an enormous contribution in helping to move Argentina and the region in a progressive direction. Although these efforts have not generally won him much favor in Washington and in international business circles, history will record him not only as a great president but an independence hero of Latin America.

VP: U.S. Conducted 17 Types of Experiments on Guatemalans

2010-10-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

GUATEMALA CITY – The United States carried out 17 different types of medical experiments on Guatemalans by intentionally infecting them with venereal diseases in the 1940s, Vice President Rafael Espada told the press.

Officials already have data on the medical projects and the information is being investigated by the commission the vice president heads along with the collaboration of the United States, Espada said.

Seventeen types of medical experiments were performed by U.S. scientists on the mentally ill, prostitutes, prisoners and soldiers between in the Central American nation between 1946 and 1948, Espada said.

The Guatemalans were infected intentionally with syphilis and gonorrhea, among other diseases.

“We have confirmed 17 types of projects in the experiments with humans conducted in our country,” the vice president said, without providing additional details about those programs.

The U.S. government has already provided about 90 percent of the scientific information about the experiments and the documents will be opened when the commission investigating the matter is fully constituted with medical experts and translators to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings, the vice president said.

Guatemalan physicians Jorge Solares and Jose Guillermo Monroy have joined the commission, he added.

Solares will be the coordinator in Guatemala and Monroy, who lives in Paraguay, will be the liaison with the United States, the vice president said.

The investigation, which will be financed by the United Nations, could last at least six months, Espada said.

The experiments performed by the United States on some 1,500 Guatemalans were revealed on Oct. 1 and that same day President Barack Obama contacted his Guatemalan counterpart, Alvaro Colom, to express his profound regret over those acts.

Colom said that the medical experiment directed by U.S. physician John Cutler were “horrifying” and crimes against humanity, adding that the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, was aware of them.

Mexico: Indigenous Leader Assassinated In Oaxaca

2010-10-26T14:07:00.001-07:00

At approximately 2:20 pm on Friday, October 22 was shot and killed the Indian leader
Catarino Torres Pereda, in the offices of the Citizens' Defense Committee (CODECI)
located in the City Tuxtepec, Oaxaca.

A pair of 2 armed men broke into these offices to shoot at close range against the
official 37-year-old from the Cacahautal, Ojitlan, Oaxaca.

Today the leader will be buried after being watched by hundreds of militants from the
afternoon, the news of his death came to offer condolences to his family.

Catarino Torres had suffered in the past ten years, a relentless political persecution
because of their political and social.

Participated in the Other Campaign adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon
Jungle Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

Also championed the fight for fair compensation and Mazatec indigenous Chinanteco
displaced by the construction of dams and Cerro de Oro Temascal.

He also led the recovery of indigenous lands invaded by farmers and landowners in the
region.

That led him to be the first political prisoner of the APPO, in 2006, in Oaxaca, and to
be held for 7 months at the maximum security prison in the highlands.

In March, City Hall took CODECI Tuxtepec also demand support for their members, at that
time he was accused of causing damage to property, but after the dialogue, the conflict
was resolved.

In recent months, attended the Democratic State Convention Oaxaca Libre, who backed the
candidacy of now Gabino Cue Monteagudo elected governor.

In one of his recent statements criticized the National Action Party of Democratic
Revolution, Labor and Convergence "being awarded the victory of the people" in
the election on July 4, since "nobody can deny" that in 2006 " generated
due to pit to change the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. "

Colombia has 50,000 disappeared: Official

2010-10-23T07:22:00.001-07:00

By LINDA AZODI

Colombia has one of the highest number of forcibly disappeared people in the world, with 50,000 individuals missing, the Ombudsman's National Search Commission coordinator Andres Peña told EFE on Wednesday.

Most of the disappeared are victims of "illegal groups, paramilitaries mainly and guerrillas, and an important part correspond to agents of the state," says Peña.

Colombia's Congress on Tuesday ratified the United Nations' International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted in 2006.

Peña said that Colombia's situation is particularly difficult because most countries are in a post-conflict situation when they begin to investigate cases of disappearances, whereas Colombia is still facing conflict.

The prosecutor general has registered some 27,000 people as missing, but admits there are still many cases that need to be investigated.

Peña stated that Colombia "is just on the first step of a large mountain" and stresses the importance of psychosocial help for the families of victims.

"In five years minimum we will see the results," says Peña. He expects the world will be shocked when full information on the extent of forced disappearances becomes known.

Cristian Salazar, director of the Colombia's office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in September encouraged Colombia to ratify the pact, saying that it would mean that families whose loved ones disappeared were able to report the failure of Colombian justice to solve these cases.

Government pressure led to extrajudicial killings: Inspector General

2010-10-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

By ADRIAAN ALSEMA

Colombia's inspector general said that the extrajudicial killing of civilians by the country's armed forces was caused by pressure to please the armed forces' high command and the government, newspaper El Tiempo reported on Thursday.

According to the newspaper it is the first time that a Colombian watchdog body has contradicted the official line, which is that murders of civilians by the army to inflate kill statistics were isolated cases.

The inspector general's (IG) comments were made when charging members of the army with "false positive" extrajudicial killings in Soacha, a city south of Bogota, where the army allegedly killed 19 young men and then presented them as guerrillas killed in combat.

The murders were a "criminal plan which only purpose was to meet an institutional requirement, born of the need to show senior commanders, and why not say it, the government, that the fight against legal armed groups was being won," El Tiempo quoted the IG saying when charging two colonels, two majors, four non-commissioned officers and 18 soldiers with the kidnapping and murder of the men.

In the case of the murder of one of the victims, one of the colonels and his troops aimed for "the mentioned homicide [to be] recognized as an operational result by the high command, taking into consideration that this military unit had not had success in quite a while," the IG said.

According to NGOs, more than 3,700 civilians have been murdered by the military since 2002. Judicial authorities are investigating at least 1,000 cases of extrajudicial murders.

Report Assails Haiti Officers in Prison Killings

2010-10-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

By DEBORAH SONTAG and WALT BOGDANICH

After officers had quelled the prison uprising in Les Cayes, Haiti, in January, Jacklin Charles, an unarmed detainee, was killed by a bullet to the head as he stood beside a tree in the courtyard. Several witnesses said that the chief of the antiriot police pulled the trigger.

Another detainee, Verlin Potty, was handcuffed and dragged into the dispensary, where officers beat him to death with their batons. The warden is said to have participated in the killing.

These two men were among at least 12 detainees killed by Haitian officers who opened fire “deliberately and without justification,” using “inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force” against unarmed inmates who presented no immediate threat, according to an independent commission of inquiry report on the Jan. 19 uprising.

Most of the dead were summarily executed, the commission found, and at least 14 prisoners were wounded in what amounted to “grave violations of human rights.”

In a forcefully worded, detailed report, the commission said that it hoped for an official and public condemnation of the violations, which were initially covered up by the local authorities in Les Cayes. But the report, delivered to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive on Sept. 2, was not released by the government.

The New York Times, whose investigation of the killings spurred the creation of the commission, obtained a copy from the prime minister’s office late on Wednesday after requesting it repeatedly over the past six weeks.

The report contains allegations of hidden bodies and rearranged cadavers, of a ringleader’s escape by a ladder that awaited him, of medical care denied wounded prisoners who lay dying in their cells, of threatened witnesses and common graves.

The commissioners said they found it difficult to determine precisely how many detainees were killed on Jan. 19 and by whom because of inadequate records, failure to preserve evidence and contradictory reports. They said the detainees’ accounts were more coherent, consistent and credible than those given by officials.

Although they could confirm only a dozen deaths, the commissioners said the death toll was undoubtedly higher, probably at least 15. Cemetery workers said they buried 12 indigent detainees and 3 others were claimed by their families for private burials. Other injured detainees were transferred to Port-au-Prince or released and some of them reportedly died, too.

The commission decided not to exhume the bodies because it was costly and probably too late.

Because the prison shootings had occurred one week after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, they originally went unnoticed. Soon after the killings, in fact, the prison warden, Sylvestre Larack, was quietly promoted to director of the national penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, which had emptied after the disaster but was starting to fill back up.

After The Times’s article published in May stirred outrage, the Haitian police took Mr. Larack into custody along with as many as 14 other police and prison officials from Les Cayes. Then, even as the commission began its work, the episode fell from the headlines until an uprising at the national penitentiary last Sunday.

Three inmates were killed Sunday at the penitentiary, two shot dead and one trampled during an escape attempt that took place during a visit by Swedish corrections officials. Inmates began pouring out of their cell blocks and the guards fired shotguns to push them back, according to Lars Nylen, director general of the Swedish prison and probation service. The visitors were briefly taken as shields by the inmates in an effort to stop the guards from shooting, he said.

During the melee, Mr. Larack, the former warden who is now a detainee himself, was “savagely beaten” by other inmates, according to a human rights advocate, Marie Yolene Gilles. Speaking on Radio Caraibes, Mr. Larack’s wife said that his attackers were transferred detainees from Les Cayes exacting revenge. She also said that her husband, like many of the detainees he used to oversee, had not yet seen a judge.

Overcrowded and dilapidated with poorly trained guards, Haitian prisons contain large numbers of inmates in prolonged pretrial detention, a reflection of the weakness of the judicial system. Lessons must be learned from the episodes in Les Cayes, the commission of inquiry said; that prison remains a tinderbox, even more understaffed than usual because of the guards arrested in relation to the Jan. 19 killings.

The commission, financed by the Haitian government and the United Nations, was composed of three foreign and two Haitian experts. It was led by Lt. Gen. Salvatore Carrara of Italy and Florence Elie, Haiti’s ombudsman.

The seeds for the uprising in Les Cayes were planted right after the earthquake when the detainees, scared to stay in their cells, clamored to sleep in the courtyard. Refused by the warden, they rebelled, throwing metal beds against the cell doors. Several were punished the next day by guards who beat them with batons, the commission said, condemning that mistreatment.

An escape plan was hatched, and on Jan. 19, several detainees attacked a guard who had opened their cell to empty their waste bucket. In the ensuing commotion, the guard fled. As the detainees set fire and vandalized the prison, United Nations officers helped surround the perimeter and provided tear gas, but took no part in the shooting, the commission found.

The commission did fault the United Nations officers for failing to seek medical help for the wounded they encountered after the shooting.

Mr. Larack claimed that officers, more than two dozen of them, entered the compound under a hail of bullets. But the commission determined, based on physical evidence and testimony, that the only shooting was done by the officers. The prisoners, unarmed, had obeyed orders to lie down.

The supposed ringleader had already escaped, without harm, although others were not as lucky; one detainee, shot from outside when he stuck his head through a hole in the prison wall, bled to death in his cell.

Coup Forces 157 Hondurans Into Exile

2010-10-23T07:14:00.001-07:00

TEGUCIGALPA - A total of 157 people are currently living in exile due to persecution after the coup, reported the Committee of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH).

The exiles are leaders of the resistance movement in neighborhoods and communities that have fled the country because their lives were in jeopardy, said Bertha Oliva, Cofadeh coordinator.

Oliva denounced the policy of persecution promoted by the Honduran government, paramilitary groups and death squads against opponents of the coup of June 28, 2009.

That day hooded men kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya, took him by force to Costa Rica and put in power Roberto Micheletti.

Zelaya managed to return to the country by surprise on Sept. 21 and remained refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa for three months, until his departure for the Dominican Republic.

Zelaya has lived in exile due to the lack of guarantees for safe return to Honduras and the trials conducted against him by the same institutions that supported the coup.

This week 30 US Democrat congressmen denounced the deplorable human rights situation in Honduras and urged their government to stop attempts to achieve the reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS as long as this situation continues.

"We have received credible reports from human rights organizations that say that abuses continue with impunity," the congressmen said.

During the first half of this year about 3,000 were killed in the country, for an average of 16.27 deaths per day.

The victims included 10 journalists, 30 lawyers and several leaders of popular organizations, and most of the crimes have not been investigated so far.

US to give $30M for Colombia land restitution

2010-10-22T06:27:00.001-07:00

By GREG HAUGAN

The United States plans to give $30 million over three years to support the restitution of lands to displaced persons in Colombia, announced the Colombian Agriculture Ministry.

The ministry said the money was promised by U.S. ambassador to Bogota Peter Michael McKinley and would be delivered through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAid).

"We support the efforts of the current government for the restitution of land and the strategy for improving marketing of agricultural products and productive efficiency" said Ambassador McKinley, according to a ministry press release.

The government of President Juan Manuel Santos recently submitted a proposal to Congress for restoring approximately 500,000 hectares per year until 2014 to displaced families. Authorities have already begun returning land seized by paramilitaries, although increased security is needed for those benefiting from land restitution, say human rights defenders.

More than four million Colombians are thought to have been displaced by their nation's 50-year armed conflict. Most of Colombia's internal refugees were forced from their land by violence committed by guerrillas or paramilitary groups.

Honduras: Crisis and Progress

2010-10-21T15:21:00.001-07:00

by Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond

Today, October 21, the democratic resistance in Honduras will celebrate Artists in Resistance Day. This event contrasts directly with today’s official recognition of Honduras Armed Forces day. The resistance, which is working for a truly democratic Honduras, renamed the day and created an alternative celebration because of a brutal police attack on musicians and others last month that left one dead and scores injured.

On September 15, 2010, a non-violent march and musical concert in Honduras was attacked by police and security forces. Incredibly the police involved in the attack made it a point to destroy the instruments of the musicians.

The musicians who were attacked called for today to be renamed Artists in Resistance Day. To mark the occasion the collective Artists in Resistance and the National Front of Youth in Resistance (FNJR) organized concerts tonight in San Pedro Sula and in Tegucigalpa.

These groups reflect just a small sliver of the National Front of Popular Resistance inn Honduras (FNRP for its initials in Spanish), one of the most mobilized social movements currently taking shape in our hemisphere. The FNRP represents social movements, organizations and individuals from nearly every sector of Honduran society. They are organizing to stand up to one of Latin America’s foremost human rights crises: the 2009 coup in Honduras and the intimidation, assaults, silencing, and killing of those who have resisted the subsequent regimes that took power. The hope is that today’s concerts will underscore the resistance to the crisis in Honduras and mobilize more international solidarity with the FNRP.

Ongoing Crisis in Honduras

Since the coup in June 2009, two regimes – the de facto coup government under Roberto Micheletti and the administration of the sitting president Porfirio Lobo – have done little to protect human rights while police and security forces have subjected members or those identified with the FNRP to mass arrests, beatings, tear gas raids, rape and other forms of torture, and kidnappings. Judges critical of the coup and post-coup authorities have been divested of their positions, transferred arbitrarily, and faced disciplinary proceedings.

At least ten journalists have been killed in 2010 alone, under circumstances overwhelmingly indicative that these were assassinations. Journalists not killed have faced state censorship. Violence and repression of political speech, public assembly, and critical democracy have become a part of daily life.

Rather than investigate these crimes and hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions, Honduran officials have looked the other way. The official line mouthed by Honduran officials and getting much play in Honduran newspapers (which make no effort to hide their support for the coup and post-coup regimes) is that this violence is a by-product of drug and gang wars. Sadly, this narrative has gained some traction in the blogosphere and diplomatic circles even though these speculations are not based on any independent investigation or arrests.

The surge in violence against union leaders, community organizers, journalists and activists has in fact come only after the coup and the targets are undeniably leaders and members of the resistance.

According to the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) there have been 83 murders of members of the FNRP, countless injuries from assaults, and a steady stream of exiled individuals who have left the country after being raped or otherwise tortured and/or have had their lives threatened as a result of being part of, or being perceived as part of the resistance.

Time to “Move on”?

Despite the overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya last year, the repressive actions of the interim Micheletti coup regime, the illegitimate “election” of Lobo (one that groups like the Carter Center and even the United Nations refused to observe because of its clear illegality), the lack of justice for any of the victims of the coup and the subsequent and continuing political violence, the post-coup authorities are repeatedly saying that it is time for the Honduran people to move on.

The latest incarnation of effort to “move on” is a bogus invitation by Pepe Lobo to the FNRP to dialogue about the Constituent Assembly process. The FNRP considered the invitation carefully. They met in two separate assemblies—one for the Directorate and one of the General Assembly—and decided to reject the invitation to dialogue because of the ongoing violence and repression directed at the resistance. The reasons for rejecting included the fact that President Zelaya is still being forced into exile with false charges against him, that there are many political prisoners, and that there has no accountability for all the human rights violations against the movement. FNRP leadership stated that this was just another attempt by Lobo to legitimize his authority before a national and international audience.

Resistance Progress

The FNRP is committed to changing the Honduras constitution but in a way that reflects democracy and human rights. Many in Honduras view the constitution as having been written for the elite of the country and giving far too few rights to the poor and historically marginalized. Some say the constitution is one of the main reasons why Honduras has one of the highest poverty rates and gaps between rich and poor in the Americas.

The Constituent Assembly, or constituyente in Spanish, has been the principal focus of the FNRP for much of the past year. They recently they presented 1.3 million signatures that they had gathered in support of the process.

At first glance, it might seem counter-intuitive; if this is the movement’s primary focus and the current President wants to dialogue about it, wouldn’t the resistance at least try to engage? The resistance views Lobo as an illegitimate official and actively involved in the repression against the FNRP. Dialogue with Lobo had the potential to compromise the careful, deeply democratic process that the FNRP has been engaging every sector of Honduran society— unions, youth, peasant farmers, LGBTQ groups, and beyond—with for months.

The FNRP has now resolved to move forward with the Constituent Assembly as an autonomous, deeply democratic process. This is incredibly exciting, even historic, for our hemisphere and an example of participatory democracy that we all could learn from.

Meanwhile, in the United States, 29 members of Congress took a bold step, especially given the lead-up to midterm elections, in issuing a strongly worded condemnation of the “deplorable human rights record” in Honduras listing several recent cases of political violence. See http://quotha.net/docs/honduras/10.19.10.Dear_Colleague_Letter.pdf.

The members of Congress registered their “serious concern that the rule of law is directly threatened by members of the Honduran police and armed forces” and called on the Obama Administration to end all direct assistance to Honduran authorities, especially the police and military. They also called on the US to cease its lobbying for the re-admittance of Honduras into the Organization of American States (OAS).

While most member countries of the OAS have stood firm in their rejection of Honduras as a member of the OAS, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton has made Honduras’s reinstatement a US priority in the region, raising it in her meetings with Latin American heads of state and lobbying for it at various regional meetings. For reasons that the Center for Constitutional Rights laid out in our Open Letter to Secretary of State Clinton, the Obama Administration must stop and the OAS should remain firm in rejecting Honduras as a member. See http://ccrjustice.org/files/CCR%20Letter%20to%20Clinton-Honduras.pdf

Those committed to working in solidarity with ordinary people organizing for democracy, equality and social justice in the Americas are outraged that the Obama Administration has become the Lobo regime’s most important ally. Without US support, the Lobo regime would not have been able to hold its illegitimate elections or hold on to power for as long as it has.

But history shows that anti-democratic regimes in Latin America and elsewhere can be overcome, even when they have the backing of the US, by campaigns for democracy and human rights. The FNRP is working to show the way in Honduras. Those of us in solidarity from afar watch in admiration as they work to transform their country and salute their efforts to celebrate while doing so!

Tonight’s concert in San Pedro Sula with be streamed live via the FNRP’s website: http://www.resistenciahonduras.net/

Bill and Laura work at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com and Laura at ljraym@gmail.com

Guatemalan Authorities OK'd Illegal U.S. Experiments

2010-10-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

GUATEMALA - Guatemalan health authorities approved the illegal U.S. experiments carried out on Guatemalans in the 1940s, according to reports disclosed Thursday.

A report by the U.S. Public Health Service refers to an alleged agreement between high-ranking Guatemalan physicians and the former Pan-American Health Office, a new disclosure in the case.

The supposed agreement gave the green light for studies involving infecting people with venereal diseases, designed by the team of U.S. doctor John Cutler, set as a condition for opening up a research lab in Guatemala, according to the newspaper Prensa Libre.

The alleged objective was to probe the effectiveness of medicines such as penicillin to treat those diseases, as part of a project scientifically and technically directed by the U.S. Venereal Disease Research Lab.

Though some professionals supported the study on humans, the majority of the local scientific community did not know about it, the daily noted.

According to the report, Cutler first infected prostitutes as a way of infecting his study subjects, but the results were poor, so he began directly infecting his subjects without informing them or asking for their consent.

Guatemalan society reacted with great indignation at the disclosure of the story a couple of weeks ago, when the government announced an apology from the U.S. administration, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

U.S. President Barack Obama also conveyed his apologies to President Alvaro Colom in a phone call, but the Guatemalan president called the incident a crime against humanity and demanded a thorough investigation.

Rights group questions fairness of Cuban spy trial in U.S.

2010-10-18T06:54:00.001-07:00

By David Ariosto, CNN

October 16, 2010 -- Updated 0954 GMT (1754 HKT)
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/15/cuba.imprisoned.agents/

Cuba says the five men, known at home as "the five heroes," were sent to Miami to infiltrate violent exile groups.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Amnesty International points to a "prejudicial impact of publicity"
It says questions surround the Cubans' access to attorneys and documents
The five have denied that they sought to breach U.S. national security
They say their job was to monitor anti-Castro groups, U.S. military activity against Cuba

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Amnesty International has questioned the fairness of a U.S. trial that convicted five Cuban agents of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder and other related charges.

In a report issued earlier this week, the London-based human rights group described a "prejudicial impact of publicity," saying the anti-Castro community in south Florida may have created partiality during the trial that affected the convictions and subsequent appeals process.

The rights group, while not commenting on the men's guilt or innocence, highlighted questions surrounding their pretrial detention, their access to attorneys and documents that "may have undermined their right to defence," the report said.

Cuba says the five men, known at home as "the five heroes," were sent to Miami to infiltrate violent exile groups at a time when anti-Castro groups were bombing Cuban hotels. They were arrested in 1998. Their incarceration has drawn condemnation in Cuba and abroad.

One of the five is serving a life sentence for allegedly helping Cuba shoot down two unarmed airplanes that were dropping leaflets over the island, killing the Cuban-American pilots.

The five have acknowledged acting as unregistered Cuban agents assigned to report hostile activity from the Cuban exile community or visible signs of U.S. military actions against Cuba, but have denied efforts to breach U.S. national security, according to the Amnesty report.

Last year, the defendants were denied an appeal when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their case.

The defense argued that a fair trial was impossible in a city dominated by anti-Castro politics.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Amnesty asked for closer examination of the circumstances surrounding the group's incarceration.

Images of the men are plastered across billboards throughout Cuba. Their names are also commonly included in speeches given by Cuban officials during major political events.

The report comes at a time when Cuba is in the process of releasing its largest batch of political prisoners in over a decade.

Chile’s Lesser Told Story: The Mapuche Hunger Strike

2010-10-18T06:51:00.001-07:00

by COHA Research Associate Alexandra Reed

Most of the news out of Chile recently has been coming from a dark hole 2200 feet below ground in Copiapó, where 33 trapped miners became an international media sensation. This week, the news from Copiapó is particularly joyful, as the long-awaited rescue mission is finally complete, 70 days after the miners’ ordeal began. For Chile and President Sebastián Piñera, the rescue is a triumph on all accounts—a triumph for human courage, modern engineering, and technical coordination on an unprecedented scale. The men’s story of survival is truly inspirational, and the images of their rescue and subsequent reunion with loved ones are most certainly newsworthy.

Some Chileans, however, may have difficulty reconciling the amount of media attention the miners have received over these past two months with the lack of attention afforded to Chile’s 38 Mapuche hunger strikers during the same time period. As Luis Campos, Director of the School of Anthropology at Chile’s Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, pointed out almost a month ago, “more buried than the miners themselves, the demands and the rights of the indigenous population continue to be flouted and unrecognized in our country.”1 Indeed, the Mapuche activists’ stand against their persecution under Chile’s antiquated anti-terrorism laws seems to have barely registered within Chile, much less in the international press. In contrast, public outrage over the dreadful safety conditions in the San José mine was converted into tangible—and much needed—reforms in mining regulations just one day after the miners were discovered to be alive.2 As Chile celebrates the successful rescue of the miners, it is important to remember Campos’ words, and take a moment to reflect on another group of Chileans whose struggle has not received the attention it deserves.

The Hunger Strike Revisited

Three months ago, on July 12th, 34 jailed Mapuche activists across southern Chile initiated a hunger strike to protest their treatment by the Chilean government. The strike expanded to include a total of 38 Mapuche prisoners, all of whom were awaiting trial for crimes committed in the name of reclaiming their ancestral lands in Chile’s Araucanía region. The hunger strike initially garnered very little media attention, both in Chile and abroad; the protest only began to receive the coverage it warranted when it reached its second month and the condition of several of the strikers became critical, just as Chile was gearing up to celebrate its bicentennial. As the strike dragged into September, dozens of Chilean political and social leaders—including four members of the Chilean Congress’s Human Rights Commission—joined the protest in a high-profile show of solidarity with the Mapuche community.

The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group, representing approximately five percent of the population. Though their struggle to defend ancestral lands in the southern Araucanía region began long before Chile became an independent state, the Chilean government itself was responsible for one of the most brutal and comprehensive campaigns waged against the Mapuche people, the Pacification of the Araucanía (1861-1883). Since then, the Mapuche people have been stripped of the majority of their ancestral lands. For just as long, Mapuche activists have remained locked in land disputes with the government in an attempt to reclaim just a portion of those territories. Frustrated with inadequate responses from those in power, some activists have given up on negotiations and turned to direct action, including arson, land occupations, road blockages, and occasionally, armed assault. Typically targeted in these attacks are private landowners and large logging companies in the south of Chile. While the victims claim otherwise, the Mapuche protestors maintain that their actions fall in the category of social protest.

Under Chile’s old anti-terrorism legislation—a relic of the brutal Pinochet regime—the government was entitled to charge Mapuche activists with acts of terrorism, making them eligible for trial in military courts, as well as unusually harsh sentences.3 In 2004, Human Rights Watch released a report condemning the application of the anti-terrorism law against the Mapuche as a violation of their basic right to due process.4 The strikers demanded that all charges brought against them under the counter-terrorism legislation be dropped, and even more importantly, they requested direct dialogue with the Chilean government regarding the Mapuche struggle for political and territorial autonomy. President Piñera initially refused to respond to the strikers’ demands and enter into negotiations on the grounds that a hunger strike was, in his words, “an illegitimate instrument of pressure in a democracy.”5

In early September, faced with increasing media coverage and pressure to address the strike, the Piñera administration was forced to supplement its strategy of delegitimizing the protest with more concrete action. Piñera took a tentative step in the right direction by pledging to reform the counter-terrorism legislation in question, but he continued to balk at the Mapuche protestors’ pleas for substantive negotiations until September 17th, the day before Chile was set to celebrate its Fiestas Patrias. Needless to say, the timing of Piñera’s agreement to enter into direct talks with Mapuche representatives seemed to have less to do with genuine concern for the strikers, and more to do with his desire to dispel the dark shadow that the hunger strike threatened to cast over Chile’s bicentennial celebrations. Even after agreeing to direct dialogue, Piñera made his opinion of the strikers’ tactics clear: “Let us not confuse the Mapuche people that are participating in this Bicentennial with the situation of the 34 who have chosen the wrong path. The country we shall construct we will build with dialogue, unity, and hard work—not with violence, nor with a hunger strike.”6

The negotiations, which began on September 24th after the bicentennial celebrations had drawn to a close, were facilitated by the Archbishop of Concepción, Ricardo Ezzati. With Archbishop Ezzati’s help, on October 1st, the majority of the protestors called off their hunger strike in exchange for the Chilean government’s agreement to withdraw the charges brought against Mapuche activists under the anti-terrorism legislation (and instead charge them under common criminal law), in addition to making permanent changes to the anti-terrorism legislation and Chile’s military justice system.7

For 14 of the 38 protesters, however, the hunger strike dragged on for another week, until they reached a more comprehensive agreement with the government on October 9th, day 89 of the strike.8 According to their spokesman, Rodrigo Curipán, the initial decision to continue the hunger strike was based on the perception that the government was dragging its feet over modifying the charges against them. Moreover, they pointed to inadequate guarantees that the Chilean prosecutors would not use the anti-terrorism law against Mapuche activists in the future. Curipán explained in an October 5th interview with online Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe that, with respect to the government’s promises, “there is an intention, but nothing concrete. This intention, once the strike is dispelled, may not amount to anything.”9

The Piñera administration managed to convince the remaining strikers of its sincerity in an agreement reached late last week. In the October 9th agreement, the government finally made good on its pledge to withdraw the terrorism charges filed against the Mapuche prisoners. Additionally, Piñera announced his intention to begin immediate discussions regarding the long-overdue introduction of a law recognizing Chile’s indigenous peoples (pueblos originarios) in the constitution.10

Too Much Talk, Not Enough Action?

The Piñera administration’s reliance on discussions (also known as mesas de diálogo) to address the Mapuche conflict is nothing new, cautions Professor Patricia Rodriguez, an expert on Mapuche political mobilization at Ithaca College. Hundreds of these discussions between Mapuche and government representatives have been held since the 1990s, and most have amounted to nothing. In this historical context, Rodriguez explained in an interview with COHA, not only do Piñera’s repeated promises of dialogue lack substance and sincerity, but they also serve to “sideline the hunger strike and the important legal and historical justice issues that the hunger strike is meant to bring attention to.”11

When it comes to the Chilean government’s dealings with the Mapuche people, a historical precedent of superficial dialogue and empty promises certainly gives cause for skepticism. As Chile’s first elected right-wing leader in over 50 years, Piñera is perhaps subject to particular scrutiny with respect to his management of the Mapuche conflict. Piñera’s long-term response to the demands brought forward by the recent hunger strikers could represent a unique opportunity not only for Piñera to improve his own party’s record regarding the Mapuche issue, but also to outshine former president Michelle Bachelet’s center-left Concertación. Piñera has already invited such a comparison, suggesting that he inherited an exacerbated Mapuche conflict from Bachelet’s administration. All of the Mapuche activists involved in the hunger strike were, in fact, jailed as “suspected terrorists” before Piñera assumed the presidency. Bachelet and the Concertación reacted to Piñera’s claims by criticizing his administration’s delayed response to the strike, in addition to putting forth a proposal to remove arson from the list of terrorist acts covered by the Pinochet-era legislation.12 Though the Concertación’s criticisms of Piñera’s management of the strike may be legitimate—and their suggestions constructive—Rodriguez explains that given their own disappointing record with the Mapuche, it seems unlikely that the Concertación would have handled the strike very differently.

Despite her initial campaign promise to break the cycle of destructive relations between the Chilean government and its indigenous population, Bachelet, like her predecessor Ricardo Lagos, ultimately gave in to pressure to maintain the status quo by allowing Mapuche activists to be tried pursuant to the anti-terrorism legislation. Mapuche expert José Bengoa explains that the decision to apply the anti-terrorism legislation against the Mapuche activists was influenced in large part by the Chilean media’s sensationalist coverage of the Mapuche conflict. As quiet as the press has been about the strike itself, Bengoa points out that the mainstream Chilean media has played a crucial role in the conflict between the Mapuche and the government by shaping the dialogue in the years leading up to the hunger strike. According to him:

The ‘terrorism’ in the south was repeated thoughtlessly by the television channels, which constructed—in an irresponsible manner—the impression of un-governability. The Concertación administrations, always fearful of what the newspaper El Mercurio would say to them, made it clear through their actions that [the Mapuche acts] were related to terrorism, and they applied the infamous [anti-terrorist] law. And the downward spiral has continued.13

In response to Piñera’s attempts to blame previous administrations for allowing this spiral to continue, however, Bachelet pointed out that she did propose reforms to the anti-terrorism legislation as well as the military justice system, neither of which received the necessary support from Piñera’s own Alianza party in Congress.14 It seems that Bachelet’s commitment to improving the relationship between Chile’s government and its indigenous population was no match for the sustained media and public pressure to reign in the Mapuche conflict.

Piñera himself certainly does have a dubious record when it comes to his policy on Chile’s indigenous population. When asked about the Mapuche conflict on the campaign trail in August of last year, Piñera responded unequivocally in favor of the application of the anti-terrorism law:

In the Araucanian region, they have committed acts of terrorism, and the government,
instead of applying the anti-terrorist law—save for two exceptions—looks the other way.
And when the government buries its head in the sand, the people think that they can continue to act with impunity.15

Piñera’s opponent, former President Eduardo Frei of the Concertación, was far more measured in his reply, explaining that the government needed to convince the Mapuche people to participate in solutions, rather than imposing solutions upon them. As president from 1994 to 2000, however, Frei seemed incapable of putting this open-minded notion into practice. While the anti-terrorism law was not applied under Frei’s administration, he did allow fast-track prosecutions of Mapuche activists under Chile’s 1958 Law of State Security. As Frei demonstrates, the Concertación has been largely unsuccessful in translating its more tolerant official position towards Chile’s indigenous peoples into serious political reform.

Fundamental Miscommunications Transcend Party Lines

Though it is one thing for the opposition to point out the current administration’s shortcomings and quite another for it to do a better job, the Concertación’s criticism of Piñera is by no means unwarranted. Indeed, Piñera’s initial attempts to skirt the issue of political rights in the strike by steering the debate toward his plans for economic development in the southern region were less than promising. Piñera’s Plan Araucanía, which lists “multiculturalism” and “appreciation for the Mapuche cultural identity” among its principal themes, is not designed to address the issues of political and territorial rights in any capacity.16 Regardless, during initial talks with spokesmen for the strikers, Piñera seemed much more interested in discussing his plans for economic development than listening to the Mapuche demands. As José Bengoa explained in a September 29th interview with IPS journalist Daniela Estrada, “two completely different languages are being spoken here…On one hand, the young Mapuche activists are talking about politics and rights, while the government, in a huge step backwards, is talking about poverty, development and building roads…these are two very different conceptions.”17

Piñera’s seemingly singular focus on development has met with harsh criticism from many in the Mapuche community and beyond, who perceive it largely as a distraction from the concrete political issues at hand. Moreover, Piñera’s development plan may not, in fact, be as beneficial to the majority of the rural indigenous community as it first appears. Rodriguez suggests that Plan Araucanía is hardly the answer to the Mapuche people’s demands:

These are policies that have been adopted in other countries, Colombia being a current example, and they are embedded in language that sounds like a magic solution, but in essence they contribute further to the destruction and displacement of communities. What the Mapuche want is redress, historical redress for years of marginalization, abuse, exclusion, [and] discrimination.18

Indeed, Piñera was unable to entirely avoid the issue of political rights in the October 9th agreement that put a definitive end to the strike. His pledges to recognize Chile’s indigenous peoples in the constitution and to amend the anti-terrorism legislation so that it may no longer be used against Mapuche activists were instrumental in ending the strike, and they are certainly steps in the right direction. However, the Mapuche people are no strangers to empty government promises, and the fundamental issue of their right to ancestral lands remains unsolved.

A Long Road Ahead

Mapuche spokesman Jorge Huenchullán pointed out to Azkintuwe just days before the agreement was signed, “This is not a strike merely for prisoners’ rights, we’re looking to put the subject of our territorial rights on the government’s agenda.”19 It remains to be seen in the months to come whether that item really is on Piñera’s agenda, and whether he will use these reforms as a springboard for more substantial changes in the way the Chilean government relates to the Mapuche as a people, not just the 38 activists in question. It may well be the case that Piñera’s most recent promises, like so many others before them, will turn out to be more symbolic than substantive for the majority of the Mapuche population. Indeed, Rodriguez suggests that Piñera’s reforms will be largely “cosmetic” in nature, as he has no sincere intent to address the Mapuche’s more fundamental demands.

In the wake of the miners’ rescue, Piñera has promised a “radical” overhaul in the way Chile regulates worker safety. While increased safety standards are sorely needed in Chile, so is profound redress for the Mapuche’s centuries-long mistreatment at the hands of the Chilean government. Piñera must do a great deal more than he has during these negotiations in order to convince skeptics such as Rodriguez of his commitment to righting the historic wrongs perpetrated against Chile’s indigenous population.

Lula's allies sweep Senate race, governorships - Summary

2010-10-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Brasilia - The coalition that backs Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to have a two-thirds majority in the Senate and won 12 governorships in the first round of voting, results showed Monday.

Sunday's general election was however not a complete success for the ruling- party camp. Its presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, won the first round of voting, but still must to face off against social democrat Jose Serra in a runoff October 31.

Lula's Workers' Party (PT) and its allies are to have 55 Senate seats beginning in January - up from their current 39, while the opposition goes from 33 down to 22 seats and independents shrink from 10 to four, according to a vote count from Sunday's legislative election. Lula's allies swept the board Sunday: Of 54 Senate seats being chosen, they won 40.

The relevance of the balance of power in the Senate will depend on the outcome of the presidential runoff between Rousseff and Serra.

If Rousseff wins the presidency, she will have a very friendly Senate to work with, in line with the wishes of the outgoing Lula. However, if Serra were to win, he would have to govern in an unfavourable legislative setting.

Rousseff's leftist PT increased its own share from 11 to 15 senators. It is set to be the second-largest in the upper house of the Brazilian Congress, behind its main ally, the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), with 20 seats.

The opposition led by the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), whose presidential candidate Serra managed to hold Rousseff to a runoff, and by the conservative party Democratas (DEM) suffered a historic defeat in the Senate race.

The PSDB, which currently has 14 senators, will from January have only 10, while the DEM went from 18 seats to seven.

No details were immediately available as to the make-up of the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, for which pre-electoral opinion polls had also given Lula and his allies a comfortable lead.

The ruling coalition that backs Lula and Rousseff also carried 12 of the 18 state governorships races that were decided in Sunday's voting.

The PT got back the leadership of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and kept Bahia, Sergipe and Acre. Its allies of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), in turn, comfortably won Ceara, Pernambuco, Piaui and Espirito Santo.

The centrist PMDB, the PT's main ally, kept Rio de Janeiro - Brazil's third most powerful state - and also won Maranhao, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.

However, the social democratic opposition will keep command of Brazil's two most powerful states in both political and economicterms, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. They also won Parana and Tocantins, while their allies of the DEM are to govern the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Santa Catarina.

The state of Amazonas elected a governor of the tiny Party of National Mobilization (PMN).

The election for governor is set to be defined in a runoff in the remaining eight states and in the federal district of Brasilia.