WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #269, MARCH 26, 1995 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. CIA Involvement Revealed in Guatemala Deaths 2. Harbury Ends Hunger Strike, Demands Action 3. Illegal Logging Behind CIA Murder of US Citizen in Guatemala? 4. Mexican Austerity Plan: Crime and Suicide Rates Jump 5. Protests, Strikes Up in Mexico 6. US Business and Toxic Ash: Bringing Mexico to Haiti 7. US Works on "Free Elections" for Haiti 8. Riots Against Bus Fare Hike in the Dominican Republic 9. Salvadoran Unionist Arrested 10. Police Crack Down on Demonstrators in Venezuela 11. Troops Attack Bolivian Teachers, General Strike Called 12. Creditor Nations Restructure Nicaraguan, Bolivian Debts 13. Correction on Brazil in Update #267 14. Upcoming Events in the New York City Area ISSN#: 1068-5332. These updates are published weekly. A one-year subscription is $25 by first class mail. Please send check or money order payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network at 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012). Back issues and source materials are available on request. (Many of our source materials are accessed through NY Transfer; back issues are also available on NY Transfer's OnLine Library.) Subscriptions to the Electronic Edition of this Update are delivered directly to your e-mail box. To subscribe to the electronic edition, send your e-mail address with a check or money order for US $25 payable to Blythe Systems. Mail to: NY Transfer News Collective, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. Feel free to reproduce these updates or reprint any information from them, but please credit us, and send us a copy. We welcome your comments and ideas: send them via e-mail to nicanet@blythe.org. 1. CIA INVOLVEMENT REVEALED IN GUATEMALA DEATHS In a Mar. 22 letter to US president Bill Clinton, US Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) announced that Guatemalan army colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez--a paid informer for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)--was responsible for the 1992 murder of disappeared guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Velasquez and the 1990 murder of US citizen Michael Devine. [New York Times 3/23/95] The next day, Torricelli gave a press conference in Washington DC, explaining that the CIA had known about Bamaca's capture and murder for several years but had concealed the information from US government officials. According to Torricelli, White House and State Department officials received the information between October 1994 and January 1995. Torricelli claims that the US government's Mar. 10 decision to cancel military training funds to Guatemala and to suspend joint training exercises with the Guatemala military [see Update #267, #268] was a response to the Guatemalan government's refusal to question Col. Alpirez. Former US ambassador to El Salvador Robert White pointed out that with that action, the US government was punishing Guatemala for refusing to relinquish information the CIA already had. [Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA Press Release 3/23/95] Alpirez twice attended the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which trains Latin American military officers. In 1970, while the SOA was located at Fort Gulick in Panama, Alpirez took a course in Combat Arms and Support Services. In 1989, Alpirez attended the SOA's prestigious, year-long Command and General Staff College at Fort Benning, Georgia. [Latin American Support Office- Info/SOA Statement 3/23/95] In the late 1980s Col. Alpirez served as a senior official of an intelligence unit within the presidential military guard, according to a Guatemalan Foreign Ministry official. US officials said it was in those years that Col. Alpirez became a paid agent of the CIA, receiving tens of thousands of dollars a year for information. The intelligence unit, known as the Archivo (archives), has been accused by such groups as Amnesty International and the Washington Office on Latin America of assassination, infiltration of civilian agencies and spying on Guatemalans in violation of the nation's constitution. "The Archivo works like the CIA," said Guatemalan Helen Mack, whose anthropologist sister Myrna Mack was murdered in 1990; Archivo agent Noel de Jesus Beteta Alvarez was convicted for the murder. [NYT 3/26/95] Beteta was sentenced on Feb. 12, 1993, to 30 years in prison for killing Mack [see Update #160]. Alpirez was one of several top army officers named by eyewitness Santiago Cabrera Lopez as having participated in the capture and torture of Bamaca and other prisoners [see Update #250]. Cabrera, a member of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), testified on Nov. 3, 1994, at the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH); his testimony confirmed suspicions that URNG member Bamaca had been captured alive in March of 1992 and held for interrogation, not killed in combat as the army claimed. Cabrera told the CIDH that he saw Bamaca and other prisoners alive and under torture in clandestine Guatemalan army custody on several occasions in both March and July of 1992. In March of 1993 the OAS provided the Guatemalan government with the names of the army officers allegedly involved, including Alpirez; the government admitted at the 1994 hearing that it had failed to interrogate any of the officials named. [Press Release from the Law Offices of Jose Pertierra (Washington, DC) 11/4/94] The CIA reportedly learned in October 1991 of Col. Alpirez' role in the June 1990 murder of Michael Devine. The CIA finally took Alpirez off the payroll in 1992, and later that year gave him a lump sum final cash payment of $44,000, according to unnamed intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post. CIA officers made the payment after the Justice Department decided not to pursue a criminal prosecution of Alpirez. The agency went to considerable lengths to deliver the money to Alpirez in person at the remote military garrison he commanded. Alpirez was kept on as a clandestine CIA contact through July 1992, when he allegedly ordered the Bamaca killing. [WP 3/24/95, 3/25/95] President Clinton has warned that he will order the dismissal of anyone at the CIA who deliberately withheld information about the Devine and Bamaca killings. The CIA station chief in Guatemala was reassigned to the agency's headquarters in January after US Ambassador Marilyn McAfee accused him of withholding information about the case from her, officials said. [NYT 3/25/95] One US official said the station chief "sat on the information" about Alpirez' links to the Bamaca killing for a week before passing it along to CIA headquarters, despite intense interest in the matter at the White House. An intelligence source said top CIA officials had concerns that the station chief was "too close" to his contacts in the Guatemalan military, and that these concerns played a role in the decision to remove him. [WP 3/25/95] Law enforcement officials said on Mar. 24 that a review of files at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found no formal record that the CIA had provided them with any information on the Devine murder. But officials familiar with the CIA's version of events challenged that account, saying the agency had given a thorough report of its knowledge of the Devine murder, including the role played by Col. Alpirez, in late 1991. The Justice Department reportedly reviewed the case but found no political motive for Devine's death; only political acts fall under a US anti-terrorism law that makes it a federal crime to kill a US citizen overseas. [NYT 3/25/95] Torricelli said in an interview, "There were no US security concerns in Guatemala that justified a CIA presence there, much less the murder of citizens, including our own. This is the single worst example of the intelligence community being beyond civilian control and operating against our national interest." [NYT 3/23/95] 2. HARBURY ENDS HUNGER STRIKE, DEMANDS ACTION Bamaca's widow, US lawyer Jennifer Harbury, was in the 12th day of a hunger strike outside the White House when Torricelli made his disclosure. [WP 3/24/95] "There is no way out of this for the Guatemalan Army and the State Department and the CIA," said Harbury. "They've been caught, for once and for all." [NYT 3/23/95] On Mar. 23, Harbury said she would suspend her fast that evening; in a statement the same day she said: "I must now learn where my husband is buried, and return to Guatemala to reclaim his body. I cannot leave him tossed like so much trash into an unmarked grave. His bones belong to me. "Next I must take action to make sure that this never happens again to any human being, whether Latin American or US citizen. This brutal and shameful chapter of history must come to a close. I will review all of the documentation as soon as I receive it, and pursue all legal actions available to me. I will also seek hearings on CIA and State Department misconduct not only in my own case, but in Central America. "The time has come to put an end to the death squads, and the US complicity in their activities. My husband is dead. I can now only say, NEVER AGAIN." [Harbury Statement 3/23/95, posted on email by GHRC/USA] While all coverage of the case has focused on Alpirez' role in the Devine and Bamaca killings, it is highly likely that Alpirez was involved in murdering a large number of Guatemalans--quite possibly hundreds--while on the CIA payroll. In a news conference on Oct. 11, 1993, at Guatemala City's Pavoncito prison, former soldiers Francisco Solbal and Tiburcio Hernandez--both serving long sentences for the Devine murder-- stated that higher military officials had ordered them to kill Devine and approximately 50 other people as part of their work in a military death squad [see Update #198]. The two threatened to name those involved, but later withdrew their testimonies and said they had "lied," apparently after receiving threats from the army high command. [NISGUA Rapid Response Alert 11/3/93 from Amnesty International] Concerned individuals are urged to call the US State Department (202-647-4000) to demand that it immediately release all CIA and other US government information on the actions of Alpirez and other CIA informants and agents operating in Guatemala; that a full, independent, in-depth investigation be carried out into CIA involvement in human rights violations and death squad activities in Guatemala and elsewhere; and that any CIA or other US government officials believed to have participated in or covered up such activities be prosecuted. And, as Robert Bernstein of the Central America Response Network in Santa Barbara, CA, pointed out in a message posted on email, "This seems like a good time to demand the disbanding of the CIA again." Members of Congress should also be contacted and asked to support legislation to close the US Army School of the Americas. A seven- day liquid-only fast is being held from Mar. 24 to 30 in Washington, DC to protest the School. For more information contact SOA Watch at 706-682-5369, or info/SOA at PO Box 86, Gilbert, IA 50105, phone/fax: 515-233-8372. 3. ILLEGAL LOGGING BEHIND CIA MURDER OF US CITIZEN IN GUATEMALA? Despite the media furor over the news of CIA involvement in the 1990 murder of US citizen Michael Devine, little if any attention was given to the motive behind his murder. Devine had lived in Guatemala for nearly 20 years [NYT 3/23/95]; he operated a hotel in Poptun, near the Mayan city of Tikal, in Guatemala's northern Peten region. According to an unnamed US diplomat cited in the New York Times, in June 1990 Devine stumbled onto a smuggling operation conducted by the Guatemalan military, possibly involving ancient mahogany trees. That same month he was kidnapped, bound, and nearly decapitated by Guatemalan soldiers. [NYT 3/26/95] Others who have tried to investigate illegal logging in the Peten have been similarly discouraged. Omar Cano, a journalist for Guatemalan daily Siglo XXI, went into exile on Feb. 10, 1993, after receiving constant death threats for his investigations of army links to illegal logging in the Mayan Biosphere ecological reserve in the Peten [see Update #160]. Cano and his traveling companions were brutally beaten two months earlier, on Dec. 2, 1992, by a mob of 100 armed men while on a trip to investigate the illegal logging. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 2/11/93 from AFP] Representatives of the Permanent Commissions (CCPP) of Guatemalan refugees have also accused officials of the government environmental agency CONAP of involvement in illegal logging and trafficking of hardwoods in the Peten. "Since CONAP began to function in the Peten, illegal logging has increased to inconceivable levels," said a CCPP representative. [Cerigua Weekly Briefs 2/7/95] 4. MEXICAN AUSTERITY PLAN: CRIME AND SUICIDE RATES JUMP The Mexican peso rose for two consecutive days Mar. 23-24, closing at 6.815 pesos to the US dollar, and on Mar. 24 the Mexican stock exchange rose more than 6.5%. The New York Times immediately hailed the rallies as "the first signs" that the "tough new recovery plan" the Mexican government introduced on Mar. 9 "may be working" as a way to restore the confidence of foreign investors. [NYT 3/25/95] Other signs pointed in the opposite direction: by Mar. 23 it was clear that a $3 billion credit line private banks offered Mexico in January had fallen through. The group of banks, headed by J.P. Morgan & Co. and Citicorp's Citibank, is now considering a $1 billion credit line. [Financial Times (UK) 3/23/95; Wall Street Journal 3/23/95; NYT 3/24/95] Citicorp, the largest US bank operating in Latin American, announced on Mar. 22 that it had suspended plans to expand its Mexico retail banking business. [WSJ 3/24/95] The Visa credit card consortium is reportedly thinking about pulling out of the country. [La Jornada (Mexico) 3/19/95] Whether or not the austerity plan has restored investor confidence, there are no doubts about the suffering it is causing in Mexico. Labor Secretary Santiago Onate told the Wall Street Journal the week of Mar. 19 that the current economic crisis, including the austerity measures, would eliminate at least a million of the country's 26 million jobs; this was four times his previous estimate. [WSJ 3/24/95] Official figures now show that 400,000 Mexicans were laid off in January alone; at the beginning of March the government had claimed that the combined job loss for January and February was 250,000 [see Update 267]. [NYT 3/25/95] Among the "social costs" of the measures, according to the moderate leftist daily La Jornada, are "the increase in robberies and assaults which attack the security of the citizenry...and the rise in the rate of suicides for economic reasons." On Mar. 18, for example, Mexico City (with a population of about 20 million) had three suicides and one attempted suicide. [LJ 3/19/95] The capital's forensic medicine department reports 127 suicides in the first 80 days of 1995, up by nearly a third over the rate last year. The total for 1994 was 371, or more than one a day; when former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari took office in 1988, the city's suicide rate was one or two a week. [El Diario- La Prensa 3/23/95 from AFP] Relatives have directly attributed about 50 of this year's suicides to financial problems. [Independent (UK) 3/22/95] The crime wave, meanwhile, has even reached the family of Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. On Mar. 17 three moonlighting officers of the federal judicial police tried to carjack the vehicle taking the president's 18-year old son Ernesto home from school. [Washington Post 3/26/95] The suffering may already be spilling over into the US, whose government has directed much of Mexico's economic policy for the last decade. In January the US had its worst trade deficit ever for one month, $12.23 billion. US exports to Mexico fell 10% from the month before, leaving a $863 million deficit with the smaller country; the deficit might reach $15 billion by the end of the year. Exports to South and Central America fell 17%, cutting the US trade surplus with countries in those regions by two-thirds. The Clinton administration is now silent about its recent claims that trade with Mexico created 700,000 US jobs last year. [WSJ 3/23/95; NYT 3/23/95] 5. PROTESTS, STRIKES UP IN MEXICO Mexicans are unlikely to benefit from the trade surplus with the US. In 1994 the country's 2,064 maquiladoras (assembly plants which are generally owned by foreigners) accounted for 43.8% of Mexico's $60.8 billion in exports. The industry's exports grew by 20.2% last year, compared to a 3.8% growth rate in Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP). [LJ 3/19/95] "The only ones who benefit [from the economic crisis] are the American bosses," a worker at a US-owned furniture factory in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, told the Wall Street Journal. The workers complained that the owners won't give pay increases despite the peso's 50% fall against the US dollar in just three months. [WSJ 3/21/95] Some 13,000 Ciudad Juarez-area workers have struck against the maquiladoras since the beginning of the year; in most cases they won raises. The 200 workers at the Dulces Arbor plant won a 20% increase in the middle of the month, while 1,000 workers at Coclisa wildcatted on Mar. 18, blocking the plant's entrance and raising red and black flags, to demand a 30% raise. There are strike pressures in other sectors as well. On Mar. 18 some 20 unions representing university workers from the Federal District and 10 states decided to push for a general strike in the universities to demand a 50% wage increase. [LJ 3/19/95] Mexico City had 100 separate protests on one day recently. [Independent 3/22/95] Some 3,000 indigenous marchers from the southern state of Chiapas camped out in the city's main plaza, the Zocalo, for 11 days in the middle of the month to demand that the government investigate landownership cases in Chiapas, eliminate the rightwing paramilitary groups known as White Guards and free local leaders jailed in February on charges of belonging to the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). The Chiapanecos returned home when the government refused to meet the demands [Equipo Pueblo Mexico Update Vol. 2, #23, 3/23/95], but on Mar. 18 another 3,000 indigenous people arrived in the Zocalo after marching more than a week from the southern state of Guerrero, in a protest organized by the state's 500 Years of Resistance council. [LJ 3/19/95] Even the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) feels it should be doing something, according to its general secretary, Luis Felipe Calderon. "But there is also the danger that social unrest might escape political control," he says, to explain the party's low profile. "Mexico is like a tinderbox now. We will not be the ones who ignite the match." [FT 3/24/95] Meanwhile, EZLN spokesperson "Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos," in hiding since the government began a military offensive on Feb. 9, has been fighting back with a flood of communiques and letters released to Mexican newspapers. Marcos thanks Mexican civil society for its efforts to hold back the government's military drive, and also thanks the "good people in many parts of the world" who protested against the offensive. "...[T]hese people live closer to Mexico than those who live in Los Pinos," Marcos writes, referring to the Mexican president's residence. The EZLN literary counter-offensive includes jokes, anecdotes about the rebels' "strategic withdrawal," a dialogue on neoliberalism with a beetle nicknamed "Durito," and full quotations (in English) of Shakespeare's Sonnets 23 and 29. Sonnet 29 begins: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state," and ends: "I scorn to change my state with kings." [EZLN communiques 2/20/95, 3/11/95, 3/14/95, 3/17/95 from LJ 3/5/95 and 3/19/95 and National Commission for Democracy in Mexico 3/22/95 and 3/24/95] 6. US BUSINESS AND TOXIC ASH: BRINGING MEXICO TO HAITI US under-secretary of state Strobe Talbott made a two-day visit to Haiti Mar. 7-8, accompanied by Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, members of the US Congress and State Department and a number of US businesspeople. At a ceremony on Mar. 8 the visitors signed contracts, launched the Haitian American Business Development Council, and announced the opening of a US Commerce Department office, a $65 million loan agreement for businesses from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and a $750,000 commitment from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for technical assistance to Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's economic commission. The US is also planning missions to study Haiti's power, telecommunications and port infrastructures. The missions would "alert US firms to the trade and investment opportunities arising in this sector as a result of Haiti's expansion and modernization efforts, which are a precursor to the anticipated privatization of this sector." [Haiti Info Vol 3, #11, 3/11/95; Haiti Progres (NY) 3/8-14/95] The H. H. Cutler company, a Michigan footwear manufacturer, has announced that it will reopen its operations in Haiti, employing 1,500 workers. [Haiti en Marche (Miami) 3/15- 21/95] The return of neoliberal economic policies to Haiti is meeting opposition from various sectors. On Mar. 4 representatives of six unions in the public sector--covering workers in the port authority, the flour mill and the water, cement, electricity and telephone companies--signed a declaration asking the government "to halt the process of privatization of state industries" and to allow "a public debate so the people can know the consequences." The unions say that the enterprises would all make a profit for the government if they were run without the corruption tolerated under previous regimes. [Haiti Info 3/11/95; HP 3/8-14/95] The US-based Haitian weekly Haiti en Marche--which has supported all of Aristide's policies, including his acceptance of the September 1994 US occupation--complains that Aristide is now embracing the same US-sponsored economic policies that hastened the downfall of the hated dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. The paper notes that neoliberal policies have brought disaster even to Mexico, "a giant of the Third World" in comparison to tiny Haiti. [HEM 3/15- 21/95] Haiti continues to be plagued by one of the deals previous Haitian governments made with US companies. In 1988 some 2,000 tons of toxic ash from Philadelphia were dumped at the northwestern city of Gonaives. The ash lies in an open site, and according to the US-based environmental organization Greenpeace, water and soil samples collected last December show lead, cadmium and other heavy metals are leaching from the ash into the ground. Greenpeace is demanding that the city of Philadelphia pay for the waste's return to the US. "US willingness to allow children to be poisoned by US toxic waste makes a mockery of Haiti's right to self-determination," according to Greenpeace's Marcelo Furtado. Meanwhile, the US is reportedly trying to use talks that opened in Senegal on Mar. 15 to overturn the Basel Convention ban on the export of hazardous wastes to the Third World. [Greenpeace press release 3/14/95] 7. US WORKS ON "FREE ELECTIONS" FOR HAITI Forces in the US are starting to express concern about the Haitian elections now scheduled for June 4. Candidates will run for some 2,000 local offices, for 18 of 27 Senate seats and for all 83 posts in the Chamber of Deputies. Pro-Aristide forces are expected to win heavily. [Washington Post 3/22/95] US agencies are hard at work preparing for the elections. The National Democratic Institute, an affiliate of the US Democratic Party with funding from USAID, has been giving representatives of the traditional anti-Aristide parties lessons in "democracy." The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a USAID sub- contractor, is working with "over 600 community organizations," according to IOM director James Purcell, to teach people "about participation in a democratic form of government." IOM, which has a local budget in the millions, has been working in Haiti for two years. Previously the organization processed applicants for political asylum in the US; during this work the IOM was able to build up a computerized data base on the 60,000 people, mostly from the democratic and grassroots movements, who wanted to flee the 1991-94 military regime. [Haiti Info 3/11/95] These efforts are not enough for Lawrence Pezzullo, Clinton's special adviser on Haiti in 1993 and early 1994. In an op-ed co- authored with his son, Ralph Pezzullo, the diplomat charged that pro-Aristide forces were packing electoral boards. Aristide is either "leading the move to consolidate power at the expense of political opponents or permitting the more radical elements in his Lavalas movement a free hand..." Aristide needs to promote "political stability" to "attract the private investment that his country desperately needs." The Pezzullos cite a "former member of the coalition that supported Aristide's presidential candidacy in 1990" to the effect that "paramilitary groups would emerge if the political right is not given an opportunity to participate fully in the political process. Political violence and even civil war are possible in this highly polarized society." [WP 3/22/95] In some ways the civil war has already started. The murder rate in February was about five a week; nine people were murdered in the first week of March [see Update #268]; in the second week the toll jumped to 25, 10 of them suspected robbers lynched by angry mobs. [El Diario-La Prensa 3/23/95 from AP] The homicide rate is now about the same as under the military dictatorship, when between 13 and 19 Haitians were murdered each week [see #246]. 8. RIOTS AGAINST BUS FARE HIKE IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Four people were killed, dozens injured and hundreds arrested during street protests from Mar. 20 to 23 in various neighbhorhoods of the northern part of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Students and other residents were protesting a bus fare hike from two pesos ($0.15) to five ($0.38). [El Diario-La Prensa 3/26/95 from EFE] [Some sources said the fare was increased by one peso.] The price hike was considered unjustified since there was no corresponding recent increase in fuel prices. [ED-LP 3/21/95] Two demonstrators, 19-year old Jorge Urena and 22-year old Pedro Castillo Rojas, were killed on the night of Mar. 20 in separate incidents as police tried to quell the riots. [ED-LP 3/22/95] A number of buses were burned that day, as well as some luxury vehicles with official government plates. [ED-LP 3/21/95] The protests continued on Mar. 21 as stores were looted, vehicles were damaged and burned, and several people were injured. Two journalists of the newspaper Hoy were also attacked; the source did not say if they were injured. National police chief Brig. Gen. Luis Alberto Nunez Guzman ordered one police officer arrested for participating in the incident in which Urena was killed, and ordered other officers to control the street protests without committing excesses. [ED-LP 3/22/95] Another police officer, Rafael Valdez Mateo, died after receiving three bullet wounds in the chest on Mar. 22. [ED-LP 3/23/95 from EFE] The demonstrations finally forced the transport association to reverse its decision and abandon the fare hike. The final protests were held on Mar. 23 in two of the neighborhoods after police shot to death Ruddy Arcadio de los Santos, a janitor of a local hospital, as he stood in his home with a towel around his waist and a toothbrush in his hand. The city was calm on Mar. 24; Armed Forces secretary Adm. Ivan Vargas Cespedes ordered the withdrawal of the troops and assault vehicles that were stationed in several neighborhoods. [ED-LP 3/26/95 from EFE] 9. SALVADORAN UNIONIST ARRESTED On Mar. 20, Secretary General Juan Jose Huezo of the National Federation of Salvadoran Workers (FENASTRAS) was arrested by the National Civilian Police while at the negotiating table at the JATEX maquiladora (assembly plant) in the El Progreso free trade zone in Santa Tecla, west of San Salvador. Media sources said Huezo was charged with "aggression, violation of private property, and resisting arrest." The police have beaten Huezo, according to FENASTRAS. A series of recent incidents have focused national attention on the situation in El Salvador's maquiladoras. On Feb. 24, 65 workers at the JATEX factory were fired when management discovered they belonged to a union. Previously, over 1,000 maquiladora workers at the Mandarin International factory were fired to prevent the creation of a trade union there. In response, and after a lockout, all the workers at the free trade zone of San Marcos demonstrated on Feb. 8 in one of the largest organized maquiladora actions ever in El Salvador. Also at San Marcos, on Mar. 1, a worker suffering from acute gastroenteritis died after she was refused permission to leave work to see a doctor. Her co-workers, who took up a collection to cover her funeral expenses, were then beaten and fired. Initially, President Armando Calderon Sol responded to public outrage by stating that "abuses cannot be allowed," though officials at the Ministry of Labor have complained that their office lacks the resources to investigate and prevent such abuses. Calderon is now supporting claims by maquila owners that union organizing is being orchestrated by the US labor movement in order to sabotage Salvadoran maquiladoras and return jobs to the US. For more information, contact the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador at PO Box 1801, New York, NY 10159, 212-229-1290. [CISPES Action Alert 3/21/95] 10. POLICE CRACK DOWN ON DEMONSTRATORS IN VENEZUELA Venezuelan police arrested at least 31 people--16 of whom were under 18 years old--in a student demonstration on Mar. 22 in the capital, Caracas. The protesters, many with their faces covered, threw rocks, disarmed a police officer, blocked streets with burning tires and set a vehicle on fire. The students were protesting the shooting death of student Richard Paez on Mar. 16 by a sub-inspector of the political police (DISIP) during demonstrations in the city of Maracay. The Mar. 22 protest was the third consecutive day of student demonstrations in several Venezuelan cities, including Caracas, Maracay, Valencia and Merida. The students have been rebelling against the high cost of living and the refusal of bus conductors to accept special student fares. [El Diario-La Prensa 3/23/95 from combined wire services] 11. TROOPS ATTACK BOLIVIAN TEACHERS, GENERAL STRIKE CALLED The Bolivian Workers Central (COB) withdrew from the negotiating table on Mar. 22 and called for an open-ended general strike after army and police troops used tear gas to disperse some 3,500 rural teachers who were marching to La Paz for a demonstration, and after police arrested 27 teachers at union offices in La Paz and Cochabamba. The government said the marches were broken up because they "turned violent," and warned that none of the marchers would be allowed to reach the city. (In fact, many of the marchers managed to escape the army cordon and arrive in La Paz.) The arrested union leaders have been charged with sedition and conspiracy, and the government has refused to negotiate their release. Government officials began negotiations with the COB at the beginning of March over a package of demands from several different labor sectors, including demands for a salary increase, changes in the government's structural reform laws, and a new policy on the cultivation of coca leaf. Some 80,000 teachers are challenging the Law of Education Reform--the first such reform in more than 40 years--which is supposed to incorporate education in native indigenous languages and teacher training. Teachers oppose the law because it involves privatization of the public education system, and changes rules on union membership and salary raises. [El Diario-La Prensa 3/23/95 from EFE] 12. CREDITOR NATIONS RESTRUCTURE NICARAGUAN, BOLIVIAN DEBTS The Paris Club of international creditor nations has forgiven some $500 million of Nicaragua's debt, official sources reported in Managua on Mar. 23. The Nicaraguan government is seeking to bring its $11.7 billion foreign debt down to some $2.2 billion this year. According to Presidency Minister Antonio Lacayo, the Paris Club decision will have an immediate impact on the economy, since Nicaragua will be able to avoid paying some $40 million in interest payments, which can then be shifted to the productive sector. The Nicaraguan delegation that took part in the Paris negotiations will soon travel to Israel where it will meet in the first week of April with representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank to seek more debt restructuring. [Diario Las Americas (Miami) 3/25/95 from AFP] The Paris Club announced on Mar. 24 that it has also forgiven $500 million of Bolivia's debt, which had totalled $4.2 billion by the end of 1993. The creditor nations present at the negotiations congratulated the Bolivian government for implementing the first stages of a structural adjustment plan imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nicaragua and Bolivia have now joined several African nations in benefitting from the terms of Naples, a set of new rules on debt restructuring established in July of 1994 at the summit of G-7, the group of seven developed nations. The Naples terms involve restructuring of the debts of the poorest and most indebted nations, allowing as much as 67% of a country's debts with a particular group or financial body to be forgiven, while the previous limit was 50%. [El Diario-La Prensa 3/26/95] 13. CORRECTION In Update #267, we misspelled the first name of the suspected thief shot and killed by police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His full name is Cristiano Moura Mesquita de Melo. 14. UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE NEW YORK CITY AREA For more information, call NSN at 212-674-9499. Events listed are not necessarily endorsed by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network. 3/29 WED, 12 PM - Brown Bag Lunch with Doris Tijerino, FSLN Commander and member of Nicaragua's National Assembly. Free. NACLA office, 475 Riverside Drive rm 604. 3/30 THU, 5 PM - Anti-Police Brutality March. 1 Police Plaza. Call Nat'l Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, 212-614-5355. 3/31 FRI, 1 PM - Brown Bag Lunch with FSLN Commander Doris Tijerino. Free. MADRE, 121 W 27th St rm 301. 212-627-0444. 3/31 FRI, 6 PM - Cuban youth leaders Kenia Serrano & Rogelio Polanco speak. Baruch College, 17 Lex Ave Room 4 North. 4/1 SAT, 9 AM-6 PM - Out From Under The Bell Curve, teach-in on confronting right-wing ideology. $12 prereg, $15/$5 door. PS 41, W 11th St & 6th Ave. Initiating sponsor: The Brecht Forum. 4/1 SAT, 3PM - "Tourism and Women's Lives in Cuba," report on trip, with Cuban videos "Oggus" and "Transparent Woman." Center for Cuban Studies, 124 W 23rd St, 2nd fl. 212-242-0559. 4/4 TUE, 6:30 PM - Project Censored Awards Ceremony. $10-$15. Columbia School of Journalism, 116th & Bway. Learning Alliance, 212-226-7171. -- + NY Transfer has moved! + + NY Transfer Blythe Internet + + 212-979-0464 <== NEW PHONE NUMBERS ==> 212-979-0440 + + 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 + + e-mail: nyt@blythe.org + >