WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #282, JUNE 25, 1995 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Immigrants Trash INS Prison in "Self-Defense" 2. New Loans as Mexico Expels 3 Priests 3. Judge Killed in Mexico Bus Scandal 4. Mexico's "Political Breakdown": Tabascogate, Ruiz Massieu 5. Mexico & Guatemala Trade Tips on Counter-Insurgency 6. Guatemala Pressures US, Fears More Bodies Will Be Found 7. Election Miracles in Haiti 8. Nicaragua: Workers, Farmers Battle Government Over Land 9. Chile: One Army Officer Goes to Jail 10. Chile: Rome Court Sentences Contreras to 20 Years 11. Argentine Slump, Brazil Trade Deficit 12. US Missionaries Killed in Colombia 13. Other News: El Salvador, Counterterrorism, Cuba 14. Upcoming Events in the New York City Area ISSN#: 1068-5332. The Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. 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, which distributes our e-mail edition; 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 as Weekly News Update on the Americas, and send us a copy. We welcome your comments and ideas: send them via e-mail to nicanet@blythe.org. * 1. IMMIGRANTS TRASH INS PRISON IN "SELF-DEFENSE" On June 18 some 300 immigrants being held at the privately-run Esmor Immigration Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, chased out the guards, trashed the facility and held off federal, state and local law enforcement agents for nearly six hours. Police finally threw a flash grenade into a barricade the prisoners had set up and stormed the facility, leaving 20 detainees with minor injuries. No officers were hurt. The detainees at Esmor are mostly asylum-seekers with no criminal history. "They were really acting in self defense," said Peter Schey, an attorney at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, who filed a class action suit against Esmor in April. According to Schey and other activists, detainees had to stay inside the crowded, windowless facility for months while awaiting hearings. Some detainees say they were physically and sexually assaulted by guards, forced to take anti-depressant drugs, denied food, and constantly insulted with ethnic slurs. The Esmor detention center was opened last August; Attorney General Janet Reno launched a probe into conditions at the facility earlier this month after repeated complaints, and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials had been inspecting the site for two weeks when the incident occurred. [El Daily News (NY) 6/19/95] Esmor Correctional Services, the Melville, Long Island-based private company that is paid $8 million a year to operate the facility, manages 10 correction and detention programs in New York, New Jersey, Texas and Washington. [EDN 6/20/95] INS officials said on June 19 that they expect the center to reopen in 45 days and that it will continue under Esmor's management; Union County, NJ prosecutor Andrew Ruotolo said he would file a civil suit if necessary to keep that from happening. [New York Times 6/20/95] Ruotolo said that only a dozen employees--who were trained for three hours and paid $7 an hour--were guarding the center at the time of the rebellion. [EDN 6/20/95] In an interview on June 20, Esmor chairperson James F. Slattery claimed that the INS was responsible for the uprising because it ordered the center built for stays averaging 90 days, while in fact delays in processing cases meant the detainees were stuck there for much longer periods. [NYT 6/21/95] But assistant prosecutor Michael Lapolla said, "Esmor put minimal effort into this place. If privatization is the future then we're all in for big trouble." [NYT 6/20/95] 2. NEW LOANS AS MEXICO EXPELS 3 PRIESTS On June 21 the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a $1.25 billion loan package for Mexico, with $750 million going to the banking system and $500 million to social programs. It was the largest loan ever approved by the IDB in a single day. On June 22 the World Bank approved a similar $1.51 billion loan package, with $1 billion for the banking system and $500 million for social programs. The banking system loan is the largest single loan in the World Bank's history. These are in addition to the $50 billion bailout package the US and international institutions provided Mexico in February. "The loans are a measure of our confidence that the Mexican economy remains fundamentally sound," said Shahid Javed Burkie, World Bank vice president for Latin America. [Associated Press 6/23/95; Financial Times (UK) 6/19/95, 6/21/95] As the World Bank passed its loans on June 22, the Mexican government arrested three foreign Catholic priests who had worked with indigenous campesinos in the southern state of Chiapas; they were charged with "diverse illicit activities" and deported the next day. The priests are Loren Laroye Riebe of Los Angeles, parish priest in Yajalon for the past 18 years; Jorge Alberto Baron Gutlein of Argentina, parish priest in Venustiano Carranza; and Rodolfo Izal Elorz of Spain, who worked in Sabanilla. "The local people are going to take this as a slap against the guys who were trying to mediate peace," Riebe told the New York Times. The priests worked with San Cristobal de las Casas bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the official mediator in talks aimed at ending the 18-month old rebellion by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). [Reuter 6/23/95; Diario Las Americas (Miami) 6/24/95 from AFP; Washington Post 6/24/95 from AP; NYT 6/25/95] The Mexican government continues to hold 19 Mexicans arrested last February as EZLN members, including video journalist Javier Elorriaga Berdegue and his wife Maria Gloria Benavides ('Elisa'). All deny belonging to the EZLN. The government has failed to produce any evidence except confessions the prisoners say were coerced. Elorriaga says it is "curious" that they are being charged with "terrorism," while in the legislation for the peace talks the EZLN itself is not. The Javier Elorriaga and Maria Gloria Benavides Liberation Committee charges that the couple's year-old son has been sick because of poor medical attention in the prison where he is staying with his mother. Protests can be faxed to Mexican governance secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragan at 011-525-546-7388, with copies to the Interfaith Center in Tacoma, WA, at 206-383-2672. [La Jornada (Mexico) 6/4/95; Anderson Valley Advertiser (California) 6/14/95; Latin American Support Office release 6/21/95] 3. JUDGE KILLED IN MEXICO BUS SCANDAL On June 18 an unknown assailant shot and killed Mexico City assistant prosecutor Jesus Humberto Priego Chavez as he stood outside his home. Priego Chavez had been responsible for gathering evidence against 11 jailed leaders of the Route 100 Urban Passenger Auto Transport Workers Union (SUTAUR 100). The union represents the 13,000 employees of Route 100, Mexico City's main bus line, which was declared bankrupt on Apr. 8; the union leaders are charged with corruption. Two days later, on June 20, the body of former Federal District (DF) judge Abraham Polo Uscanga was found in an office building. He had been shot dead the night before; the authorities ruled out the possibility of suicide. Polo Uscanga had quit his post several weeks earlier, saying he had been forced out by DF chief justice Saturnino Aguero Aguirre because of his refusal to authorize a warrant for five of the jailed SUTAUR leaders. He charged that he had been pressured by Aguero twice before, once when he refused to support a case promoted by former federal finance secretary Pedro Aspe and once when he released eight people charged in January 1994 with a Mexico City car bombing allegedly in support of the EZLN uprising. Two weeks before his death, Polo Uscanga said that after his resignation he received death threats; on Apr. 27 he was kidnapped, beaten and tortured by individuals who wanted to know if he was linked to leftist groups. He denied being opposed to the government and said he had been a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for 35 years. He was the third person to die in the Route 100 bankruptcy. On Apr. 10 the body of DF transport and highways secretary Luis Miguel Moreno Gomez was found in his office, shot twice in the heart. The death was ruled a suicide [see Update #272]. [Equipo Pueblo Mexico Update Vol. 2, #35, 6/21/95; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 6/21/95 from EFE; El Daily News (NY) 6/22/95 from Reuter; FT 6/21/95, 6/23/95; NYT 6/21/95] All of SUTAUR's members were laid off when Route 100 was declared bankrupt, but most have refused to accept their severance pay and have kept Mexico City traffic tied up with frequent demonstrations. The union, which is openly leftist and has sent humanitarian aid to Zapatista-controlled areas in Chiapas, charges that the government's goal is to privatize the bus line and break a powerful union that remains independent of the PRI- dominated Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM) [see Update #272]. DF regent (mayor) Oscar Espinoza Villarreal told the New York Times that Route 100 was "a great Frankenstein" that at one time supported 28,000 workers. [NYT 6/21/95] But a study the federal Chamber of Deputies commissioned from the Consultores Asociados firm in April showed that due to productivity agreements between labor and management, Route 100 had a ratio of three workers to two buses. This was "one of the lowest ratios...among the urban transport companies in the world," the study said. [LJ 5/21/95] A dissident from another union group charges that the DF government has contracted goons to help break SUTAUR. The same goons reportedly were responsible for a 1990 attack on dissident workers at the Ford Motor plant in Cuautitlan, outside Mexico City; one dissident was killed in the incident [see Updates #241 and #250]. [LJ 6/18/95] Thousands of SUTAUR members marched in Judge Polo Uscanga's funeral procession on June 21; none of his colleagues attended. [FT 6/23/95] On June 23, more than 10,000 SUTAUR members, teachers and farmers held separate marches in downtown Mexico City, creating chaos in public transport. [ED-LP 6/25/95 from AP] Mayor Espinoza, Chief Justice Aguero and former finance secretary Aspe will all be called in for questioning about the Polo Uscanga case, DF attorney general Jose Antonio Gonzalez Fernandez told reporters on June 21. [AP 6/22/95] Polo Uscanga reportedly wrote a letter on June 17 holding Aguero responsible for anything that might happen to him or his family. [DLA 6/24/95 from EFE] 4. MEXICO'S "POLITICAL BREAKDOWN": TABASCOGATE, RUIZ MASSIEU Mexico's recent political violence "does not stem from ordinary social disorder," according to federal deputy Marco Rascon of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). "It is a political breakdown--a breakdown of the rule of law and of the practice of negotiation between groups in power." [Christian Science Monitor 6/23/95] "...[T]he country is approaching a plunge into violence and non-governability," Mexican Academy for Human Rights director Sergio Aguayo Quezada wrote in the Mexico City daily La Jornada on June 21. [Mexico Update 6/21/95] At a June 18 press conference, leaders of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) announced that they were walking out of electoral reform talks with the government over what they claim was a fraudulent PRI victory in May 28 gubernatorial elections in the southeastern state of Yucatan; the PAN says it will demonstrate if PRI candidate Victor Cervera Pacheco tries to take office, and that the state may become ungovernable. [EDN 6/20/95 from Reuter] The PRD was already boycotting the reform talks to push its demand for government action on "Tabascogate"--evidence that the PRI illegally bought its Nov. 20, 1994 victory in the southern state of Tabasco. The PRD has given the attorney general's office 16 cartons of financial records which indicate that the PRI spent 60 times the legal limit on the race [see Update #281]. The PAN, which has generally supported the PRI on most economic and political issues, is now backing the PRD's demand for Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado to step down. In exchange the conservative party is seeking PRD support for its campaign to overturn the Yucatan vote. During the week of June 15 PAN general secretary Felipe Calderon Hinojosa became the first PAN leader ever to visit the PRD headquarters. "The hour has come to take solid political action across the country," he said afterwards. [CSM 6/21/95] [Other contentious elections are coming up: July 9 municipal elections in the northern states of Durango and Chihuahua (which has a PAN governor) and Aug. 6 gubernatorial elections in Baja California Norte, which the PAN won in 1989. The next hot race after that will be in Michoacan, where the PRD is favored despite sharp divisions within the party. Municipal elections are scheduled for Chiapas in October. [LJ 6/18/95]] The crisis atmosphere is exacerbated by the refusal of last year's two major assassinations to go away. On June 22 in Newark, NJ, US federal judge Ronald Hedges rejected Mexico's request for the extradition of former Mexican federal assistant attorney general Mario Ruiz Massieu. Backed by the US government, Mexico wanted Ruiz Massieu extradited to face charges that he had sabotaged the investigation into the September 1994 slaying of his own brother, PRI general secretary Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Hedges ruled that testimony against the former prosecutor had been obtained through torture and was "incredible and unreliable." Ruiz Massieu, who says he will be murdered if he is returned to Mexico, remains in jail pending a ruling next month on a second extradition request; in this one the Mexican government charges Ruiz Massieu with embezzling $750,000. [Los Angeles Times 6/23/95; NYT 6/23/95; Wall Street Journal 6/23/95; WP 6/23/95] On June 22 the Mexican daily El Financiero reported that Mario Aburto Martinez, who confessed to the March 1994 assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, has made a recorded statement to his lawyer recanting his confession and saying that there were three other people who looked like him at the murder scene. [ED-LP 6/23/95 from AFP] Correction: Following our source, in Update #281 we reported that if the Tabascogate charges are correct, the PRI spent $133 for each vote it received. This was based on the peso's current exchange rate; at the time, the price per vote would work out to $234. 5. MEXICO & GUATEMALA TRADE TIPS ON COUNTER-INSURGENCY Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon spent June 8 and 9 on an official visit in Guatemala. Zedillo and Guatemalan President Ramiro de Leon Carpio signed six accords during the visit, covering technical cooperation between the economic and development agencies of the two countries; public health; natural disasters; trafficking of drugs and archeological monuments; and nuclear energy. [Cerigua Weekly Briefs #22, 6/14/95] According to the New York Times, relations between Guatemala and Mexico have warmed up as a result of the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico. According to unnamed "Guatemalan military and government officials" cited by the article, Guatemala's armed forces--which have been fighting a counterinsurgency war since the early 1960s- -"are now providing informal military assistance to their Mexican counterparts." The unnamed sources explained that in return for this aid, Guatemala expects Mexico to press Guatemalan guerrillas "to be more flexible" in negotiations currently under way to bring the war to an end. The article said a delegation of Mexican military officials visited recently to seek advice from their Guatemalan colleagues. "They came to ask about our experience in tactics, on explosives and on guerrilla counterinsurgency," a Guatemalan military officer is quoted as saying. [NYT 6/6/95] Two bombs exploded in Guatemala City the night before Zedillo's arrival, causing property damages but no injuries. One of the devices was launched at the house of congressional president and former dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. Rios Montt said the attack was the result of personal differences with two unnamed army officers; he said he would name the source of his information only if the US gave him permission. Rios Montt's critics say he may have staged the bombing in order to gain sympathy and press coverage. Rios Montt insists he should be allowed to run for president; the Constitution prohibits the candidacy of former coup leaders. [Cerigua Weekly Briefs #22, 6/14/95] 6. GUATEMALA PRESSURES US, FEARS MORE BODIES WILL BE FOUND The Guatemalan attorney general's office has announced it intends to take legal action to pressure the US State Department to identify the exact location where murdered guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca is buried. [Diario Las Americas 6/24/95 from EFE] US lawyer Jennifer Harbury has been demanding the exhumation of her husband's body; Attorney General Ramses Cuestas says that Bamaca's exhumation will take place when the US gives more information. The US State Department said it had information that Bamaca's body was buried in the Cabanas military base in San Marcos department [see Update #281]. "What we need now is for them to be more precise; we are not going to start digging holes like a mole," said Cuestas. [El Daily News 6/23/95 from Reuter] Based on accounts from area residents, Harbury believes the army is trying to hide the presence at the Cabanas military base of one of the country's largest clandestine cemeteries. "In the 1980s they arrested a lot of people, tortured them and buried them right there," said one resident who asked to remain anonymous. Guatemalan vice president Arturo Herbruger said that Bamaca's body wouldn't be found at the base, but that they would find "other unidentifed skeletons." While this is not the first time that forensic experts have carried out an exhumation in a clandestine cemetery, it would be the first one at a military base. "If we let them stick their paws into this base, afterwards they will want to do it in all the others in the country, and this is inconceivable..." said a military officer from the base. [Inter Press Service 6/17/95] According to the Mutual Support Group (GAM) for relatives of the disappeared, President Ramiro de Leon Carpio--Guatemala's former human rights attorney general--has information about other clandestine cemeteries at military bases. GAM criticized the president's silence on the issue. [El Diario-La Prensa 6/21/95 from Notimex] 7. ELECTION MIRACLES IN HAITI Haitians were to vote on June 25 for all 83 national deputies, 18 out of 27 senators, 133 municipal councils, and 564 members of district councils. Runoffs are scheduled for July 23. [International Liaison for President Aristide Update 6/21/95] The elections are the first since the US and UN began a military occupation of the country in September 1994. The US and other foreign sources are paying for all but 6% of the electoral budget. In addition, the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Republican Party's section of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was to spend $400,000 on educational programs, while the National Democratic Institute (NDI) had already spent $550,000 by the middle of June. The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)--a section of the AFL-CIO with longstanding links to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)--has been organizing unions and taking out full-page ads. The European International Organization for Migrations (OIM) now has 717 projects in Haiti and has spent at least $7.5 million. [Haiti Info Vol. 3, #18, 6/17/95] The IRI has issued a 300-page report denouncing the role of the government of left-populist president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the elections. The IRI favors rightist candidates linked to the bloody 1991 coup that drove Aristide into a three-year exile. [Washington Post 6/25/95] Leftist independent candidates would seem to have more to complain about. Picture symbols have been left off the ballot lines of 113 independent candidates, including the popular singer Manno Charlemagne. Charlemagne, who opposed the US occupation, is running for mayor of Port-au-Prince against incumbent mayor Evans Paul ("K-Plim"), who is close to the US embassy and whose political organization has received tens of thousands of dollars from the US. The majority of Haitians are illiterate and cannot identify candidates without their picture symbols. The ballots were printed by a US firm, Sequoia Pacific System of Exeter, CA. [New York Newsday 6/21/95] [Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) president Anselme Remy had objected strongly to having the printing done outside Haiti; see Update #272.] Many mysteries surround the voter registration process. The CEP claims that 3,217,593 voters were registered as of May 10. The US-based liberal Human Rights Watch organization writes that "many observers view the CEP figure...with skepticism." ["Haiti: Human Rights Conditions Prior to the June 1995 Elections," Human Rights Watch/Americas June 1994] Remy now says the figure is 3.5 million, a number the New York-based leftist weekly Haiti Progres calls "miraculous." Only 3.2 million voters registered for the much more exciting national elections that brought Aristide to power in 1990. [HP 6/21-27/95] Even more miraculous are the 800,000 voter registration cards that Remy announced were stolen in May [see Update #278]. "[I]t now appears," writes Aristide's own registered lobbying group, "that the cards may simply have been misplaced. Additional registrations were ordered, and excess cards will be used for a supplemental registration period prior to the presidential elections in December." [Aristide Update 6/21/95] 8. NICARAGUA: WORKERS, FARMERS BATTLE GOVERNMENT OVER LAND Hundreds of Nicaraguan campesinos have been camped out for over a month outside the Central American University (UCA) and the Engineering University in Managua to demand the delivery of legal titles for property given to them under the administration of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, 1979-1990). On June 15 about 40 of the campesinos, led by union leader Lucio Jimenez of the pro-Sandinista National Workers Front, took over the National Assembly building to demand that the legislative branch pass laws expediting delivery of the property titles. [El Daily News 6/20/95 from AP; El Diario-La Prensa 6/19/95 from AP] More than two weeks later, the 36 campesinos remain entrenched in the Assembly building; Assembly president Luis Humberto Guzman has ordered the building's water, electricity and telephone services to be cut. The legislature is paying to conduct its sessions at the nearby Olof Palme Convention Center. The Assembly leadership has revoked for a year the pay and privileges of three FSLN deputies--Nathan Sevilla, Damaso Vargas and Francisco Rivera--for allegedly leading the takeover, but has refused to ask for police intervention, fearing it might lead to violence. Conservative deputy Nicolas Bolanos blamed FSLN general secretary and former president Daniel Ortega and current presidency minister Antonio Lacayo for instigating the takeover to impede the legislature from working out the details of accords reached on a series of constitutional reforms. Ortega and Lacayo both oppose the reforms. [Diario Las Americas 6/24/95 from "Del Noticiero Nicaraguense"] Ortega criticized the recent accords on June 18, and warned that the protests by campesinos will continue "until the government responds to their demands." [ED-LP 6/19/95 from AP] On June 22, Ortega visited the protesters in the Assembly building; after talking with them, Ortega told reporters that the 33 men and three women had asked him to try to get Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo to serve as a mediator. The archbishop is in Rome, however, and is not expected back until the end of June. Ortega's visit to the occupied building coincided with a demonstration in front of the building where some 50 workers protested the government's plans to privatize telephone and electricity services. [ED-LP 6/23/95 from EFE] The details of the reform accords were almost completely worked out by the time Lacayo left for France to attend a June 19 meeting with international donors and creditors of the Paris Club. Lacayo is seeking financial consessions for $1.5 billion from 1995 to 1997 to pump up the Nicaraguan economy. Donors had threatened to withhold funding if an agreement to the conflict over constitutional reforms was not reached. [DLA 6/24/95 from "Del Noticiero Nicaraguense"; Nicaragua Network (DC) Hotline 6/20/95] Donors seem to have been primarily concerned because failure to enact the constitutional reforms was blocking the planned privatization of the state telephone and mail company, Telcor. With the reforms now agreed on, the Assembly is expected to pass a regulatory law for Telcor before debating details of the sale by the end of July. [Financial Times 6/19/95] Some 6,000 small farmers from across Nicaragua participated in a march on the presidential palace on June 15 to commemorate "National Agrarian Reform Day" and to demand the immediate legalization of their land. The march was organized by the Nicaraguan Farmers and Ranchers Union (UNAG). [Nicanet Hotline 6/20/95] 9. CHILE: ONE ARMY OFFICER GOES TO JAIL Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo was stripped of his rank and expelled from the Chilean army late on the night of June 19 by Defense Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma, on an order signed by President Eduardo Frei. Espinoza was then taken from the army's telecommunications command by army and police officers and brought to the new Punta Peuco high-security prison about 40 kilometers north of Santiago. Espinoza, former second-in-command of Chile's notorious secret police (DINA) under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, was sentenced to 6 years in prison (minus time served) for his role in the 1976 car-bomb murder in Washington of Chilean former diplomat Orlando Letelier and his US aide Ronni Moffitt [see Updates #278-281]. Retired general Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, the former DINA chief who was sentenced to seven years in prison for the same case, is still at the naval hospital in Talcahuano, in southern Chile, alleging a host of different ailments that would prevent him going to jail. [CHIP News 6/20/95] The British Financial Times has suggested that Contreras "may be using material in his archives to put pressure on" army members to protect him from imprisonment. [FT 6/20/95] Espinoza reportedly was pleasantly surprised by the conditions at the Punta Peuco prison. His private cell and visiting room are carpeted; he has a comfortable bed, color television with cable, and a VCR. Four chefs are employed to cook his meals to order. [CHIP News 6/21/95] 10. CHILE: ROME COURT SENTENCES CONTRERAS TO 20 YEARS On June 23, a court in Rome sentenced Contreras in absentia to 20 years in prison for an October 1975 attack that seriously injured former Chilean vice-president Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Ana Fresno, who were living in exile in Italy. Retired general Raul Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, another high-level DINA official, was sentenced to 18 years for his role in the attack. [CHIP News 6/23/95] Chilean foreign minister Jose Miguel Insulza said that Contreras could not be extradited to Italy until after his sentence in Chile is served. [El Diario-La Prensa 6/25/95 from AP] US citizen Michael Townley, a former DINA agent, was the chief witness against Contreras and Iturriaga in the Leighton trial. Townley told the court that Contreras had asked him to avert suspicions that the Chilean government was responsible for the attack; that was why a Cuban dissident group in Miami claimed responsibility, Townley explained. Townley said the DINA had ordered Leighton murdered because it considered him the person most likely to unite Chile's opposition parties against the Pinochet dictatorship. [Inter Press Service 5/19/95] An Italian court had previously sentenced Townley in absentia to 15 years of prison for the Leighton attack; he went to Rome to testify only after being promised that he would not be arrested. [CHIP News 5/22/95] Townley was convicted in 1979 in a US court for planting the bomb in the Letelier murder; he served three years of a 10-year prison sentence before being released. He is now in the US federal witness protection program. [Latin America Data Base Notisur 6/2/95] 11. ARGENTINE SLUMP, BRAZIL TRADE DEFICIT On June 6 Argentine economy minister Domingo Cavallo acknowledged for the first time that the country is in a recession. On the same day President Carlos Saul Menem warned that June and July would be "a little hard" but promised recovery later in the year. The government announced emergency measures postponing salary payments to 300,000 state employees from June to July and moving up the first installment of asset taxes. The Buenos Aires stock exchange fell 4.44% in response to the government's announcements. [El Diario-La Prensa 6/7/95 from AP; New York Times 6/17/95] When the Mexican economic crisis of December frightened investors out of Latin American markets, Cavallo settled on a policy of letting the economy shrink rather than devaluing the peso, which remains at a one-to-one parity with the US dollar. "Now the economy may be shrinking a little too fast for Mr. Cavallo's liking," the Wall Street Journal remarks. A sharp downturn in consumption is lowering tax revenues, which in turn may make it impossible to meet targets required as part of a $2.8 billion loan deal earlier this year with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tax revenues for May were 6% below the government's projections and 12.8% lower than April revenues. Under the IMF terms, Argentina is expected to limit its deficit to $830 million in the first half of the year and generate a $2.9 billion surplus for the second half. [WSJ 6/12/95; NYT 6/17/95] Unemployment is now officially at 12% and is expected to rise to 14%; some sources say it has already reached 15%, the highest rate in the country's history. Cavallo, the dominant force in Menem's cabinet, has now been called "arrogant" and "authoritarian" by Menem's own Justicialista (Peronist) Party. Former economy minister Bernardo Grinspun, who served in the government of Radical Civic Union (UCR) leader Raul Alfonsin during the 1980s, said Cavallo's program "is on the road to collapse." On June 14 Menem promised that after August he would "pulverize" unemployment. [El Daily News 6/13/95; ED-LP 6/15/95 from AFP] [Menem won reelection on May 14 with a campaign suggesting that only he could prevent economic chaos; see Update #277.] Meanwhile, Brazil suffered a $690 million trade deficit in May, bringing the total deficit for the year to $3.48 billion. In response, on June 13 the government slapped a 300,000-vehicle quota on imports of automobiles, reversing a five-year policy of opening up the economy to imports. The move has brought sharp criticism from the World Bank, and is likely to further damage Argentina's auto industry, which is already suffering from a 38% fall this year in domestic sales. [Financial Times 6/14/95, 6/15/95] After markets closed on June 22, the Brazilian government widened the trading band on its currency, the real, to between 91 and 99 centavos. This is a de facto devaluation of 6% against the US dollar and is the second devaluation this year. [Wall Street Journal 6/23/95] On June 9 the UN released a 32-page report praising Latin American and Caribbean nations for their "robust" economic performance. The UN list was headed by Peru, with a 12.7% growth rate in 1994, Guyana with 8.5% and Argentina with 7.1%. [Inter Press Service 6/9/95] On June 22, the World Bank's delegate in Peru said that country must "moderate" its economic growth to avoid a collapse of its economy. [Diario Las Americas 6/24/95 from EFE] 12. US MISSIONARIES KILLED IN COLOMBIA The bodies of Steve Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke, two US missionaries, were found in Colombia on June 20 after a shootout between guerrillas and the army. The two had been kidnapped by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in January of 1994. Welsh and Van Dyke worked for the New Tribes Mission of Sanford, Florida, which closed its missions in Colombia after the two were kidnapped. Human Rights Watch/Americas condemned the "apparent execution" of the two. [El Daily News 6/23/95 from Reuter; New York Times 6/21/95 from AP] [In February of 1993 in Panama's Darien province, the Panamanian rebel group December 20-Torrijista Patriotic Vanguard (VPT-20) kidnapped three members of the New Tribes Mission and reportedly took them across the border to Colombia; a VPT-20 spokesperson accused the three of being "agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)" who were "engaged in intelligence-gathering operations" in several nearby towns. See Update #159.] 13. IN OTHER NEWS... According to the Wall Street Journal, El Salvador plans to begin dollarizing its economy in the first half of 1996, making the US dollar legal tender to replace its national currency, the colon. The announcement was made by Finance Minister Manuel Enrique Hinds, architect of an aggressive tax reform and tariff reduction plan. Panama and Liberia are the only fully dollarized economies outside the US. Multinational lenders back El Salvador's dollarization. The country's international reserves are growing steadily, and it gets a consistent flow of dollars from Salvadorans living abroad. [WSJ 6/20/95]... On June 20 the US House Judiciary Committee voted 23-12 to send a proposed counterterrorism package to the floor for a vote later this summer. Four conservative Republicans and eight liberal Democrats, including John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), opposed it for what Conyers called "radical new interpretations of the Bill of Rights." Under the law US residents could be deported and US citizens jailed for 10 years if they raise funds for foreign organizations the president lists as "terrorist." [New York Times 6/21/95; Washington Post 6/21/95]... On June 23, US customs officials in Buffalo, New York, allowed the fifth US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan to enter Canada with 150 tons of humanitarian aid for Cuba. Customs officials did not even inspect the cargo, which included computers, prescription medicines, solar technology bicycles, buses, trucks, and medical equipment. Earlier in the week, customs officials had threatened caravan participants with mass arrests and prosecution. [IFCO/ Pastors for Peace Press Release 6/23/95] The caravan participants were among 2,000 people at a June 17 rally in Washington demanding an end to the embargo. [IFCO/PfP Press Release 6/19/95] 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. 7/4 TUE - Annual CISPES picnic. Prospect Park, all afternoon. 212-645-5230. 7/4 TUE, 4 PM - BBQ fundraiser for NYC Mumia Coalition. 309 Park Pl, Brooklyn (between Vanderbilt & Underhill). $5. 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