===== Redistribute *only* with full header and signature! ===== Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #314, FEBRUARY 4, 1996 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Nicaraguan Students Seize Foreign Ministry 2. Protesters Seize 51 Mexican Oil Installations 3. Mexican Mini-Rebellions Continue: Guerrero and Morelos 4. US Plants Agents in Haiti Police, Protects Death Squad Leader 5. Cuba Caravan Attacked: Activists Arrested, Computers Seized 6. US Banana Company Evicts Squatters in Honduras 7. Body Found in Uruguay May Be Chilean Ex-Agent Berrios 8. Student Protests Rock Venezuela 9. Bolivians Protest Fuel Hike, Drug Policy 10. Brazil: First Claim on Indigenous Lands Under New Decree 11. Oil Workers Strike in Peru 12. US Activist's Appeal Denied in Peru 13. In Other News: Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia & AIFLD 14. Upcoming Events in the NYC Area and Beyond ISSN#: 1084-922X. The Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A one-year subscription (52 issues) is $25. Subscriptions to the electronic edition are delivered directly to your email address by our distributor, NY Transfer News. To subscribe, send your email 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. For more information about electronic subscriptions, contact NY Transfer at nyt@blythe.org. For a subscription to the print edition (via first class mail), please send check or money order for $25 payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network at 339 Lafayette St., New York, New York 10012. The email and print versions of the Weekly News Update are identical in content. Back issues and source materials are available on request. 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Send us a copy of any publication where we are cited or reprinted. We also welcome your comments and ideas: send them to us at the street address above or via e-mail to nicanet@blythe.org. * 1. NICARAGUAN STUDENTS SEIZE FOREIGN MINISTRY About 300 university students forced their way into Nicaragua's foreign ministry building on Jan. 30, taking nearly 200 office workers and two foreign diplomats hostage in a protest to demand more government funding for higher education. Foreign Minister Ernesto Leal was also among those held in the building. The ambassadors of Pakistan and the Philippines were released after six hours; the 100 or so women office workers were also allowed to leave the same day. On Jan. 31, police used tear gas to retake the building and free the 81 remaining hostages, including Leal. National police chief Fernando Caldera said 107 students were arrested and that the police confiscated 27 homemade mortars, 520 bombs, several slingshots and an axe. [New York Times 1/31/96 & 2/1/96 from Reuter; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 1/31/96 from EFE, 2/1/96 from AP] Leal said that documents in the foreign ministry building relating to Pope John Paul II's scheduled Feb. 7 visit to Nicaragua "were in danger" during the student takeover; the foreign ministry has been preparing for the visit for several weeks and has been acting as a center for the local and international press. [ED-LP 2/1/96 from AP] Relative calm returned to Nicaragua after Feb. 2, when 92 of the 107 arrested students were released. Another 15--including some of the top leaders of the university student movement--were charged in court with such offenses as kidnapping, apology for crime, damage to property, theft and exposing people to danger. [Diario Las Americas (Miami) 2/3/96 from AFP; ED-LP 2/4/96 from AFP] The 15 who were charged were released on Feb. 2 and put under house arrest. [NICNEWS/La Prensa Headlines 2/3/96] The police are determined to maintain calm--by force if necessary--for the papal visit. As many as one million people--a quarter of Nicaragua's population--are expected to attend the pope's mass to be delivered on Feb. 7 on a specially-built stage on the shores of Lake Xolotlan (Lake Managua) in the capital. [ED-LP 2/4/96 from AFP; NICNEWS/La Prensa Headlines 2/3/96] 2. PROTESTERS SEIZE 51 MEXICAN OIL INSTALLATIONS On Jan. 29 campesinos and fishing industry workers began occupying or blocking installations belonging to the national oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco. The protesters, mostly members of the center- left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), presented a long list of demands, principally for Pemex to pay damages to campesinos and fisherpeople whose livelihood had been hurt by pollution from Pemex installations. The demonstrators also demanded that the company pay local taxes, finance a school breakfast program, and suspend a controversial program for privatizing its petrochemical facilities. By the end of the week the protesters claimed to have blocked access to 51 oil wells and other installations. The New York Times put the total number of protesters at 1,000, while the Mexico City daily La Jornada reported that almost 1,000 people were blocking the wells at just one Pemex complex, the Sen oil field near Huatacalca. [LJ 2/1/96 and 2/3/96, electronic editions; NYT 2/1/96] The action was called by the state PRD and its leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost a race for the governorship in 1994 to current governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). PRI members in the federal congress charged that Lopez Obrador was using the seizures to advance his political career. Outgoing PRD national president Porfirio Munoz Ledo echoed the PRI's charges, hinting that the Tabasco party was using the action to "resolve...possible differences about the future orientation of the [national] PRD." Lopez Obrador is running to succeed Munoz Ledo this year as national president. However, on Jan. 31 the PRD National Executive Council issued a resolution supporting the "peaceful civil resistance" undertaken "by the people of Tabasco," while Lopez Obrador began negotiations with government officials in Mexico City to end the occupations. [LJ 2/1/96 and 2/3/96] Lopez Obrador is prominent in the PRD's "Cuauhtemista" current, which supports former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano's emphasis on mass mobilizations and direct action. Munoz Ledo's supporters, the "Porfiristas," emphasize negotiations with the federal government for electoral reform. The Tabasco party head is also an author and was running ads for the formal presentation of his new book, Between History and Hope: Corruption and Democratic Struggle in Tabasco, in Mexico City on Feb. 1. [LJ 1/28/96] The state PRD led occupations of oil wells in December 1994 to protest Gov. Madrazo's election victory [see Update #256]. But Lopez Obrador insists that the current Pemex seizures are backed by a range of grassroots organizations and were mandated by 40,000 Tabasquenos at a PRD assembly a week earlier. [LJ 2/1/96] Tabasco's farming and fishing populations have been fighting Pemex for years over environmental damage, while Pemex workers have strongly opposed the privatization plans, which they say will give the plants to foreigners. On Jan. 30 several thousand women marched in the adjacent state of Veracruz to protest the petrochemical selloffs. [NYT 2/1/96] The privatization plan was worded so that only companies with three years' experience in the field will be able to buy some of the plants; since Pemex has been a monopoly, this guarantees that many of the buyers will be foreign companies. [LJ 1/21/96] In the early morning of Feb. 2 some 500 members of the Mexican army and 300 Federal Judicial Police agents, backed by four helicopters from the attorney general's office (PGR), ended the blockade of the Sen oil field and set up a base at the site. The PRD says six of the campesino protesters, members of the Chontal indigenous group, were injured. But the protesters, who say they were simply occupying land legally belonging to local ejidos (communal farms), returned to the site that afternoon to block the highway. Meanwhile, the Judicial Police arrested five local PRD leaders in a separate operation. In Mexico City Lopez Obrador broke off his negotiations with the government in protest. [LJ 2/3/96] 3. MEXICAN MINI-REBELLIONS CONTINUE: GUERRERO AND MORELOS Just before the Tabasco occupations began, delegates from 268 Mexican leftist and grassroots organizations met in Acapulco in the southwestern state of Guerrero Jan. 27-28 to form the "Broad Front for the Constitution of the National Liberation Movement." The new front is the latest effort by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) to unite Mexico's numerous grassroots struggles into a broad movement [see Update #312]. On Jan. 29 spokespeople said that the new front, which would drop "Constitution" from its name when more organizations joined, planned demonstrations in March, April and May against the petrochemical privatizations and for the demands of campesinos and workers. Meanwhile, the EZLN has called for international supporters to hold meetings between April and August in Africa, Australia, Germany, Japan and Mexico "for humanity and against neoliberalism." [Inter Press Service] Guerrero activists met in the state capital, Chilpancingo, on Jan. 27 to demand that the state government recognize the "community police" units established by indigenous communities in the Costa Chica-Montana region. Indigenous representatives say the state police are unable to fight crime and drug trafficking because they themselves "are tied to the criminal groups" that operate in those remote areas. On Jan. 26 Morelos state, just south of Mexico City, had its biggest demonstration in 15 years when 22,000 teachers marched in Cuernavaca, the state capital, to protest the Jan. 23 arrest of Gerardo Demesa. Demesa is a teacher in the village of Tepoztlan and a member of the Tepozteco Unity Committee (CUT), which has run the municipal government in defiance of state authorities since September, when the PRI mayor was thrown out in a protest against plans to build a golf course and computer center in a nearby nature reserve. The CUT then organized and won unofficial municipal elections. The state now insists on holding new elections, and has in effect barred CUT participation by issuing arrest warrants for 80 leading CUT members in relation to a December confrontation in which a PRI member was killed [see Update #309]. In this case, the local PRD has taken the PRI's side by backing the new elections. [LJ 1/28/96] 4. US PLANTS AGENTS IN HAITI POLICE, PROTECTS DEATH SQUAD LEADER In an article to be published in the Feb. 26 issue of the US left/liberal weekly The Nation, investigative reporter Allan Nairn charges that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has placed agents inside the newly created Haitian National Police (PNH). Nairn cites peasant leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, head of the transition team for president-elect Rene Preval, who is to be inaugurated on Feb. 7. Unnamed US officials confirmed the story, saying that much of the CIA recruitment took place during training of the new police by the International Criminal Investigations Training Program (ICITAP) last year at Ft. Leonard Wood, in Missouri. ICITAP is run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Nairn also charges that the US government "is pressing on at least two fronts to prevent further revelations about its secret work in Haiti," in particular operations with the now-disbanded Haitian military and the paramilitary group Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH). On one front, the US continues to withhold some 150,000 pages of documents the US military seized from the Haitian army and the FRAPH shortly after US-led United Nations forces began their occupation of Haiti in September 1994. Without guaranteeing the return of all the documents, the US now wants the Haitian government to sign an eight-point memorandum severely restricting the use Haiti can make of the "non-sensitive" documents the US does turn over. The second front is Emmanuel ("Toto") Constant, a former CIA informant and the head of the FRAPH. On Dec. 7 Constant--in custody in the US since April [see Update #307]--called Nairn and offered to reveal "everything." Four days later, Constant dropped his offer after the US agreed that it would eventually deport him to Haiti in a US government plane with "no advance notice" to the Haitian government. Pentagon contractor Brown & Root is to provide ground services when the plane lands, and Constant will be processed "at an isolated location" and then protected through "crowd control." [Nation 2/26/96, advance copy] 5. CUBA CARAVAN ATTACKED: ACTIVISTS ARRESTED, COMPUTERS SEIZED On Jan. 31, US Customs agents violently attacked volunteers from the Sixth US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan as they attempted to carry computers across the border into Mexico. The 30-vehicle caravan of humanitarian aid arrived at the border early in the day carrying nearly 300 computers, which were donated to form part of an on-line medical information system which will link hospitals, clinics, and medical schools throughout Cuba. The Friendshipment Caravan is organized by Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace, which has since 1991 organized five nationwide humanitarian aid caravans challenging the US embargo of Cuba. After police blocked the caravan vehicles, about 20 drivers tried to carry computers across the border on foot. Each the drivers was tackled by as many as eight police at a time, who tore the computers from their arms. Customs agents then broke into several trucks and began confiscating computers. Caravan members, who had formed a protective ring around the trucks, some sitting on top of them, were violently dragged away from their vehicles. Several people were injured, including one man who was knocked unconscious by police and had to be hospitalized. More than 50 police agents were at the scene in riot gear and protective shields, along with 15 squad cars, 19 tow trucks and many uniformed and plainclothes agents from several law enforcement agencies. Customs officials shut down the US-Mexico border crossing to all vehicles and pedestrian traffic for most of the day. Police arrested 18 people, including IFCO director Rev. Lucius Walker and Rev. George Hill, a Presbyterian pastor from Claremont, California. [IFCO/Pastors for Peace Urgent Emergency Action Alert 1/31/96] A large full-color photo printed on the front page of rightwing Miami daily Diario Las Americas showed customs officials holding a caravan member in a choke-hold. Seven of the arrested caravan members were released the same day, while 11 spent the night in a San Diego detention center and were freed the next day after appearing in court. [DLA 2/3/96 from EFE] According to unclassified federal documents, an inter-agency task force made up of US Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the US Attorney's office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), California Highway Patrol, Caltrans (the California state transportation authority) and the San Diego police and fire departments had been planning for weeks to seize the computers before they crossed the border into Mexico. Authorities also seized 23 computers from Canada (and therefore not subject to US regulations) which had earlier been cleared by Customs for export. [IFCO/PfP Alert 1/31/96] IFCO/Pastors for Peace is asking supporters to send faxes to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (202-622-0073), Attorney General Janet Reno (202-514-0467), and President Bill Clinton (202- 456-2461), demanding that all the computers be immediately released and that the charges be dropped against caravan participants. For more information call IFCO in New York at 212- 926-5757 or Pastors for Peace in Minneapolis at 612-870-7121. 6. US BANANA COMPANY EVICTS SQUATTERS IN HONDURAS Hundreds of soldiers and security forces seized the Tacamiche estate in northern Honduras during the week of Jan. 29 to evict more than 100 campesino families who have been living illegally on the land since it was abandoned a year ago by Tela Railroad Company, the Honduran subsidiary of US multinational banana company Chiquita Brands International. The campesinos rejected an offer from the government to move them to another site, where they were promised living quarters, basic services and economic aid while awaiting permanent homes. The security forces were acting on a court arrest order against 29 individuals accused of inflicting damages on Tela Railroad. Soldiers have arrested some 20 people, while several dozen have taken refuge inside an evangelical church which the soldiers will not enter. Tractors owned by the transnational company dismantled about 20 of the campesinos' huts and destroyed several small plots of land planted with corn, vegetables and bananas for subsistence. According to Col. Jose Martinez Amador, the fields will remain under military custody. The conflict in Tacamiche began in June 1994 when Tela Railroad dismissed some 400 workers and announced the closing of three plantations, claiming that the lands were no longer fertile for banana cultivation, and that they would be used for growing basic grains. [Diario Las Americas 2/3/96 from EFE] Troops tried to evict the campesinos several times during 1995, but most managed to return to the land [see Updates #285, 287]. 7. BODY FOUND IN URUGUAY MAY BE CHILEAN EX-AGENT BERRIOS Uruguayan authorities issued a forensic report on Jan. 25 stating that a body found on a beach near Montevideo last April is likely to be that of former Chilean intelligence agent Eugenio Berrios, who disappeared in Uruguay at the end of 1992. While both the Chilean and Uruguayan governments have said that the body's identification is not yet certain, the forensic report said officials believed "with more than 90% certainty" that it was that of Berrios. Chilean detectives had traveled to Uruguay in May 1995 and asked to examine the body, but the judge in charge had refused. The body found on the El Pinar beach had four bullet wounds in the chest and one in the back of the head; the face was stripped and the hands were cut off. The forensic report says the victim had been tortured and tied up before being killed, probably in mid-1994. The publication of the forensic report has revived debate over Berrios, an expert in chemical weapons who fled to Uruguay to avoid appearing before Chilean courts in several human rights cases in April 1992. Berrios is best known for having manufactured the deadly sarin nerve gas for the Chilean secret police (DINA). [CHIP News 1/29/96; La Jornada 1/28/96 from ANSA, AFP, Reuter, DPA] Berrios is also thought to have designed the explosive devices used in the 1976 murder in Washington of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and the 1974 murder in Buenos Aires of former Chilean army chief Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia. [An arrest was recently made in Argentina for the Prats murder--see Update #313.] Berrios' alleged abduction in Uruguay in November 1992--first reported in June of 1993--caused a major controversy throughout South America because it revived suspicions that a network set up by the DINA in the 1970s to coordinate the intelligence services of South American dictatorships is still functioning to protect its members or remove them if they become liabilities. Four Uruguayan mililtary and four police officers were arrested for their responsibility in the Berrios abduction. Berrios had told Uruguayan authorities that the Chilean army wanted to kill him because he had to testify against Chilean army chief and former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the Letelier case. According to the Uruguayan weekly Busqueda, Berrios told a friend, "My problem is that I saw something I wasn't supposed to see," adding that "if Pinochet manages to locate me, he kills me." [See Updates #176, 177, 182.] 8. STUDENT PROTESTS ROCK VENEZUELA Angry over an announcement by public transport companies that they would increase their fares by 100% to 200%--even though the government has not raised fuel prices--hooded students led protests and battled police in a dozen Venezuelan cities throughout the week of Jan. 22; ten people were injured and 100 arrested on Jan. 25 alone. The transport fare hike was a last straw for many Venezuelans already enraged by the country's increasingly desperate economic situation and the government's imminent signing of an accord with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "We're going to oust Caldera just like we ousted [his predecessor] Carlos Andres Perez, as he too has betrayed the people," one masked man said in a television interview. [Inter Press Service 1/26/96; El Diario-La Prensa 1/25/96 from EFE, 2/2/96 from EFE] The protests picked up even more steam over the week of Jan. 29. At least eight people were injured in clashes between demonstrators and police on Feb. 1, the same day that transport fare hikes were to take effect. Students in Caracas seized a school building near the presidential palace and reportedly fought off police for more than three hours with firearms and homemade mortars. Also on Feb. 1, the Caracas mayor's office and the Transport Union reached an agreement for fares in the capital to be increased by 50% instead of 200%. By Feb. 2, five of Venezuela's principal cities--including the capital, Caracas-- were under control of the National Guard (GN) and the Metropolitan Police (PM) to prevent further demonstrations. [ED- LP 2/4/96 from Notimex; Diario Las Americas 2/3/96 from EFE] Meanwhile, Venezuela is preparing for the visit of Pope John Paul II, scheduled for Feb. 9-11. According to Baltazar Porras, archbishop of the southeastern Venezuelan city of Merida and organizer of the pope's visit, the pope will preach to Venezuelans about the "harmful consequences of neoliberalism" during his visit. [IPS 1/26/96] 9. BOLIVIANS PROTEST FUEL HIKE, DRUG POLICY Protests erupted in Bolivia during the week of Jan. 15 after the government raised fuel prices by 16.2%. A government offer to raise salaries by 8% failed to appease workers; even vice president Victor Hugo Cardenas agreed that 8% was insufficient, since inflation was nearly 13% last year. Inter Press Service reports that a 24-hour strike called by the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) on Jan. 18 was supported by miners, social security workers and health and education employees, but was only partially effective in the major cities. Sporadic clashes occurred in La Paz between protesters and police agents armed with tear gas. The COB called the strike to demand wage increases of 18%, an end to government plans to privatize the oil industry, a reconsideration of the fuel tax hike, and the resolution of coca growers' claims. [IPS 1/24/96] A photograph published in Miami Spanish-language daily Diario Las Americas on Jan. 27 showed protesters from the COB burning "Uncle Sam" and Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in effigy at a demonstration against the fuel price increase. [DLA 1/27/96] Actions continued through the middle of the following week. Several union leaders went on hunger strike. Campesinos and coca producers from Cochabamba and Santa Cruz departments blockaded interdeparmental highways on Jan. 22. Police efforts to dismantle the roadblocks left four campesinos, including a 12-year-old boy, injured by bullets. Some 200 people had been arrested by the time the government sent in military troops on Jan. 24. [IPS 1/24/96] In a pact signed with the Bolivian government on Jan. 26, the Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino Workers (CSUTCB) agreed to withdraw its roadblocks from major highways in exchange for the creation of offices to guard human rights in rural areas and the release of nearly 400 workers arrested in connection with the roadblocks. CSUTCB leader Felix Santos said the union chose to sign the pact because its primary demand, the consolidation of agrarian property, will be addressed through a proposed law presented to the legislature that would complete the 1953 agrarian reform program. [La Jornada 1/28/96 from AFP, AP, ANSA, Prensa Latina, Reuter] Evo Morales, leader of the campesino coca growers union, called the pact a "betrayal," particularly because it came at a time when some 200 women coca growers (cocaleras) are on hunger strike in La Paz after marching nearly 500 kilometers to the capital from the coca-growing region of Chapare [see Updates #311, 312]. On Jan. 29, the cocaleras completed their first week on hunger strike against the government's forced coca eradication program; they have pledged to continue their protest to the death if necessary, in order to win their demands. [LJ 1/28/96 from AFP, AP, ANSA, PL, Reuter; Inter Press Service 1/29/96] Some unionists fear the government may try to forcibly enter the COB headquarters, where the hunger strikers are staying, to force them to give up their fast and return to their home regions. Social Defense secretary Victor Hugo Canelas emphasized that the government's dialogue with the cocaleras is over and any agreements made were suspended after the cocaleras broke off negotiations with Ximena Sanchez de Lozada, wife of Bolivia's president, and Lidia de Cardenas, wife of the vice president. Morales said the coca growers will continue blocking roads in Chapare and "will defend their cultivations, which are their only source of survival, to the death" against the eradication policy. Army commander general Hernan Aguilera said troops would remain in a state of alert to crush any new roadblocks. Presidency Minister Jose Justiniano insisted that the government will not declare a new state of siege, although opposition and union leaders believe such a measure is imminent. [LJ 1/28/96 from AFP, AP, ANSA, Prensa Latina, Reuter] 10. BRAZIL: FIRST CLAIM ON INDIGENOUS LANDS UNDER NEW DECREE On Jan. 12, the agricultural company Sattin SA became the first private firm to launch a challenge under Brazil's new decree 1775/96, which allows courts to rule on claims to indigenous lands that have not yet been officially demarcated [see Update #311]. Sattin is demanding that the government annul a 1993 presidential decree recognizing the Sete Cerros reservation, an area of 9,000 hectares in Mato Grosso do Sul state, as home to 230 Guarani-Kaiowa people. [South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC) Communique posted 1/18/96, from Folha de Sao Paulo 1/11/96; Reuter 1/14/96] The Guarani-Kaiowa area has suffered many cases of violence, ranging from murders to suicides, because of the insufficient land space available to its population. [Council for the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Brazil (CAPOIB) & Forum in Defense of Indigenous Rights 1/23/96 Manifesto Against Decree No. 1775/96] SATTIN claims that the demarcation failed to honor the titles obtained from the state government in 1929 (or 1926, depending on the source), and that the reservation has not been permanently occupied by the Kaiowa people. The company's lawyer, Jose Goulart Quirinho, said the situation is tense in Mato Grosso do Sul after Justice Minister Nelson Jobim and Attorney General Geraldo Brindeiro visited indigenous areas in the region. According to Quirinho, about 70 SATTIN employees in Sete Cerros were expelled by the Indians with the help of the government's National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI). FUNAI said it knows nothing of the alleged eviction operation. Quirinho announced that a second appeal will be presented concerning the Panambizinho Rural Colony (MS). According to Quirinho, the appeal will be in response to the enlargement of the Panambizinho indigenous area from 60 to 1,240 hectares, decreed on Dec. 13. Quirinho claims that the enlargement evicted families settled there since 1943. [SAIIC Communique posted 1/18/96, from Folha de Sao Paulo 1/11/96; La Jornada 1/14/96 from Reuter, DPA] On Jan. 10, the Bahia state government also filed a suit to expropriate the Coroa Vermelha indigenous area, of the Pataxo people, located in the extreme south of the state. [CAPOIB & Forum Manifesto 1/23/96] Indigenous Brazilians are now arming themselves to protect their lands from a wave of invasions they fear will follow the new decree, according to Nelino Gale, who, as coordinator for indigenous tribes in the Amazonian state of Roraima, represents 45,000 people. "There will be deaths because we're not going to let anyone enter our lands," said Gale on Jan. 17, while attending a small demonstration in Brasilia to protest the decree. "We are arming ourselves to protect our people." [Reuter 1/17/96] Five workers of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) who were seized on Jan. 16 and 17 by about 400 Tembe people in the Alto Rio Guama reserve [see Update #312] were freed unharmed after being held for several days. The Tembe are demanding that some 30,000 settlers be removed from their land; their action led officials to schedule a meeting with Tembe leaders to discuss the matter on Jan. 19 in the city of Belem. [Reuter 1/17/96, 1/26/96] 11. OIL WORKERS STRIKE IN PERU Some 2,000 oil workers are on strike in northern Peru and are threatening to extend the strike to the entire country in a protest against the planned privatization of the state oil company PETROPERU. The strike, led by the National Federation of Oil and Similar Workers of Peru (FENPETROL) began on Feb. 1; the same day more than 20 unionists were arrested for blocking access to the Talara refinery in Piura department. Those detained were freed 24 hours after the demonstration. The open-ended strike continued on Feb. 2 amid strict military and police control, with troops guarding the city of Talara and the PETROPERU installations. The oil workers say they will expand the strike if the government and PETROPERU representatives continue to refuse dialogue with the union leadership. [ED-LP 2/4/96 from EFE] On Jan. 27 some 60,000 health workers in Peru suspended a strike they had begun on Jan. 23 [see Update #313], in expectation of an agreement between the unions and Health Minister Eduardo Yong. If an agreement is not reached, the strike will be renewed. [La Jornada 1/28/96 from EFE, AFP] 12. US ACTIVIST'S APPEAL DENIED IN PERU On Jan. 30, a military appeals court in Peru rejected an appeal and confirmed a sentence of life in prison for US activist Lori Berenson, arrested on Nov. 30 and convicted of treason on Jan. 11 for allegedly being a leader of the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) [see Updates #306, 307, 309-311]. In addition, the appeals court doubled the civil reparations fine ordered collectively for Berenson and the three other MRTA members who received life sentences, from the equivalent of about $1.7 million to about $3.4 million. The 30-year prison sentence of Panamanian co-defendant Pacifico Castrellon was also confirmed by the appeals court, but the site where he must serve his term was changed from the Yanamayo maximum security prison near the Andean city of Puno, to a Lima prison. Berenson's lawyer, Grimaldo Achahui, said he was "surprised" and "disappointed" by the decision of the Court of Appeals of the Supreme Council of Military Justice to reject Berenson's appeal. "They do not have a case in law," he said. "They have failed completely to answer the points raised by the defense." Achahui will appeal the sentence once again, this time to the military supreme court, which has the final word in the military justice system. Berenson has already begun serving her life term at Yanamayo. [NYT 1/31/96 from Reuter; El Diario-La Prensa 1/31/96 from AP, 2/2/96 from Notimex] [Note: The home page on the World Wide Web for information about Lori Berenson--cited in Update #311--has moved to: http://www.tiac.net/users/salem/lori_berenson/] 13. IN OTHER NEWS... On Jan. 31, an Argentine federal court convicted former army lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro of murder for ordering the beating of army conscript Omar Carrasco in 1994. Canevaro was sentenced to 15 years; two of his subordinates, former conscripts Cristian Suarez and Victor Salazar, were convicted of carrying out the orders and were sentenced to 10 years each. [New York Times 2/1/96 from AP] In a separate trial by a military court in May 1994, Canevaro had been discharged from the army and sentenced to 25 months in prison for abuse of authority. The killing of Carrasco sparked nationwide protests that led the Argentine government to abolish obligatory military service [see Updates #224, 229]... In Ecuador, some 15,000 health workers are on strike to demand that $69 million be included in the 1996 budget to finance salary increases. Prison workers have threatened to begin a hunger strike if their salary demands are not met. Workers of the Ecuadoran National Electricity Institute (INECEL) are continuing a strike of administrative and maintenance sectors against the company's imminent privatization [see Update #312]. The INECEL workers have threatened to step up their actions to include a "national blackout" and are threatening to shut down the Paute hydroelectric facility, which generates more than 60% of the country's electrical energy. Oil workers began a strike in the state oil company's administrative and maintenance sectors on Jan. 30 in solidarity with the INECEL workers. [LJ 1/28/96 from Reuter, EFE; El Diario-La Prensa 1/30/96 from EFE]... Antonio Jose Cancino, the lawyer who defended Colombian president Ernesto Samper Pizano against accusations that he accepted donations from the Cali drug cartel in his 1994 election campaign, has resigned and says he will leave the country because of death threats. Cancino, who was wounded in a gun attack last Sept. 27 [see Update #296] reiterated that he believes the president is innocent and a victim of a conspiracy. [El Diario-La Prensa 1/30/96 from combined services] Demonstrations demanding Samper's resignation have continued [see Update 313], while Samper is still pushing for a plebiscite on the issue, and says he will step down if defeated in the vote. [ED-LP 2/4/96 from AP]... William Doherty, for 30 years executive director of the American Institute of Free Labor Development (AIFLD), has tendered his resignation, apparently at the request of John Sweeney, who was elected president of the US AFL-CIO labor confederation in October. AIFLD, the AFL-CIO's international policy arm in the western hemisphere, has a long history of opposing leftist and grassroots Latin American unions [see Update #310]. [Working Together (Resource Center of the Americas) Jan-Feb 1996] Correction: In last week's Update #313, item #17, the first sentence should have referred to Jujuy province, not Jujuy Rioja province. La Rioja is a separate Argentine province where protests also occurred the same day as those in Jujuy. Also in Update #313, item #1, the word "Colombians" was misspelled twice because of a typographical error. 14. UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE NYC AREA AND BEYOND For more information, call NSN at 212-674-9499. Events listed are not necessarily endorsed by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network. 2/7 WED, 8 PM - "The Strike-Wave in France: A First-hand Analysis," w/Jean-Pierre Page (Int'l Dept, General Confederation of Labor [CGT]). Brecht Forum, 122 W 27 St, 10 flr. $6. 212-242-4201. 2/8 THU, 8 PM - "Mariategui & the Origins of Latin American Marxism, Session 1," w/Gerardo Renique (CCNY). Brecht Forum, 122 W 27th St, 10 floor. $6. 212-242-4201. 2/9 FRI, 7 PM - "Black History Month: The Color Line Today," w/Charlene Mitchell (Cmts of Correspondence), Carl Johnson (BMCC) & others. At Brecht Forum, 122 W 27th St, 10th fl. $5. Social hr starts at 6 PM. NY CoC, 212-229-2388. 2/10 SAT, 8 PM - Fundraiser for Guatemala Accompaniment Project in La Aurora (GUAPA). Auction, poetry, music, dance starts at 10 PM w/DJ Power Serge. 122 W 27th St, 10th fl. $15. Guatemala Support Group-NYC, 212-946-2059. 2/11 SUN, 5 PM - "Dechoukaj!" 10th anniversary of Duvalier overthrow, w/"Tonbe, Leve," "The Coup Continues," "Zoned for Slavery," "School of Assassins," music, panels, food. St Marks Methodist Ch, Ocean Ave & Beverly Rd, Bkn. $5. 212-592-3612. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 For more info, e-mail accounts@blythe.org, or gopher://ursula.blythe.org/11/NY-Transfer-News/ =================================================================