WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #317, FEBRUARY 25, 1996 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. CIA Cables Reveal US Knowledge on Guatemala 2. Argentine Police Arrest 200 Students 3. Cuba Downs Miami Planes 4. Cuba Bans Dissident Conference 5. Mexico: New Massacres in Guerrero 6. Rightwing US Candidate Panics Maquiladora Lords 7. Semi-Nude Students Protest in Nicaragua 8. FSLN Holds Primary Elections 9. More Violence in Northern Nicaragua 10. Chile: Protesters Hold Sit-in at Prison 11. Leader Quits Left Coalition in Uruguay 12. Peruvian Rebel Arrested in Bolivia 13. In Other News: Cuba/Mexico, El Salvador & Ecuador 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. 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CIA CABLES REVEAL US KNOWLEDGE ON GUATEMALA Documents from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), newly released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), reveal that on Mar. 18, 1992, the CIA informed the White House Situation Room, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that Guatemalan guerrilla commander Efrain Bamaca Velasquez had been captured slightly injured but alive on Mar. 12 by Guatemalan army troops. Other cables confirm that Bamaca was then turned over to Guatemalan military intelligence (G-2). The CIA cable, heavily censored, alleges that Bamaca cooperated fully with his captors in providing intelligence information and concludes that the Guatemalan army "will probably keep news of his capture secret, or even claim that he was killed, to maximize his intelligence value." The documents were obtained because of an ongoing lawsuit in federal district court brought by US lawyer Jennifer Harbury, Bamaca's widow, against the CIA for its refusal to hand over classified documents relating to her husband's case. [Press Release from the Offices of Jose Pertierra 2/21/96; copy of CIA cable 2/18/92] Guatemalan defense minister Julio Balconi said he would not comment on the reports of the CIA cable until he receives an official communication from the US government. [Diario Las Americas (Miami) 2/24/96 from EFE] 2. ARGENTINE POLICE ARREST 200 STUDENTS On Feb. 20, some 300 police agents attacked a demonstration of university students in the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires province. More than 200 students were arrested. The students had gathered at the entrance of the public library to block the entry of assembly members who were supposed to meet a few hours later to vote on a new statute of the "Law of Higher Education," which would allow monthly fees to be charged for university attendance. The assembly had been unable to hold a session scheduled for Feb. 15 to discuss the law because student demonstrators had blocked the entrance to the meeting. The assembly voted for the new law on Feb. 20 after the protesters had been taken into custody. The University Federation of Buenos Aires held a march the same day, carrying a coffin to symbolize the death of free higher education. The students presented a formal demand at the judicial building insisting that application of the law be suspended. [Inter Press Service 2/20/96; Diario Las Americas 2/24/96 from AFP] [According to a report from French news agency Agence France Presse published in Miami Spanish-language daily Diario Las Americas, the assembly did the opposite of what students expected and voted for a statute supporting free education at all the University of La Plata campuses. Other statutes passed were equally advantageous to students, according to the AFP report. [DLA 2/24/96 from AFP]] Hebe de Bonafini, president of the human rights organization Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and a resident of La Plata, was beaten by police on Feb. 20 when she tried to enter the Infantry Guard building where the arrested students were being held; she suffered a cut to her head which had to be stitched up in the hospital. At the hospital, de Bonafini told Inter Press Service that she had entered the Guard building along with another member of the Mothers organization and a group of journalists, who were also beaten and driven from the building with tear gas, rubber bullets and blows from police billy clubs. According to de Bonafini, the Guard center functioned as a clandestine prison during the military dictatorship. [IPS 2/20/96] On Feb. 22, students gathered again to demonstrate for the release of nearly 100 students who remained in custody from the Feb. 20 arrests, and to demand the resignation of those they consider responsible for the repression: provincial police chief Pedro Klodczyk, security secretary Alberto Piotti and judge Manuel Blanco. [DLA 2/24/96 from AFP] In New York City, members of the Spartacists League and its affiliated Partisan Defense Committee held a demonstration on Feb. 22 in front of the Argentine consulate to demand the release of the arrested students. Signs carried by the picketers also included demands for the release of former rebel leader Enrique Gorriaran [see Update #301] and of Horacio Panario. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 2/23/96] In other news, the Argentine Senate has approved the State Reform law, granting special powers to the executive branch of government to restructure public administration [see Updates #315, 316]. The ruling Justicialista Party (PJ), which has a majority in the Senate, gained the support of the provincial parties to approve the law. With its new powers, the government will begin a second reform of the state by suppressing or reducing state agencies and laying off personnel, within a public spending reduction plan included in the 1996 budget. The budget predicts a reduction of $1.75 billion in state spending for this year compared with 1995. [DLA 2/24/96 from EFE] 3. CUBA DOWNS MIAMI PLANES On Feb. 24, two small planes belonging to the rightwing Miami- based group Brothers to the Rescue went down off the coast of Cuba; the crew of a third plane which made it back to Florida said the two planes had been shot down by Cuban Air Force jets. Four people were said to be missing. The US Coast Guard dispatched helicopters and boats to an area about 12 miles north of Cuba--where Cuban territorial waters end and international waters begin--to search for wreckage or any survivors. [Washington Post 2/26/96; New York Times 2/25/96] Cuba admitted on Feb. 25 that it shot down the planes, arguing that they had invaded Cuban airspace. The crew of the plane that escaped harm claimed that the planes had not entered Cuban airspace. [1010 WINS Radio 2/25/96] The US Navy appeared ready on the night of Feb. 24 to assist in any rescue operations. "We don't consider this any sort of a threatening action to the US," said Navy Capt. Craig Quigley. [WP 2/25/96] But US president Bill Clinton, speaking in a televised address the same night, called the Cuban action an "aggression" and said that US troops were being sent to support the search and rescue operation. [Channel 11 (NY) TV News 2/24/96] Brothers to the Rescue was founded in the early 1990s, when large numbers of Cubans began leaving the island on rafts headed for the US. The group of volunteer pilots patrolled the waters around Cuba looking to rescue the immigrants. But since an agreement between the US and Cuba stemmed the flow of immigrants last year, Brothers to the Rescue has focused on more overtly political actions against the Cuban government. [NYT 2/25/96] On Jan. 9 and 13 of this year, small planes from Florida dropped leaflets over Miami; an official statement published in the weekly trade union newspaper Trabajadores warned that any future flights would meet with a stronger response from the Cuban government. According to Inter Press Service, Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto admitted at the time having distributed half a million pamphlets over Havana urging residents to take "nonviolent direct action" against the government of President Fidel Castro [see Update #312]. Retired Adm. Eugene Carroll of the Center for Defense Information said on the night of Feb. 24 that during a visit to Cuba 10 days earlier, Cuban authorities asked him and others in his group how the US government would react if Cuba shot down exile planes that violated Cuban airspace. Carroll said he took the question as an indication that Cuban military officials were considering such an action. He said he told the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) about it when he returned. [WP 2/25/96] Carroll was in Cuba Feb. 5-9 leading a delegation of four former US military personnel and two civilians, including former US ambassador to El Salvador Robert White, now with the Center for International Policy. A key focus of their trip was a tour of the partly-finished Juragua nuclear facility in Cienfuegos province. Carroll told the press: "There is nothing in Cuba that threatens US security," and said he and the other delegation members "did everything possible to convince [the Cubans] that there is no possibliity the US will invade Cuba." [El Diario-La Prensa 2/11/96 from EFE; Radio Havana Cuba 2/6/96; Inter Press Service 2/8/96] In related news, Michael and Robert Kennedy, nephews of former US president John F. Kennedy, met with President Fidel Castro on Feb. 17 to discuss alternative energy and the future of the Juragua nuclear plant. The Kennedys were in Cuba as part of a delegation of the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); the trip was led by NRDC president John Adams. [ED-LP 2/20/96 from EFE] 4. CUBA BANS DISSIDENT CONFERENCE A coalition of Cuban dissident groups postponed indefinitely their plans to hold a conference on Feb. 24-27 in Havana after the government refused permission for the meeting. [El Diario-La Prensa 2/20/96 from EFE, 2/25/96 from AFP] In a Feb. 19 statement, six leaders of the coalition Concilio Cubano said they cancelled the conference because of "the imprisonment of numerous dissidents and acts of harassment against others." Concilio leaders and diplomats in Havana said that at least 28 of the group's members have been arrested as part of a crackdown on dissidents over the past week, including a group of 10 on Feb. 20 and four out of the five members of the coalition's steering committee. The fifth steering committee member is said to be in hiding, and at least one of those already in custody is reported to have begun a hunger strike. [New York Times 2/21/96] Concilio sources cited in rightwing Miami newspaper Diario Las Americas claimed that 45% of the coalition's members were arrested in the latest crackdown. On Feb. 23, both Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch/Americas (HRW/A) condemned the Cuban government's arrest of dissidents and urged their immediate release; HRW/A charged that more than 40 Concilio members had been arrested. [DLA 2/24/96] Concilio Cubano was formed last year by 130 dissident, human rights and unofficial professional groups on the island. The steering committee wrote a letter in late December to the Cuban government's Council of State, formally asking permission to hold the conference. Though the government acknowledged receiving the request, the Concilio leaders said, it never issued a written reply. According to the group's statement, Lt. Col. Aristides Gomez from the Ministry of the Interior personally contacted Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, secretary general of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, on Feb. 16 and told him that the meeting would not be allowed to take place. [NYT 2/21/96; ED-LP 2/20/96 from EFE] The statement was signed by Arcos, along with Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz of the Commission of Human Rights and National Conciliation; Feliz Bonne of the Civic Current; Martha Beatriz Roque of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists; Jesus Yanez Pelletier, vice president of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights; and Vladimiro Roca of the Democratic Socialist Current. Arcos said that the Cuban government had shown a certain flexibility since the beginning of this year, "and because of that we thought they were beginning to accept the existence of the dissidents." [ED-LP 2/20/96 from EFE] In a Feb. 22 press conference, Cuban foreign ministry spokesperson Marianela Ferriol accused the US of interfering in Cuban affairs by organizing and financing the Concilio Cubano meeting. "The meeting was organized, preconceived, sponsored and financed by the United States government," said Ferriol. "And this will never be allowed in our country." [ED-LP 2/23/96 from AFP; Radio Havana Cuba 2/22/96] According to controversial Miami-based Cuban emigre columnist Luis Ortega, Concilio Cubano has tainted its credibility by associating with rightwing anti-Castro groups based in Miami. Ortega adds that Richard Nuccio, who has served as US president Bill Clinton's special adviser on Cuba since May of last year [see Update #305], "does not hide his support for the Concilio." Ortega reveals that "[t]he multi-million dollar enterprise that operates under the name of Brothers to the Rescue, just gave a check for a secret amount to Sebastian Arcos Bergnes [a CCDDH leader and brother of Gustavo] to pay the expenses of the Feb. 24 meeting." That fact, writes Ortega, makes it "obvious that it doesn't represent a legitimate opposition movement," but rather "a branch of Miami's business dealings." Ortega predicts that this will quickly bring the dissolution of the coalition: "Everyone who jumps into fighting the government in Cuba and does it in complicity with Miami's apparatus of corruption and [while] receiving aid from the Americans, is dead on arrival," writes Ortega. [ED-LP 2/21/96] Dissident Lazaro Gonzalez Valdes, a leader of the Cuban Party for Human Rights (PPDHC), was arrested in his home on Feb. 15 and was sentenced on Feb. 22 to 14 months in prison on charges of resisting arrest and defying authority, according to a bylined article in rightwing Miami daily Diario Las Americas. The day before Gonzalez was sentenced, the PPDHC had announced that despite the cancelation of the conference, delegations from various Cuban cities were going to meet on Feb. 24 to design a plan to continue the work of the Concilio Cubano. [DLA 2/24/96] 5. MEXICO: NEW MASSACRES IN GUERRERO In a little more than 12 hours starting in the late morning of Feb. 18, a total of nine people were shot dead in the sierra region near Acapulco in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. The violence began when three relatively prosperous coffee-growers were driving from their home town, El Paraiso in Atoyac de Alvarez municipality, towards a ranch in the village of La Florida. According to their relatives, the three were attacked on the road by members of the state judicial police, who ended up killing the men in a bungled kidnapping attempt. Some reports say the men fought back and wounded one police agent. Kidnappings for ransom have become common in the coffee-growing region, where some ranchers and campesinos can afford new vans and satellite dishes. In the evening the judiciales brought the La Florida victims' bodies to their families in El Paraiso. Later, five friends and relatives drove off in a van for Acapulco, either to buy flowers and candles for the wake or--according to some versions--to check out a rumor that the wounded police agent was in an Acapulco hospital. Judicial police from Tecpan de Galeana municipality, headed by Commander Leopoldo Benitez Perez, stopped the men around midnight on the highway at a place called El Roble, in Coyuca de Benitez municipality. The police wounded and then executed the men, according to the victims' relatives. One more relative of the La Florida victims was found dead with six bullet wounds the next morning in the Atoyac municipal center. Guerrero authorities and the judiciales initially claimed that the La Florida and El Roble killings were unrelated, and that at El Roble the police had been defending themselves from armed attackers. But on Feb. 20 forensic officials in Acapulco confirmed that four of the El Roble victims had received the coup de grace--had been shot from as close 15 cm after being wounded. Commander Benitez and another police agent were arrested, and state governance secretary Zotico Garcia Pastrana flew to El Paraiso by helicopter on Feb. 20 to promise the victims' families that justice would be done. [La Jornada (Mexico) electronic edition 2/20/96, 2/21/96, 2/22/96] The new killings took place just a few miles from Aguas Blancas, where state judicial police massacred 17 members of the leftist Southern Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS) on June 28, 1995 [see Updates #283-286]. Last October two armed men fatally wounded a local doctor, Martha Morales Vazquez, in Tecpan de Galeana; she was a local leader of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) [see Updates #299 and 301]. The PRD reports that 76 of its members have been murdered in Guerrero since the current governor, Ruben Figueroa Alcocer of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), took office in 1993. [El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 2/21/96 from AFP] Another four people died violently in the area during the week of Feb. 18. A campesino, Eliseo Diaz Pino, was kidnapped on Feb. 18 and was held for a ransom of about $16,000; his body was found in El Ticui, a town near Atoyac, on Feb. 22. In Tlacotepec municipality, about 50 km north of Coyuca, four men killed the owner of a van on Feb. 20, apparently in a robbery or kidnapping attempt. Judicial police arrested the assailants and then allegedly took them to a remote mountain area and shot all four, killing two and leaving the other two for dead. [LJ 2/23/95, electronic edition] After his Feb. 20 visit to El Paraiso, governance secretary Garcia Pastrana told a reporter: "The fact that there are isolated incidents, regrettable incidents that stir things up, this, in Guerrero--I don't know if you're from the state--I'd say is normal." But Atoyac's PRD government is demanding that the state judicial police and the army be kept out of the municipality and that the state legalize and fund a locally organized community police force. [LJ 2/4/96, electronic edition] [Indigenous communities in the northeast of the state have raised similar demands; see Update #314.] The Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights is calling for faxes to ask for an impartial investigation of the killings and for the protection of witnesses. Fax Mexican president Ernest Zedillo Ponce de Leon (011-524-271-1764) and others. For more information, contact Global Exchange 415-255-7296, fax 415-255- 7498, email globalexch@igc.apc.org. [Global Exchange 2/24/96] El Paraiso itself is about equally divided between PRD supporters, PRI supporters and non-party people. The Rojas family, which lost three members in the Feb. 18 incidents, has strongly supported the PRI and Gov. Figueroa in the past. But now the town is united in its anger against the state government. Some 2,000 mourners participated in the funeral of several of the victims. "If the government goes on killing people, the only thing it will do is provoke people to rise up in arms," said one relative of the dead men. [LJ 2/22/96] On Feb. 22 judiciales made a routine arrest of an El Paraiso shopkeeper, Reyna Bautista, for health code violations. Dozens of armed residents followed the police, rescued Bautista and drove the judiciales out of the sierra region. [LJ 2/23/96] 6. RIGHTWING US CANDIDATE PANICS MAQUILADORA LORDS The US apparel industry trade journal WWD (formerly Women's Wear Daily) reports that major retailers and textile and apparel manufacturers are in a "tizzy" over the narrow victory of far rightwing newspaper columnist Pat Buchanan in the Republican Party's New Hampshire primary on Feb. 20. Their concern is the candidate's call for repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which Buchanan blames for the loss of production jobs in the US. Julia Hughes, chair of the US Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, says she resents Buchanan's use of textile job losses to attack free trade policies. "Many lost textile jobs have nothing to do with NAFTA, imports or wages overseas," she says. "The job losses have to do with higher productivity and technology." [WWD 2/22/96 from Fairchild News Service] But another trade journal, DNR, reports that attendance at the Bobbin Contexpo show in Miami Feb. 28-Mar. 1 is expected to increase by 30% over last year. The show is "a place where Latin American contractors and US manufacturers and retailers can work out programs, compare labor rates and talk about opening up production," according to an unnamed official of the J.C. Penney Co. The "big retailers with private-label lines" are the important customers at the show, says Alfonso Hernandez, who heads Argus International, a Miami-based contractor that operates maquiladoras in Central America. The one "cloud hanging over Bobbin Contexpo" is the likelihood that Congress will have to wait until after this year's elections to pass legislation giving maquiladoras in the Caribbean and Central America (the "Caribbean Basin Initiative," or CBI, region, named for a Reagan Administration trade initiative) the same trade breaks that Mexican assembly plants get under NAFTA [see "NAFTA: The Second Year," Update Supplement 12/2/95]. But the J.C. Penney executive thinks that "the established contractors in the CBI nations should survive. There's good shipping to Miami and labor rates are generally lower than labor rates in Mexico." Colombia is also trying to edge into the maquiladora industry; it will have the second largest representation in the show, after Mexico. [DNR 2/22/96] In 1995 US apparel industry jobs fell by 10% from 945,000 to 846,000, while textile jobs fell from about 660,000 to 620,000. Some textile job losses were due to automation, but clothing manufacturers "stay profitable by exporting jobs to low-wage Latin American countries like Mexico and the Dominican Republic," according to the New York Times, which supports free trade. [NYT 2/21/96] 7. SEMI-NUDE STUDENTS PROTEST IN NICARAGUA On Feb. 22, some 500 Nicaraguan university students stripped off much of their clothing for a protest march in Managua to demand that 6% of the national budget be dedicated to higher education, as required by the Constitution. Many of the students went shirtless, and some wore only towels covering their lower bodies, while others wore short pants with the pockets pulled out; many had slogans painted on their bodies. The protest caused a stir in the local media: La Tribuna's headline was "Vulgarity"; the pro- Sandinista El Nuevo Diario proclaimed "Struggle for the 6% with Pants Down"; and the Sandinista-run daily Barricada ran a photo of a completely nude youth getting his buttocks painted by a fellow student, along with the headline, "They get naked and condemn double standard." Education minister Humberto Belli--who opposes the 6% budget share for universities because he believes government support for education should focus on primary and secondary schools--echoed the charges of "vulgarity" against the students' action. "It is regrettable that the superior elite, considered the best educated in the country, behaves in such an uncivilized manner," said Belli. "They are giving an example of how part of the money spent on higher education is wasted." [El Diario-La Prensa 2/25/96 from AP; Diario Las Americas 2/24/96 from AFP] 8. FSLN HOLDS PRIMARY ELECTIONS On Feb. 18, over half a million people went to the polls in Nicaragua to vote in the party primary of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). For the first time ever, the primary elections were open to all Nicaraguans regardless of party affiliation. According to Julian Corrales, head of the FSLN's National Electoral Committee, the number of voters far exceeded the party's expectations. Especially surprising to many was the large turnout of non-FSLN members. Even former members of the contras are said to have participated. [Nicaragua Network (DC) Hotline 2/19/96] At least 5,500 polling places were open across the country; voters chose from a list of nearly 7,000 candidates for the posts of president, vice president, National Assembly deputies, mayors, vice mayors and departmental council members. Some voting centers opened late for lack of ballots or transport, or because the organizers failed to appear. In some neighborhoods, the list of candidates was only distributed the night before the elections, causing fears that the elections would not be as successful as hoped. In the north Atlantic region of the country, the voting is to take place Feb. 25 because the ballots did not arrive in time on Feb. 18, according to the National Electoral Committee. [El Diario-La Prensa 2/19/96 from AFP] While final results have not been released, it appears to be a close race between FSLN secretary general Daniel Ortega and human rights advocate Vilma Nunez for the presidential nomination. Some districts have reported that radio journalist Carlos Guadamuz won the race as candidate for mayor of Managua. [NN Hotline 2/19/96] According to a bylined article in rightwing anti-Sandinista Miami paper Diario Las Americas, official results still had not been released by Feb. 23, and rumors were circulating in Managua that fraud was being carried out to favor Ortega's presidential candidacy. The article cites Victor Hugo Tinoco, FSLN secretary of international relations, saying that "uncontrolled passions" were present in the race for the presidential nomination. The FSLN's secretary of organization in Managua, Henry Petrie, was quoted saying that the FSLN's primary elections "left negative effects in the party structures." [DLA 2/24/96] 9. MORE VIOLENCE IN NORTHERN NICARAGUA The National Police reported on Feb. 21 that three activists from a party called Arriba Nicaragua (Up With Nicaragua) were killed by a group of five assailants, members of armed bands, in the northern department of Jinotega. "The three campesinos were killed by bullets when the group shot at two pickup trucks belonging to the European Economic Community (EEC), in which [the victims] were traveling," said a police spokesperson. The campesinos had asked for a ride in the back of the pickup trucks, explained the spokesperson. Bayardo Salmeron, coordinator of the EEC in Nicaragua, was in the one of the vehicles at the time of the attack, but was unhurt. [El Diario-La Prensa 2/22/96 from AP] Arriba Nicaragua is led by presidential candidate Alvaro Robelo. Party leaders said the attack seemed not to be politically motivated. [DLA 2/24/96] In the past 14 months, a total of 225 people have been killed and 148 kidnapped in northern Nicaragua. Esteli bishop Abelardo Matta warned on Feb. 21 that the situation in the area "is generating the bases of a new civil war," and expressed regret that the majority of the newly armed assailants are young people. [DLA 2/24/96 from AFP] 10. CHILE: PROTESTERS HOLD SIT-IN AT PRISON A group of between 160 and 200 relatives of prisoners began a sit-in at the Santiago Penitentiary on Feb. 18 to protest the bad treatment of inmates by guards; they ended the sit-in five days later and walked out of the prison to cheers and applause after reaching an agreement with director of prisons Claudio Martinez. "We have [the government's] commitment to respect...the physical integrity of our relatives," said Marianela Rios, who acted as spokesperson of the movement. The protesters--who included 30 children--had entered the prison during Sunday visiting hours and then refused to leave, demanding to be heard by government representatives. Heavily armed police surrounded the prison, while other relatives of prisoners gathered outside and demonstrators set up barricades in the area to support the sit- in. [Diario Las Americas 2/24/96 from AFP; Inter Press Service 2/19/96] A spokesperson of the relatives outside the penitentiary said that recently an inmate at the prison died after being beaten, and another has permanent health problems because of the deficient medical attention at the prison. [IPS 2/19/96] 11. LEADER QUITS LEFT COALITION IN URUGUAY On Feb. 5, at a ceremony celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front (FA) coalition, former general Liber Seregni announced his resignation as FA president. "I can't stay in the presidency a moment longer," said Seregni, who has represented the Front in negotiations with the traditional parties for more than 20 years. Seregni was barred from political activity during Uruguay's 12-year military dictatorship (1973-1985) and was imprisoned for several years. Seregni's resignation stemmed from the FA's failure to reach a decision on a proposed electoral reform; the former general was to convey the decision to the Colorado and National parties. "I am not in a position to negotiate with the government nor with the other political parties," said Seregni. He explained that the left had to show it could rule responsibly, and criticized ongoing internal conflicts within the coalition. "Tolerance is a virtue we must cultivate among party members and apply to everything," he warned. In Uruguay's 1994 elections, the FA won its highest level of electoral support since it was founded in 1971, gaining nearly a third of the seats in the legislature. FA support has continued to increase since then, and Uruguayan polling firm Equipos Consultores reported in November 1995 that if elections were held at this time, the FA would have won 31% of the vote, against 20% each for the Colorado and National parties. The two traditional parties want to reform the voting system to bring in a second round runoff when no presidential candidate gets a clear majority. Some sectors of the FA--mainly the Communists, Socialists and the former Tupamaro guerrillas--oppose this because they feel it hurts the Front's chances of victory. Others, like Seregni, think a second round is a risk the coalition has to take if it wants to pass other electoral reforms it has been fighting for since its creation. Under the current constitution, each party can present several presidential candidates, and the total of their votes are added up to decide which party will win overall. The FA is seeking a system where each party has only one presidential candidate. The conflict over electoral reforms has spilled over into a dispute between the FA's two most probable presidential candidates, Senator Danilo Astori--who said he "totally" agreed with Seregni's criticisms--and former Montevideo mayor Tabare Vazquez. Socialist Party leader Vazquez did not attend the anniversary celebration, though he said his absence was not related to his disagreement with Seregni, whom he considered "irreplaceable." Some analysts feel that Seregni, as one of the few unaffiliated FA leaders, was uniquely able to hold together such a diverse coalition, and that a split within the Front is now inevitable. [Inter Press Service 2/7/96] 12. PERUVIAN REBEL ARRESTED IN BOLIVIA Juan Carlos Caballero Velasquez, a top leader of the Peruvian Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), was arrested in Bolivia on Feb. 16. Bolivian governance minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain said that Caballero will be tried in Bolivia, where he allegedly planned and participated in the kidnapping of businessperson Samuel Doria Medina last November [see Updates #305, 309]. Anti-terrorist police in Lima said that Caballero was also responsible for the January 1985 assassination in Peru of Defense Minister Enrique Lopez Albujar and for the death of at least three businesspeople, one of them from Spain. Agents of Peru's anti-terrorist police were to travel on Feb. 19 to La Paz to help with the interrogations of Caballero. [El Diario-La Prensa 2/19/96 from AFP; La Jornada 2/18/96 from AFP] In related news, the New York weekly Village Voice revealed in its Feb. 27 edition that US activist Lori Berenson--now serving a life sentence in Peru for having worked with the MRTA [see Updates #306, 307, 309-311, 314]--worked in Nicaragua and El Salvador during the early 1990s as the trusted personal secretary to Salvador Sanchez Ceren ("Leonel Gonzalez"), head of the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL) of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), even traveling with him to Mexico throughout the peace negotiations to end El Salvador's civil war. Her Salvadoran former husband, Walter Mejia, is quoted as suggesting that Berenson must have made contact with the MRTA while she was in El Salvador. A well-placed FPL source confirmed that there have long been extensive contacts between the FPL and the MRTA. [VV 2/27/96] 13. IN OTHER NEWS... Cuba's largest joint venture with foreign investors appears to be in trouble. During an official June 1994 visit to the island, Mexico's then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari announced that his country's Grupo Domos firm was buying a 49% share in the Cuban telephone company, Etecsa, for about $1.4 billion [see Update #229]. But Grupo Domos president Javier Garza Calderon is now looking for a partner in the venture, which was to modernize the Cuban telecommunications system. The Mexican company was unable to pay Cuba the final $320 million installment when it came due in October 1995. Another joint venture with a Mexican company fell apart last fall when Cuba had to cancel a $200 million project with the Mexpetrol consortium for the modernization of the Soviet-built oil refinery at the port of Cienfuegos. [Financial Times (UK) 2/8/96]... Hundreds of bus owners went on strike on Feb. 22 in El Salvador, blocking the roads leading into the capital to demand that the government end the unfair competition of "pirate microbuses." The strike is more than 70% effective in the entire country, and we are not going to work until we get a response from the government," bus owner Guillermo Burgos told journalists. Clashes between police and strikers erupted when agents of the National Civilian Police tried to move the parked buses from the roads; police used tear gas to disperse the protesters. One agent was injured by thrown rocks and dozens of strikers were arrested in similar clashes the following day. The strikers are represented by the Association of Public Passenger Transport (ATP). [El Diario-La Prensa 2/23/96 from AP, 2/25/96 from AFP]... Health workers in Ecuador decided on Feb. 18 to accept a 40% raise and end the strike they had started on Feb. 9 [see Updates #314-316], although administrative employees in the health sector are staying out on strike while talks with the government continue. [ED-LP 2/19/96 from AP] 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. 2/29 THU, 8 PM - "A Night Out of Time," benefit party w/Judith Malina, Quentin Crisp & many more. Casa de las Americas, 104 W 14th St. $8 adv, $10 at door. War Resisters League, 212-228-0450. 2/29 THU, 8 PM - "The Zapatistas & Radical Democracy" w/June Nash (CUNY). Brecht Forum, 122 W 27 St, 10 fl. $6. 212-242-4201. 3/1 FRI, 7:30 PM - "Implications of US Intervention in Bosnia" w/speakers including David Wilson of the Weekly News Update. 122 W 27, 10th fl. NY CoC Peace & Solidarity Task Force, 212-229- 2388. 3/2 SAT, 3 PM - CREED mailing. Place TBA. Call 212-645-5230. 3/2 SAT, 9 PM - "Fiesta Colombiana por la Paz," dance, drink, food. 122 W 27, 10th fl. $5. Colombia Multimedia Proj, 212-802- 7209.