WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
                   ISSUE #331, JUNE 2, 1996
       NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
     339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499
1. Chile: DINA Involved in Killings In Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina
2. Colombian Guerrillas Turn Over New Leaf?
3. Temporary Exile for Colombian Leftist
4. US and Guatemalan Governments Sabotaged UN Peace Mission
5. Haiti: Cop Murders, Kidnappings, Lynchings
6. Migra Monitor: Computerized IDs, Vigilantes, Harassment,
7. Maquiladoras: New York, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico
8. Mexican Labor's "Hot May" Ends as Dissident Teachers March
9. No Talks and No Peace in Southern Mexican State
10. Venezuelan Ex-Presidents Get Off Easy 
11. Tornado Devastates Nicaraguan Town
12. Cuba Considers Appeal For Rightwing Cuban-American
13. In Other News: Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay


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*1. CHILE: DINA INVOLVED IN KILLINGS IN BRAZIL, URUGUAY,
ARGENTINA

New developments in three separate South American murder cases
all implicate the DINA, Chile's secret police force during the
military regime from 1973 to 1989. A 1975 letter from then-DINA
chief Manuel Contreras Sepulveda to Brazilian Gen. Joao
Figueiredo has just been turned over to Brazilian courts; in the
letter Contreras asked Figueiredo, then head of Brazil's secret
police, the National Information Service, to prevent Kubitschek
and Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier from returning to active
political life. In 1976, Kubitschek was killed in Brazil when the
car he was riding in exploded, much the same way Letelier was
killed in Washington, DC. During his term as president from 1956
to 1961, Kubitschek survived two military coup attempts; at the
time of his death he was a critic of the military regime
installed in his country in 1964. Contreras is now serving time
in prison for masterminding the December 1976 assassination of
Letelier and his aide Ronni Moffitt [see Updates #278-283], which
occurred one month after the killing of Kubitschek.
 
The statute of limitations on the Kubitschek death expires in
three months, but the case could kept open in light of this new
evidence. The document had been obtained years ago by the
Kubitschek family, which gave it to United States journalist Jack
Anderson on the condition that it not be released during the life
of Kubitschek's widow, who died in February 1996. [CHIP News
5/27/96 from La Nacion]
 
Argentine judge Maria Servini, who heads the investigation of the
1974 murder of former Chilean Army commander-in- chief Gen.
Carlos Prats, said on May 28 that she will question former DINA
agent Michael Townley in the US. She said Townley has agreed to
answer questions, but she did not specify when her interview
would occur. Townley was convicted in the US for the Letelier and
Moffitt killings, but after he made a plea bargain where he
revealed information on those killings, and also the attempted
assassination of former Chilean vice president Bernardo Leighton
in Rome, the US government placed him in a witness protection
program.
 
Gen. Prats was commander-in-chief under Socialist president
Salvador Allende; he was forced to step down weeks before the
coup, replaced by coup leader and current commander-in-chief
Augusto Pinochet. Gen. Prats and his wife Sofia Cuthbert were
killed in 1974 in Buenos Aires by a car bomb planted in their
car, similar to the Kubitschek and Letelier assassinations.
Enrique Arancibia Clavel, another former DINA agent, was arrested
in Buenos Aires this past January and remains in custody as an
alleged accessory in the killing [see Update #313]. Townley has
admitted that he was in contact with Arancibia and Argentine
military personnel prior to the assassination. In Santiago,
Chile, seven individuals gave testimony after witness subpoenas
from Judge Servini were accepted by the Chilean Supreme Court.
But instead of appearing in a court of law, they testified in
another location, which Prats family attorney Pamela Pereira
called "highly irregular," and caused her to file a motion of
complaint before the Supreme Court. [CHIP News 5/29/96 from La
Nacion, La Epoca]
 
Dental plate comparisons have confirmed that a corpse found in
Uruguay in April 1995 is that of former DINA secret police
chemist Eugenio Berrios, who has been missing since 1991 [see
Update #314]. The Berrios family announced that they will ask the
courts to appoint a special judge to investigate his presumed
abduction and subsequent murder. The Forensic Technical Institute
of Uruguay said the corpse showed evidence of torture and
estimated that the death occurred in November 1994.
 
Berrios is believed to have developed the lethal sarin gas
employed by the DINA. He is known to have worked closely with
Townley, using the basement of Townley's house as his laboratory.
Berrios fled Chile in 1991 to Uruguay when he was cited as a key
witness in the case of the slain Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.
He was also mentioned as having information implicating Pinochet
in the Letelier case, and he had warned that Pinochet would kill
him if he found him. The abduction is believed to be the joint
work of Uruguayan and Chilean military; four Uruguayan military
and four police have been arrested in connection with the case.
[CHIP News 5/31/96 from La Nacion, La Epoca]
 
*2. COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS TURN OVER NEW LEAF?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) celebrated its
32nd birthday on May 27 with a political manifesto calling for a
broad-based civil movement. The "Bolivarian Manifesto" cites
President Ernesto Samper Pizano's drug corruption scandal as
evidence that Colombia's traditional political parties are not
viable, and calls on all righteous Colombians to join forces in a
"Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia." Because of the routine
state-sponsored murders of leftist politicians, the FARC is
calling for the organization to work from underground to build a
Colombia based on "national independence and social justice."
Once it takes office, the FARC said, its "government of national
reconciliation and reconstruction" would allocate 50 percent of
the country's budget for social welfare spending, ensure state
control over Colombia's natural resources, carry out a land
reform and seek a non-military solution to drug trafficking and
production through negotiations with the leading drug consuming
nations. [Reuter 5/27/96]
 
Three days later, two leftist guerrillas and a policeman were
killed in a shootout on the southern outskirts of Bogota. FARC
rebels were wounded and captured during the shootout, according
to a police spokesperson. Police and military also blamed the
FARC for two more killings of banana workers on May 30 in the
northwestern region of Uraba. [Reuter 5/30/96]
 
*3. TEMPORARY EXILE FOR COLOMBIAN LEFTIST

Bogota city councilperson Aida Abella, president of the leftist
Patriotic Union (UP) party, has left Colombia for temporary exile
in Europe. Abella has been threatened with death increasingly
since armed assailants tried to assassinate her on May 7 in heavy
traffic on a Bogota highway [see Update #328]. Abella traveled to
Switzerland on May 10; she plans to remain in Europe for three
months, according to the daily El Tiempo, which cited Communist
Party sources. (Abella is also a member of the Central Executive
Committee of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), which is linked
to the UP.) [Diario Las Americas (Miami) 5/17/96 from EFE]
 
According to a communique from the press office of the PCC, just
a few days before the attack Abella had gone with a delegation of
the PCC and the UP to inform Defense Minister Juan Carlos
Esguerra about the existence of the "Coup de Grace Plan II," in
which military intelligence groups are charged with plotting to
eliminate leaders of the PCC and the UP. On May 3, Carlos Durango
and Marcelino Medellin were murdered in Uraba; both were members
of the regional PCC leadership. [PCC Communique 5/7/96, PCC
Urgent Action 5/7/96]
 
The International Secretariat of the Geneva-based World
Organization Against Torture (OMCT), citing information from the
Unitary Workers Central (CUT) labor federation in Colombia,
explains that the existence of the "Coup de Grace" or "Final
Blow" plan was revealed in early 1994. The OMCT says that the
plan's professed goal was to prevent or hamper the activities of
legally recognized political or social organizations by means of
judicial accusations, arrests, attacks or murders of members and
leaders of such organizations. Faxes can be sent to President
Ernesto Samper Pizano (fax 011-571-284-7186, 286-7434 or 287-
7939), demanding that Colombian government authorities "take all
steps in their power" to end threats and violence against members
and leaders of civilian political organizations and carry out a
thorough investigation into the attack on Abella. [OMCT-SOS
Torture Case COL 080596 Urgent Action 5/9/96]
 
*4. US AND GUATEMALAN GOVERNMENTS SABOTAGED UN PEACE MISSION

According to an anonymous US embassy source, Guatemala's
Presidential Human Rights Commission (COPREDEH) worked to tie the
hands of the UN Verification Mission (MINUGUA), with help from US
embassy officials, the US Agency for International Development
(USAID), and Guatemalan government officials. The daily Siglo
Veintiuno reported on May 24 that a plan was created in 1994
under former president Ramiro de Leon Carpio to impede MINUGUA's
operation. The source said members of the military met with
COPREDEH to limit MINUGUA's ability to reveal military abuses.
Guatemala's armed forces have killed over 100,000 people, mostly
civilians, during a thirty-year counterinsurgency. 
 
COPREDEH was created by de Leon Carpio to duplicate the functions
of the Constitutionally mandated independent Human Rights
Ombudsman's Office. (De Leon Carpio was human rights ombudsman
before the military installed him as president in 1993.) In its
January 1996 report, the Ombudsman's Office stated that the
office's budget is insufficient to properly fulfill its function,
while COPREDEH is overfunded. Amilcar Mendez, legislator for the
leftist New Guatemala Democratic Front (FDNG), has called for
COPREDEH's elimination, saying that the commission, whose members
include the defense and interior ministers, is biased and
protects human rights violators. [Cerigua Weekly Briefs 5/30/96]
 
*5. HAITI: COP MURDERS, KIDNAPPINGS, LYNCHINGS

Haitian police inspector Desir Valcourt was killed on the evening
of May 27 by a group of heavily armed people who followed him in
a red Montero jeep and gunned him down in front of his home in
Port-au-Prince. Valcourt was the fifth police agent murdered in
one month. The next morning a gang stopped the car of Florence
Behrmann Pautinsky (or Pautynsky) in Port-au-Prince's Petionville
suburb and kidnapped her six-year old son Patrick. Florence
Pautinsky's father is the wealthy automobile dealer Carl
Behrmann.
 
The Haitian National Police (PNH) moved quickly to set up
roadblocks, virtually paralyzing the capital in an effort to find
the child's abductors. PNH head Pierre Denize announced that the
murders of police agents were part of "a plot to destabilize and
demobilize the police...we are taking measures to foil this
plot." Haitian president Rene Preval said that "given the type of
people being targeted, it is clear that we are dealing with a
plot." The PNH issued an arrest warrant for former dictator Gen.
Prosper Avril. Another warrant named Eddy Moise. Moise and his
brother Patrick are self-styled leftists generally considered
agents provocateurs; both were arrested in March 1995 shortly
before the still-unsolved murder of rightwing lawyer Mireille
Durocher Bertin [see Update #271]. The New York-based leftist
weekly Haiti Progres suggests that if there is a plot, the most
likely suspects would be forces that want to use instability as a
pretext to extend the United Nations military presence in Haiti.
[HP 5/29-6/4/96]
 
The violence continued on May 30 when a group of unknown
assailants gunned down Erla Francois, mayor of the northeastern
town of Chansolme, as she waited for a bus to take her home from
Port-au-Prince, where she had been attending meetings. Francois
was a member of the governing Lavalas coalition. When news of her
murder came to Chansolme later that day, an angry mob stormed the
police station where agents were interrogating seven people
arrested the day before for armed robbery of motorists. The crowd
beat all seven to death. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 6/1/96 from
AP, 6/2/96 from AFP]
 
In other news, former Haitian official Patrick Elie is still
being held in the Alexandria [Virginia] Detention Center [see
Update #327] awaiting trial on US federal charges of illegal gun
possession and impersonating a diplomat. The Haitian government
and several of Elie's friends say that he has been under
psychiatric treatment. According to US prosecutors, Elie, who
headed anti-drug operations for former president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, left the Haitian government in November to get
psychiatric care in Canada. In March he moved to the DC area,
where he had lived in exile from 1991-1994, and bought several
weapons in Virginia using an old Virginia driver's license. In
April he was charged with slapping and kicking President Preval
sister Raymonde Preval, a former lover who works at the Haitian
embassy in Washington. The charges were later dropped. Elie
admits that he took Prozac last year for depression but says that
he still works for Preval and has evidence of a plot "to wreak
havoc on Haiti's president." He says the Washington embassy is
secretly issuing passports to Haitian rightwingers, and that he
is being framed. "I wonder if American officials are acting out
of stupidity, or if they are trying to isolate me," he says.
[Washington Post 6/2/96]
 
*6. MIGRA MONITOR: COMPUTERIZED IDS, VIGILANTES, HARASSMENT,
DEATH

On May 23 US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
commissioner Doris Meissner announced the start of the
"Employment Verification Pilot Project" (EVP). The project will
test a new electronic employee identification system in which
employees will use a personal computer to access an INS database
and check each job applicant's immigration status. EVP is
starting with 48 meat packing companies in ten states with a
total work force of 56,000, most of them immigrants, but by the
fall the US plans to extend the project to 1,000 companies
throughout the country. [El Diario-La Prensa 5/24/96]
 
Meanwhile, in San Diego a rightwing vigilante group has been
patrolling the city's airport, ostensibly to demand enforcement
of existing laws that require passengers to show photo
identification to ticket agents before boarding flights. Members
of the group, the "Airport Posse," wear blue T-shirts with the
words "U.S. CITIZEN PATROL" in yellow block letters, in imitation
of the uniforms worn by INS Border Patrol agents. Vigilante Win
Housley says that "to say that we're harassing Mexicans is a
blatant lie," but admits that the patrolling "gets their
attention." He calls border control a "domestic Vietnam war."
[Washington Post 5/23/96] Airport officials have filed for an
injunction against the vigilantes, and San Diego County judge
William Howatt issued a temporary restraining order on May 23
after a news conference Latino groups held in the airport turned
into a shouting match when a Citizen patrol member appeared; the
next day Howatt extended the order. [New York Times 5/26/96]
 
US Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) was harassed and insulted by
security agent Stacia Hollingsworth as he tried to enter the
Capitol building in Washington on Mar. 29. Gutierrez, who is of
Puerto Rican descent, was with his 16-year old daughter and a 17-
year old niece; they had all attended a march to celebrate Puerto
Rican national heritage that day in Washington and were carrying
Puerto Rican flags. "Go back to your country!" Hollingsworth
shouted at the Congressperson. Hollingsworth has been suspended
while an internal investigation takes place. [ED-LP 4/19/96,
4/20/96]
 
At least two people were killed and 15 injured on Apr. 26 when
the vehicle they were in crashed while being pulled over by the
US Border Patrol in southern California. The victims "appear to
be undocumented migrants, but that has not been confirmed at this
point," said Phil Konstantin, a highway patrol spokesperson. The
incident followed a similar crash that killed eight undocumented
immigrants on Apr. 6 [see Update #324]. [WP 4/27/96 from news
services]
 
*7. MAQUILADORAS: NEW YORK, HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, MEXICO

The exploitation of immigrant labor in sweatshops was brought to
the attention of daytime television viewers on May 23 following
new revelations about the clothing line Wal-Mart markets in the
name of morning show star Kathie Lee Gifford. At the end of April
the National Labor Committee (NLC) revealed that some of the
clothes in Wal-Mart's Kathie Lee Gifford Collection were stitched
by children and pregnant women in Honduras for 31 cents an hour
[see Update #329]. Now the New York Daily News has revealed that
blouses for the line were being stitched by Seo Fashions on West
38th Street in New York City--a few blocks from Gifford's
television studio--by immigrants paid less than the minimum wage
and owed two to four weeks' back wages and overtime.
 
Gifford, who nets between $5 million and $11 million annually
from the clothing line (she recently donated $1 million of this
to a children's charity), told her TV audience on May 23 that she
"was sick to [her] stomach" when she learned about the sweatshop.
Her husband, former football star Frank Gifford, rushed to the
headquarters of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile
Employees (UNITE) to distribute $9,000 in cash to the workers.
[DN 5/24/96] Some were paid but many didn't stay because they
were afraid of being arrested and deported. [El Diario-La Prensa
5/24/96] The Giffords have hired Howard J. Rubenstein's public
relations firm to counter the bad publicity. On May 30 Kathie Lee
Gifford held a joint news conference with New York's conservative
Republican governor George Pataki to support anti-sweatshop
legislation. [New York Times 5/31/96] On May 31 she joined with
federal labor secretary Robert Reich, a liberal Democrat, to back
the Labor Department's "No Sweat" anti-sweatshop campaign. [ED-LP
6/1/96] [The Department also slapped Seo Fashions with a $22,000
fine. [WP 5/31/96]]
 
But more trouble came for the Giffords on May 29 when the 15-year
old Honduran Wendy Diaz arrived in Washington to describe the
conditions in the Global Fashions maquiladora that stitched pants
for the Gifford line until December 1995. Diaz, who was employed
by Global from the time she was 13 until she quit last month,
said she had been one of about 100 minors routinely working 13
hours a day. Global's South Korean supervisors would "insult us
and yell at us to work faster," Diaz said, and would "touch our
legs or buttocks, pretending it's a joke." Pregnant women were
forced to work in the pressing department, standing in tremendous
heat for 12 or 13 hours a day; according to Diaz this was meant
to make the women quit before they could get maternity benefits.
The NLC says the New York contractor, About Sportswear, shifted
production of the Gifford line from Global to a maquiladora in
Nicaragua to take advantage of even lower costs there. "We want
Kathie Lee to return her work to our factory, but with better
working conditions and a just wage" and the right to attend night
school and "organize to protect our rights," Diaz said.
[Washington Post 5/30/96]
 
Meanwhile, in Mexico the 190 companies forming the Maquiladora
Association (AMAC) of Ciudad Juarez in the northern state of
Chihuahua have begun a campaign to "rescue the moral values" of
their 160,000 employees, according to AMAC president Alonso
Corrales Quinones. The campaign, announced on May 15, intends to
warn the workers against vices like alcohol and drug consumption,
to encourage savings and to teach women to dress differently in
order to avoid sexual harassment. The campaign is backed by the
Juarez Women's Group, headed by Virginia Caraveo, a leader in the
local branch of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). [La
Jornada (Mexico) 5/26/96]
 
*8. MEXICAN LABOR'S "HOT MAY" ENDS AS DISSIDENT TEACHERS MARCH

Dissident teachers from Mexico's million-member National
Education Workers Union (SNTE) continued their efforts to win a
100% wage increase and improved benefits with a strike May 27-29
in the Federal District (the DF, which includes Mexico City),
neighboring Mexico State and several other states. The strike was
called by the national opposition group in the union, the
National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), and
several SNTE locals, including Local 9, representing 56,000
school teachers in the capital. (There are three locals in the
DF, Locals 9, 10 and 11.) The strikers were also demanding the
resignation of Oscar Espinosa Villarreal, the DF's regent (a
mayor appointed by the president) over an incident on May 23 in
which DF police beat teachers trying to march on Los Pinos, the
Mexican president's residence [see Update #330].
 
The federal Public Education Secretariat (SEP) dismissed the
strike's impact on May 27, saying only 1,091 teachers observed it
on the first day in the DF and 3,238 (3.7%) in Guerrero,
Michoacan and Tamaulipas. [La Jornada 5/28/96, electronic
edition] CNTE officials and other dissidents claimed that 20,000
struck in the DF, Mexico State, Michoacan and Oaxaca--about 15%
of the teachers in those areas. [Reuter 5/27/96] Members of SNTE
Local 18 in Michoacan occupied 20 bank branches in the state
capital, Morelia, on May 27, and 15 branches in parts of the
state. On the same day about 4,000 SNTE Local 14 dissidents in
Acapulco, Guerrero held a sitin all day in front of city hall.
Some 15,000 teachers marched in Ciudad Victoria, capital of
Tamaulipas, where the dissidents claimed they had shut down 22 of
the city's 24 schools. [LJ 5/28/96]
 
On May 28 DF Public Security Secretary David Garay Maldonado, the
capital's police chief, was summoned to Los Pinos to explain the
May 23 beatings to Mexican president Ernest Zedillo Ponce de
Leon. According to an official statement, the president accepted
Garay Maldonado's claim that agitators had provoked the police,
but "in no way was the president satisfied with the fact that
there was a violent response to these acts instead of the use of
other procedures that would have avoided a confrontation with its
deplorable consequence of wounded people." The president
personally "asked Mr. Garay Maldonado for his resignation as head
of the aforesaid department." [LJ 5/29/96, electronic edition]
Even before the beatings at Los Pinos, Garay Maldonado had
antagonized human rights groups by promoting a law to authorize
arrests without reasonable suspicion and to lower to 16 the age
at which suspects can be tried as adults. He is an advocate of
the death penalty, which is currently banned in Mexico. Street
crime rose dramatically in Mexico City during Garay Maldonado's
tenure, which coincided with the economic crisis that began in
December 1994. [Mexpaz: Analysis #74 "The Heartbeat of Mexico,
5/30/96]
 
On May 31 thousands of dissident teachers and their supporters
from the DF and 14 states marched from Mexico City's main plaza,
the Zocalo, through the Historic Center to the National
Anthropological Museum. The demonstration was the largest
gathering of dissident teachers since 1989, when the teachers'
movement was at its most militant; the left-leaning Mexico City
daily La Jornada set the crowd at 70,000, while the organizers
claimed that more than 100,000 marched. The demonstrators again
attempted to approach Los Pinos, but this time they were held
back with only minor incidents by a special police women's unit.
After a lengthy standoff in the rain, the marchers agreed to move
on in exchange for a government offer to negotiate the
dissidents' demands. The talks are to start on June 3. The only
serious injuries came at the beginning of the march. Two teachers
were wounded when they were caught in the crossfire during a
shootout between police and three people who had just robbed a
store in the Historic Center. [LJ 6/1/96]
 
La Jornada financial column Leon Bendesky notes that from the May
1 demonstration by independent unions [see Update #326] through
the teachers' wildcats, May was a "hot month" for Mexican labor,
which has long been dominated by unions tied to the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). "[T]he decadence of the
political party itself and of the aging union leadership," he
writes, "along with the severe social impact of the recent
[economic] crisis has cracked [the official labor movement's]
formerly solid structure." [LJ 5/26/96]
 
*9. NO TALKS AND NO PEACE IN SOUTHERN MEXICAN STATE

While apparently backing off from a confrontation with teachers
in Mexico City, the Mexican government seems determined to keep
up tensions with the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army
(EZLN) in the southeastern state of Chiapas. On May 27 a federal
judge in the eastern state of Veracruz gave a seven-year sentence
to Francisco Garcia Santiago for allegedly sabotaging a high-
tension tower belonging to the Federal Electricity Commission in
Aleman municipality, Veracruz. Garcia Santiago was arrested on
Feb. 12, 1995, during a government crackdown on the EZLN and its
supporters. The Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center charges
that the only evidence against Garcia Santiago comes from a
confession obtained through moral pressure and psychological
torture. [LJ 5/28/96]
 
Ongoing talks between the federal government and the EZLN had
already broken down over the May 2 sentencing of two other
alleged Zapatistas, videomaker Javier Elorriaga Berdegue and
indigenous activist Sebastian Entzin Gomez [see Update #328]. In
a communique made public on May 29, the Indigenous Revolutionary
Clandestine Committee (CCRI), the EZLN's political directorate,
said that "the conditions don't exist" for resuming talks as
scheduled on June 5 because of "the threat of war"--the increased
mobilizations of federal army troops in Chiapas and in the
growing conflict over the municipal government in San Andres
Larrainzar (or Sakamch'en de los Pobres), the Chiapas Highlands
town where the talks are held.
 
The San Andres conflict began on July 1, 1995, when a traditional
indigenous assembly--the inhabitants are members of the Tzotzil
Mayan group--elected Juan Lopez Gonzalez to serve as mayor for
the term starting on Jan. 1 of this year. Lopez Gonzalez is a
member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD). The townspeople then refused to register their candidate
in the official Oct. 15 Chiapas municipal elections; as the only
contender on the ballot, the PRI candidate won with 2,894 votes
to 32. On Dec. 26 PRD supporters seized the town hall and
installed Lopez Gonzalez as de facto mayor; the official mayor
has had to operate from PRI headquarters since his inauguration
on Jan. 1.
 
PRI members started demonstrating against the PRD mayor in the
last week of May. On May 30 some 2,000 PRI supporters assembled--
along with some state legislators, according to several reports--
and tried to seize the municipal building. Some 700 PRD
supporters rallied to defend the site, and after a long standoff
about 100 PRD militants charged the PRI supporters. After a brief
fist fight the far more numerous PRI group withdrew. Local
graffiti now read: "PRI coward" and "PRI, rest in peace." PRD
supporters and people from outlying villages arrived to guard the
town hall and the site of the negotiations, which Lopez Gonzalez
called "a sacred place...the image of Chiapas and of Mexico." [LJ
5/28/96]
 
Meanwhile, peace has not returned to Bachajon in Chilon
municipality, to the east of San Andres, where at least six
people were killed in fighting on May 5. Some 4,000 residents
have fled the town. Jesuits and others conducted a fast in Chilon
May 18-26 to calm the situation and bring attention to the state
government's failure to stop the fighting between PRI-linked
paramilitaries and PRD supporters. [Update 329 reported correctly
that Bachajon is not officially a town, but stated that it was
incorporated as an ejido (agrarian cooperative) in the 1940s. It
was in fact made into two ejidos, San Sebastian and San Jeronimo.
The fighting goes back to 40-year old land disputes between the
original inhabitants, who support the PRI, and newer settlers,
who now tend to support the PRD. Almost all are members of the
Tzeltal Mayan group.] [Global Exchange Report 5/28/96]
 
*10. VENEZUELAN EX-PRESIDENTS GET OFF EASY 

Venezuelan former president Carlos Andres Perez was sentenced on
May 30 to 28 months in prison for misusing $17 million in public
funds while president. Perez was impeached in 1993, and confined
since 1994--he will now be eligible for release on Sep. 19, even
though a Supreme Court justice had recommended a four-year
sentence. [New York Times 5/31/96] On Feb. 27, Venezuela's
Supreme Court had cleared another former Venezuelan president,
Jaime Lusinchi (1984-89), of charges of irregular handling of
public finances. Lusinchi's former personal secretary Blanca
Ibanez--now his wife--and two other government officials were
convicted in the case, which involved the illegal use of Interior
Ministry funds to buy 65 jeeps for use in the election campaign
of the Democratic Action (AD) party. The court voted 3 to 2 that
Lusinchi could not be tried because the five-year statute of
limitations had passed before his case came to trial in 1994;
proceedings against Lusinchi and Ibanez are still open in another
two cases. [Inter Press Service 2/27/96]
 
*11. TORNADO DEVASTATES NICARAGUAN TOWN

A tornado struck the small town of Telpaneca, Nicaragua, on
Thursday, May 23, damaging 96 homes and leaving 468 people
homeless. These people are staying in the local high school while
relief efforts are organized. The Fresno-Telpaneca Sister City
Association is accepting donations for current relief efforts,
which will be forwarded to the Red Cross in Nicaragua. Donations
can be sent to the Fresno/Telpaneca Sister City Association, P.O.
Box 4496, Fresno CA 93744. [Fresno/Telpaneca Sister City
Association Press Release 5/29/96]
 
*12. CUBA CONSIDERS APPEAL FOR RIGHTWING CUBAN-AMERICAN

Cuba's Supreme Court has accepted consideration of an appeal for
a Cuban-American sentenced to death by a provincial court. On
Apr. 30, Humberto Real Suarez was sentenced to death by a court
in Villa Clara Province for the murder of Cuban fisher Arcelio
Rodriguez Garcia with the aim of stealing his car. Real Suarez
had entered the island to carry out sabotage in Cuba's Escambray
Mountains. The Miami-based National Democratic Unity Party
claimed responsibility for the action. The same court ordered
sentences ranging from 15 to 30 years for 6 other Cuban-Americans
involved in the incident. [Radio Havana Cuba 5/9/96]
 
*13. IN OTHER NEWS....

US citizen Cynthia Gurseny (spelling uncertain) has been released
after apparently being kidnapped on May 31 in northern Nicaragua.
Gurseny is in Nicaragua as a monitor for the October 20
elections. [National Public Radio "All Things Considered"
6/2/96]... Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal has decided to free
a man convicted of rape because his 12-year-old victim was
considered promiscuous. Since 1940, the age of consent in the
country has been 14, but Judge Marco Aurelio de Mello wrote that
the law was "anachronistic" because young people now are far more
knowledgeable about life, and 12-year-old girls are not children.
Soon afterwards, Sen. Jose Bonifacio introduced a bill that would
lower the age of consent to 12. The National Council for Women
said the court ruling ignored the power of persuasion that adults
have over children. Jacqueline Pitanguy of the Cepia institute
said that a change in the legal limit would send the wrong
message to a country with a high incidence of child sexual abuse
and prostitution. Human rights groups estimate some 2 million
minors work as prostitutes. [Reuter 5/28/96]... Around 800
farmers took over the Agriculture Ministry building in the
Brazil's capital on May 30, and said they would remain there
until the government agreed to $2 billion in loans for small
farmers across Brazil. Violence ensued between the protesters and
police; workers said three demonstrators were injured, while
police said one policeman had been injured and blamed union
leaders for failing to control the demonstration. About 2,000
farmers had been camped out in front of Congress as part of their
protest for loans. [Reuter 5/30/96]... The mummified body of a
South American woman who died about 500 years ago at the age of
12 to 14 has been put on display in Washington, DC, provoking
protests in Peru. Anthropologist Sonia Guillen said that
President Alberto Fujimori was using the body of the young woman-
-who apparently was killed during an Inca ritual high in the
Andes--for political ends, and said he was "selling our
grandmother." She also criticized US President Bill Clinton, who
attended the exhibition's inauguration, for commenting that the
corpse was "good-looking" and that he would date it if he were
single. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 6/2/96]... Federico and Carlos
Fasano, director and editor in chief of Uruguayan daily La
Republica, have been sentenced to two years in prison for the
crime of "offending the honor of a foreign head of state." The
punishment was for publishing articles accusing Paraguay's
president Juan Carlos Wasmosy of corruption in connection with
the Itaipu dam, a joint venture between Paraguay and Brazil. The
Fasano brothers called themselves the "first political prisoners
since the fall of the dictatorship," and criticized the trial, in
which they weren't allowed to introduce evidence that their
charges are accurate. Wasmosy said he "regretted" the
imprisonment of the journalists, but said "journalists must be
responsible and ethical." The sentences have been protested by
the Paraguayan Journalists Union (SPP), the Uruguayan Press
Association (APU), Journalists of Argentina (PA), the Latin
American Journalists Federation (FELAP), and the Latin American
Human Rights Association (ALDHU), which said the law violates the
UN Declaration of Human Rights. [La Jornada 5/26/96; Inter Press
Service 5/28/96]... On Thursday, May 30, the Dominican Republic's
Central Electoral Board officially announced the results of May
16 presidential elections. As expected, Jose Francisco Pena Gomez
of the social-democratic Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD)
finished first, ahead of Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican
Liberation Party (PLD), but since Pena Gomez received less than
50% of the vote, he will face Fernandez in a runoff on June 30.
The ruling Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC) ran a distant
third; current president Joaquin Balaguer did not run, as part of
a deal forced by fraud allegations in the 1994 elections. On May
26, though, Balaguer and PLD president Juan Bosch reportedly
signed an agreement that the PRSC will join a "patriotic front"
in support of Fernandez. [El Diario-La Prensa 5/30/96, 5/31/96]
 
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