WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
                  ISSUE #341, AUGUST 11, 1996
       NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
     339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

1. Massive Support for Argentine General Strike
2. Colombia: Government Negotiates, But Protests Continue
3. Colombia: Indigenous Groups Win Agreement
4. Police Clash With Indigenous Community in Panama
5. Mexico: Colosio Conspiracy Case Collapses
6. Mexican Rebels: EPR Meets the Press, EZLN Networks
7. Mexico News: Pemex Loses, SUTAUR Leaders Freed, Labor Votes
8. Guatemalan Rebels Do Armed Propaganda
9. Chilean Family, Government Seeks Freedom for Peru Prisoner
10. Public Defender Killed in Honduras
11. FBI Graduates Latin American Police Officials
12. In Other News: Bolivia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Ecuador

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. To
subscribe, send a check or money order for US $25 payable to
Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY
10012. Please specify if you want the electronic or print
version: they are identical in content, but the electronic
version is delivered directly to your email address; the print
version is sent via first class mail. For more information about
electronic subscriptions, contact nicanet@nyxfer.blythe.org. Back
issues and source materials are available on request. (Many of
our source materials are accessed through NY Transfer News
Collective; back issues are also available on NY Transfer's
OnLine Library. Contact NY Transfer at
accounts@nyxfer.blythe.org) 

If you are accessing this Update for free on electronic
newsgroups, we would appreciate any financial support you can
contribute. We are a small, all-volunteer organization funded
solely through subscriptions and contributions. Please also help
spread the word about the Update. If you know someone who might
be interested in subscribing, send their email (or regular mail)
address to nicanet@nyxfer.blythe.org and request a free one-month
trial subscription to the Weekly News Update on the Americas.

Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any
information from them, but please credit us as "Weekly News
Update on the Americas," and include our address so that people
will know how to find us. 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@nyxfer.blythe.org

CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES:
http://homebrew.geo.arizona.edu/wnuhome.html
http://homebrew.geo.arizona.edu/nsnhome.html
 
*1. MASSIVE SUPPORT FOR ARGENTINE GENERAL STRIKE
 
At least a dozen people were injured--one seriously--and about
100 arrested in Argentina on Aug. 8 during a national general
strike against the government's economic policy. Observance of
the strike ranged from 70% to 100%, and was highest in areas
hardest hit by unemployment. The strike was called by the General
Labor Confederation (CGT), which is allied with the ruling
Justicialist (Peronist) Party (PJ); together with two dissident
federations, the Movement of Argentine Workers (MTA) and the
Argentine Workers Congress (CTA). [Note: CTA was incorrectly
referred to in Update #339 as CAT, following an error in our
source.] According to the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), the
largest business association in the country, the strike had a 70%
impact on industry. Hospitals saw only emergency cases. The
National Commission of Automotive Transport (CONTA) said that
public transport was halted by about 70%. Some international
flights were suspended, and many small and medium producers and
businesspeople joined the strike. 
 
Support for a general strike had been increasing steadily over
the past few months, and a national poll of 15,021 people taken
by Cable Vision News on Aug. 6 showed support for the strike at
66%, independent of the respondents' personal decisions to
participate in the strike or not. Even the government had
predicted the strike would be large. But in the end, the
participation surpassed expectations, despite threats by the
national government and some businesses that strikers' pay would
docked. Strike observance was almost total in Cordoba province,
where governor Ramon Mestre decreed the day a holiday, and in the
cities of Santa Fe and Rosario in Santa Fe province; the strike
was also very strong in the provinces of Mendoza, Salta,
Catamarca, Jujuy, Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman
and Neuquen, as well as in the cities of La Plata and Mar del
Plata in Buenos Aires province and in the industrial belt of
Greater Buenos Aires. Large demonstrations were held in the
provincial capitals Cordoba, San Salvador de Jujuy, Neuquen and
Trelew (Chubut province). Hundreds of protesters marched through
the streets of Neuquen banging on drums. In Cordoba, 4,200 police
agents were mobilized to prevent incidents; a demonstration by
10,000 strikers there ended with a rally in front of the local
government headquarters. In the city of Rosario, in Santa Fe
province, workers blocked highways and set up soup kitchens; all
business and industry was closed. Unlike numerous protests by
provincial government workers in recent years, the Aug. 8 actions
saw a significant participation by private sector workers, small-
scale merchants and others. 
 
Despite heavy repression and a government ban on demonstrations,
the strike was also strong in the Argentine capital, Buenos
Aires, where labor actions are usually weakest. Under orders to
quell all public gatherings, police used tear gas and beat MTA
members in an attempt to prevent them from setting up soup
kitchens in the plazas of the capital, where they sought to
provide food for unemployed people and pensioners. [Unlike the
other union federations, the MTA includes unemployed workers and
pensioners among its membership.] About 100 MTA members were
arrested. Correspondent Stella Calloni of the Mexican daily La
Jornada witnessed one such police action in Constitution Plaza,
where she says a large number of uniformed and plainclothes
police agents virtually assaulted about 20 MTA leaders and
members who were setting out food for a soup kitchen. In what
Calloni calls a "Dantesque scene," bread, meat and vegetables
were strewn by police across the tables and the ground, then
fought over by hungry unemployed people, pensioners, and stray
cats and dogs. The MTA reacted to the police attacks by gathering
its supporters for a militant demonstration in Congress Plaza,
where they remained until those arrested were freed. [LJ 8/9/96,
electronic edition; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 8/11/96 from EFE,
8/9/96 from AFP; Diario Los Andes (Mendoza, Argentina) 8/9/96,
electronic edition, from DYN]
 
The police even prevented seven members of the Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo group from staging their customary weekly human
rights picket at the Plaza, held every Thursday for nearly 20
years. Police agents used water cannons against members of the
Mothers group--who were accompanied by Adolfo Perez Esquivel,
Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1980--and roughed up some of them.
[LJ 8/9/96; Inter Press Service 8/9/96] 
 
According to La Jornada, the police actions were inappropriate
given the peaceful nature of the various protests. The strikers
had effective security of their own at the marches to prevent the
participation of groups of hooded, supposedly ultra-leftist
individuals, who managed to provoke only a few isolated
incidents. [LJ 8/9/96] Strikers did throw rocks and break windows
of some 190 buses that attempted to provide service in and around
Buenos Aires. [ED-LP 8/11/96 from EFE] Argentine news agency DYN
and French news agency Agence France Presse both pointed out that
it was the police--not the protesters--who caused disturbances
during the strike. The police said they were acting on orders
from Interior Minister Carlos Corach. Speaking in the evening on
the day of the strike, Corach insisted that "there was no
repression." [Diario Los Andes 8/9/96 from DYN; ED-LP 8/9/96 from
AFP] 
 
While the police crackdown halted most protests within the city
of Buenos Aires, the CTA mobilized thousands of strikers in a
protest march of nearly 50 km along the outskirts of the capital,
beginning in Moron and culminating with a demonstration attended
by more than 20,000 people in Quilmes. In nearby San Justo,
police did not intervene when about 100 strikers and residents of
marginal communities used burning tires and wood to block the
national highway that joins the capital with the southern part of
the country. [ED-LP 8/11/96 from EFE; LJ 8/9/96] 
 
In addition to protesting the government's neoliberal economic
plan in general, strikers also expressed anger at legislators of
the ruling party who on the morning of the strike had voted to
approve the privatization of Argentina's nuclear plants. [LJ
8/9/96] The strike coincided with the second day of negotiations
between the Argentine government and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF); the government is seeking an IMF "pardon" for not
having fulfilled the economic goals set for this year. [ED-LP
8/11/96 from EFE] 
 
*2. COLOMBIA: GOVERNMENT NEGOTIATES, BUT PROTESTS CONTINUE
 
While their negotiations with the government have resumed, some
60,000 campesinos in the Colombian departments of Putumayo,
Guaviare and Caqueta are continuing their protests against the
government's fumigation of coca and opium poppy plantings. [El
Tiempo (Bogota) 8/11/96, electronic edition; El Diario-La Prensa
8/11/96 from Notimex] The protests, which started in Guaviare on
July 13 and spread to Putumayo on July 26 [see Updates #338-340],
have now also spread to the departments of Caqueta, Meta and
Cauca [ED-LP 8/11/96 from Notimex, 8/5/96 from AFP]; a report by
US Spanish-language TV network Univision on the night of Aug. 10
confirmed that the protests have taken hold in five departments.
[Univision TV News on NYC's Channel 41 8/10/96] Campesinos from
Guajira and Choco departments have also threatened to join the
protests. [Inter Press Service 8/5/96]
 
Negotiations, which broke down on Aug. 6, were renewed on Aug. 9
in Orito, Putumayo department. Taking part in the talks are
leaders of the coca growers from different areas and members of a
special government commission. [ED-LP 8/11/96 from Notimex]
Earlier in the week, the government announced a plan to
deactivate the protests by setting up an air "bridge" to
transport out of the area those campesinos who want to leave.
Presidential spokesperson Carlos Castillo said that any
campesinos who leave voluntarily will be signed up for job
subsidies and agricultural programs in other regions of the
country. [Diario Las Americas (Miami) 8/7/96 from AFP]
 
On Aug. 8, soldiers used tear gas to prevent campesinos from
taking over the facilities of the state-run oil company
Ecopetrol, in Orito. No one was hurt. [DLA 8/10/96 from AFP] The
government continues to insist that the campesino protests are
being organized by guerrilla forces. But when guerrillas of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dynamited Ecopetrol
pipelines in Putumayo on Aug. 5, "The campesinos participating in
the Orito strike came to the Ecopetrol installations to say they
had nothing to do with these attacks and that they don't support
terrorist actions," Ecopetrol press spokesperson William Giraldo
told Associated Press. [ED-LP 8/6/96 from AP]
 
The campesinos are demanding that they be consulted on policies
that affect their communities; that the problem of illegal crops
be separated from the armed conflict between the government,
guerrillas and drug traffickers; and that the government put an
end the "Special Zones of Public Order," a sort of state of siege
imposed on their regions under which certain rights are
suspended. They are also demanding a new anti-drug policy
"independent of the pressures of the US"; the decriminalization
of coca products; and guarantees for human rights defenders. 
 
In a meeting with Colombian president Ernesto Samper Pizano on
Aug. 5 in Paris, French president Jacques Chirac suggested that
the international community could create a fund that would buy
substitution crops from campesinos at the same price that
traffickers currently pay for the coca crops. [IPS 8/5/96]
 
*3. COLOMBIA: INDIGENOUS GROUPS WIN AGREEMENT
 
Sixty leaders from 48 regional organizations representing
Colombian indigenous communities were set to end their month-long
occupation of the Episcopal Conference in Bogota during the week
of Aug. 5 after reaching an agreement with the government on
human rights and social investment. [La Jornada 8/4/96 from AP,
EFE, ANSA, Reuter, AFP] The occupation began on July 5 with the
purpose of asking the Colombian bishops, who were gathered there
for their annual conference, to intercede on behalf of the
indigenous people to demand the government comply with its
promises. [Inter Press Service 7/22/96]
 
The Episcopal Conference occupation was the longest in a series
of similar actions taken by a newly formed common front of
indigenous groups who had grown tired of waiting for the
government to act on provisions set in Colombia's 1991
Constitution. On June 24, 45 members of the Wayuu community from
the northern department of Guajira occupied the Interior
Ministry's General Department of Indigenous Affairs, in Bogota,
to protest the government's failure to fulfill its promises. On
July 8, 25 members of the Embera-Katio community occupied the
Institute of Agrarian Reform to demand that they be relocated on
lands that were promised to them. [IPS 7/22/96] On July 19, some
150 indigenous Colombians of the Siona, Kofan, Inga, and Kamsza
nations occupied the offices of the Governance Ministry for
Putumayo department, in the departmental capital, Mocoa, and
demanded that the Putumayo governor speak in favor of the
national indigenous demands. On July 22, 150 members of the Pijao
community took over the installations of INCORA in the city of
Ibague, Tolima department. [Agencia Latinoamericana de
Informacion (ALAI) 7/30/96] Other actions included the occupation
of INCORA offices in Quibdo by 100 Embera and Wounaan community
members; the occupation of the departmental assembly in Puerto
Carreno by 100 members of the Sikuani, Piaroa and Amorua
communities; and the closing of the highway from Medellin to
Quibdo by 300 members of the Embera-Katio community who were
supporting the national demands, as well as seeking the inclusion
of their communities in a municipal investment plan and
protesting the burning of homes in some of their communities. In
response to the highway blockade, the government sent troops from
the army's 4th Brigade in Medellin. [Video Message to the UN
Working Group on Indigenous Peoples 7/27/96, posted on Internet
8/3/96, from semillas@colnodo.apc.org or hathaway@ax.apc.org]
 
According to Abadio Green, president of the National Indigenous
Organization of Colombia (ONIC), there has been a resurgence of
violence against indigenous communities, particularly the Zenu.
Six leaders of the Zenu community have been killed since May,
most recently Saul Baltazar, regional director of the Colombian
Indigenous Movement (MIC), who was dragged from his home by five
hooded men on July 2 and murdered in front of his wife and
children. Baltazar was killed a week after he returned from
participating in the First National Seminar on Legislative
Culture for Indigenous Youth in Bogota. On May 16, Manuel
Beltran, a member of the Zenu municipal council, was murdered;
Alejandro Teheran, general secretary of the Indigenous High
Council, was murdered on May 25. Others killed were Jose Carpio,
whose death is being blamed on the police, and Pedro and Manuel
Hernandez, who were leading the land reclamation process. [IPS
7/22/96] 
 
*4. POLICE CLASH WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY IN PANAMA
 
On Aug. 6, a clash broke out between some 200 National Police
agents and 100 members of the Kuna indigenous community in
eastern Panama after police arrested five Kuna leaders. The Kuna
have been demanding the removal of 30 families of colonists from
their recently demarcated Mandugandi reservation. When Kuna
members blocked a bridge in the Ipeti community on Aug. 7, police
fired tear gas and birdshot; Kuna leader Clemente Vallarino was
injured by police birdshot. Members of the Kuna community
returned fire, injuring five police agents. Kuna member Evelio
Jimenez was arrested and charged with attempted homicide. A
government commission has been named to seek a solution to the
conflict between settlers and the Kuna. [Centro de Capacitacion
Social (CCS) Resumen de Noticias 8/5-9/96; Diario Las Americas
8/9/96 from AFP]
 
Spokesperson Orlando Hernandez of the Ipeti-Bayano Kuna community
and indigenous lawyer Atencio Lopez charge that four Kuna
adolescents between 12 and 13 years old disappeared after the
Aug. 6 clash. [DLA 8/9/96 from AFP]
 
According to an unnamed source cited by Panamanian daily La
Prensa on Aug. 2, the General Kuna Congress (CGK) is planning to
issue an arrest order against Donald McInnes, president of the
Canadian transnational mining company Western Keltic, for having
violated laws of the Kuna Yala reservation. The arrest warrant
will take effect when McInnes enters the reservation. Last March,
the Panamanian Congress issued a resolution rejecting any mining
activities involving Kuna communities that have not been approved
by the CGK. But a leader of the Rio Azucar community signed a
letter agreeing to let Western Keltic carry out a geological
study of the region. [CCS Resumen de Noticias 7/29/96-8/2/96]
 
*5. MEXICO: COLOSIO CONSPIRACY CASE COLLAPSES
 
On Aug. 7 Mexican authorities released Othon Cortes Vazquez after
holding him in prison for 18 months on charges of shooting
presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta on Mar. 23,
1994 near Tijuana, Baja California Norte. Unemployed factory
worker Mario Aburto Martinez is serving a 45-year term for having
killed Colosio with a shot to the right side of his head; special
prosecutor Pablo Chapa Bezanilla charged that Cortes fired a
second shot seconds later that hit the candidate's abdomen from
the left. Judge Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo dismissed all the
charges against Cortes for lack of evidence.
 
Cortes, a member of Colosio's ruling Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI), was a driver for the head of Colosio's security,
Gen. Domiro Garcia Reyes. Upon being released, Cortes told
reporters that he had been tortured, and offered greetings, "from
my heart, to the friend of Mexico, the friend of democracy, the
friend of justice, President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon."
Judge Pardo Rebolledo also dismissed charges against former
federal agent Fernando de la Sota Rodalleguez and Alejandro
Garcia Hinojosa, also members of Colosio's security team; they
been accused of making false declarations to investigators. [La
Jornada 8/8/96, electronic edition] [According to the New York
Times, De la Sota was a paid informant for the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1990 to 1992; see Update #288.]
 
The collapse of the case against Cortes is a major embarrassment
for Attorney General Antonio Lozano Gracia, a member of the
conservative National Action Party and the first high-ranking
cabinet member since 1929 to belong to an opposition party.
According to political columnist Jose Urena, who predicted that
Cortes would be freed, the PAN leadership is trying to get Lozano
removed from office so that his apparent incompetence won't hurt
the party in the 1997 congressional elections. As the leading
opposition party, the PAN has ridden anti-PRI sentiment to a
number of electoral victories since the current economic crisis
began in December 1994. But in cities and state governed by the
conservatives, many people are starting to feel nostalgia for the
notoriously corrupt PRI. Graffiti have appeared in the
conservative western state of Jalisco--ruled by the PAN since
early 1995--which read, loosely translated: "Out with the jerks,
bring back the corrupt ones." [LJ 8/4/96]
 
Lozano did have a minor success in the case of former special
prosecutor Mario Ruiz Massieu on Aug. 6 when a US appeals court
in Newark, New Jersey ruled that Ruiz Massieu could not appeal to
federal courts before his case had been heard by administrative
judges from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Ruiz Massieu, who was seized in Newark International Airport in
February 1995 as he fled Mexico for Spain, has been trying to get
political asylum through the federal courts; the Mexican
government has been seeking his extradition on charges of
embezzlement and of covering up evidence in the September 1995
murder of his brother, PRI general secretary Jose Francisco Ruiz
Massieu. [El Diario-La Prensa 8/7/96 from AP]
 
Meanwhile, Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of former Mexican
president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) and the alleged mastermind
in the Ruiz Massieu murder, could face money laundering charges
in the US. According to former federal prosecutor Charles
Intriago, who publishes the "Money Laundering Alert" newsletter,
the US Justice Department is ready to charge both Raul Salinas
and Citibank, a major US bank which reportedly helped Salinas
transfer as much as $80 million to Swiss bank accounts in the
early 1990s. Intriago says that Citibank is "up to its neck in
the Raul case" and that very high officials could be charged,
including bank president John Reed. The case has been on hold
"because of the State Department's geopolitical interests
concerning Mexico," according to Intriago. [LJ 7/29/96,
electronic edition, quotes retranslated from Spanish]
 
*6. MEXICAN REBELS: EPR MEETS THE PRESS, EZLN NETWORKS
 
The Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR), the second rebel group to
emerge in Mexico since 1994, held its first press conference
during the week of Aug. 5 in a secret encampment. A few
journalists from the Mexican media and the US-based Associated
Press wire service were taken to a location in the Mexico's
eastern mountains, hundreds of miles from the southwestern state
of Guerrero, where the guerrillas made their dramatic first
appearance at a memorial service on June 28. Five masked members
of the EPR high command dismissed speculation on the Mexican left
that the EPR was actually run by government provocateurs. The EPR
spokespeople noted that their group had not yet declared war on
the government, but made it clear that they were different from
the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which started its
own uprising on Jan. 1, 1994. "We seek power," said "Commander
Jose Arturo." "We won't carry on a dialogue with the murderous
government. The government is illegitimate." The EZLN has been
engaged in talks with the government since 1995 and says it is
seeking space for a broad democratic movement rather than power.
[LJ 8/9/96, electronic edition, from AP; NYT 8/10/96]
 
A major Mexican army operation has been searching for guerrillas
in the eastern Huasteca mountain region (which includes parts of
the states of Hidalgo, Puebla and Veracruz) since the afternoon
of June 28 [see Update #337]. But EPR activity remains focused on
Guerrero, despite the press conference in the east. The group is
thought to be responsible for an Aug. 7 sniper attack on a
military encampment near Coyuca de Benitez, in the center of the
state's Pacific coast. An army cook was killed as he lit a camp
stove, and two soldiers were wounded, according to military
sources. [Reuter 8/8/96; LJ 8/9/96]
 
On Aug. 8 the town of Tixtla received anonymous phone calls with
threats to disrupt a ceremony the next day marking the 214th
birthday of Gen. Vicente Guerrero, a hero in the war for
independence from Spain and the man the state is named for. At
around 5 am on Aug. 9 some 30 masked people set up a roadblock
near Tixtla and passed out propaganda, according to some
witnesses. But the only concrete evidence of guerrilla activity
was two floral wreaths (daisies and chrysanthemums) the EPR left
in Guerrero's honor near his statue in the town park, with a note
reading: "We'll be back later." Guerrero interim governor Angel
Heladio Aguirre Rivero told reporters that "we're dealing with a
group that's full of contradictions." [LJ 8/10/96, electronic
edition]
 
In the southern state of Chiapas, meanwhile, the EZLN resumed
talks with the government in the town of San Andres Larrainzar
(or Sakamch'en de los Pobres) on Aug. 6. [Reuter 8/6/96] On Aug.
3 EZLN leader "Sub-Commander Marcos" had expressed pessimism
about the progress of the talks, saying that "our stay in the
mountains [may] be much longer than we thought." Marcos seemed
more hopeful about chances to strengthen his organization by
building worldwide resistance to neoliberal economic policies. At
the conclusion of the July 27-Aug. 3 "Intercontinental Meeting
for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism," in the village of La
Realidad, Marcos proposed another meeting in Europe for 1997, and
promised that the EZLN would attend.
 
The 1996 meeting agreed on the "Second Declaration of La
Realidad," a statement calling for two networks: "a collective
network of all our struggles...an intercontinental network of
resistance against neoliberalism," and "an intercontinental
network of alternative communication against neoliberalism." The
declaration proposes an intercontinental "consultation"
(grassroots plebiscite), to be held worldwide in the first half
of December, asking for agreement on the declaration. [LJ 8/4/96;
Prensa Latina 8/4/96] Correction: Update #340 reported that 5,000
delegates were in attendance in La Realidad on Aug. 2. There were
actually about 3,000 delegates and 2,000 local residents.
 
*7. MEXICO NEWS: PEMEX LOSES, SUTAUR LEADERS FREED, LABOR VOTES
 
The July 26 explosion that killed six workers at the giant
Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) Cactus processing plant in Chiapas
near the border with Tabasco [see Update #339] has knocked out
about 30% of Mexico's natural gas production for the coming
months. The cost of repairing the damage may be more than $200
million; the loss in revenue and the expense of importing
replacement gas from the US could cost Pemex as much as $2.5
million, according to some analysts. Poor maintenance is blamed
for the explosion. [LJ 8/4/96] The blast also damaged Pemex's
efforts to privatize its petrochemical processing plants. Dow
Chemical lawyer Victor Bermudez remarked that "nobody wants to
buy another Cactus." The selloff was already on hold for
political reasons. [NYT 8/2/96]... As of mid-July the Mexico City
government had finally released 12 leaders of the leftist Route
100 Urban Passenger Auto Transport Workers Union (SUTAUR),
including legal adviser and de facto union leader Ricardo Barco
Lopez. Nearly 5,000 of the union's 8,200 members turned out to
greet the leaders, chanting: "This ship (barco) didn't sink." The
leaders' release, on bail, probably ends the 15-month struggle
over the privatization of Route 100, the city's largest bus line,
with the union agreeing to call off its almost daily
demonstrations in exchange for possession of some of the private
transportation companies that will replace Route 100 [see Update
#325]. [Mexico Labor News and Analysis, Vol. 1, #13, 7/16/96]
SUTAUR was scheduled to put its first 81 buses into operation
Aug. 1. [LJ 7/28/96]... Mexico's independent unions plan to hold
a grassroots plebiscite Oct. 20-22 among both unionized and non-
union workers, who will be asked eight questions about their
views on employment, salaries, union rights, the rights of
Mexican workers in the US, child labor, social security and pro-
government unions. The plebiscite is sponsored by the May 1
Inter-Union Federation, the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), the
National Association of Democratic Attorneys (ANAD) and the Civic
Alliance (AC); the rebel EZLN has endorsed it. [MLNA Vol. 1, #14,
8/2/96]... Soledad Seanez Holguin, widow of Mexican revolutionary
hero Gen. Francisco ("Pancho") Villa, died in Chihuahua,
Chihuahua state, on July 11 at the age of 100. [ED-LP 7/12/96
from EFE] Villa, who was assassinated in 1923, was the most
prominent leader of the 1910-1920 revolution's left wing after
campesino leader Emiliano Zapata; Villa's 1916 assault on
Columbus, New Mexico, made him the only foreign military leader
to attack the continental US since the War of 1812. [United Press
International 7/12/96]
 
*8. GUATEMALAN REBELS DO ARMED PROPAGANDA
 
Armed combatants of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity
(URNG) carried out a number of propaganda actions during the
months of June and July, in which they urged Guatemalans to
defend the gains laid out in the peace accords reached with the
government. On June 1, the URNG occupied the village of Tiquizate
in Izabal province and held a rally attended by more than 2,500
people. On June 2 URNG forces seized the Santa Elena estate in
Izabal. The URNG reported that its forces occupied the village of
Salaz in Alta Verapaz on June 6, and Chinaja and La Providencia,
two villages in Poptun municipality in northern Peten department,
on June 7 and 9 respectively. About 100 URNG members occupied the
municipality of Sacapulas in Quiche on June 22, where they
disarmed the local police and held a public rally. After the
rally they gave the local police back their weapons and left
without incident, according to police information. [Cerigua
newsfeed 6/24/96]
 
In mid-July, members of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), one of the
four groups that make up the URNG, held rallies in the towns of
San Juan Tecuaco, San Rafael Las Flores y Santa Maria Ixhuatan in
the southern province of Santa Rosa. [Cerigua newsfeed 6/23/96]
 
On July 24, a URNG commando armed with guns and radio
transmitters held a rally at the School of Communication Sciences
at the National University of San Carlos (USAC). Hundreds of
students gathered to listen to the rebels' message. [Cerigua
newsfeed 6/25/96] On July 29, a group of URNG members appeared at
Radio Victoria in the city of Mazatenango and forced the
station's director, Carlos Humberto Orellana, to broadcast a
half-hour taped message calling on Guatemalans to defend the
peace accords and organize for the new stage of political
struggle. After broadcasting the message, the rebels exploded a
pamphlet bomb; a second pamphlet bomb was deactivated by the
police. [Cerigua newsfeed 6/29/96]
 
*9. CHILEAN FAMILY, GOVERNMENT SEEKS FREEDOM FOR PERU PRISONER
 
Chilean writer Matilde Ladron de Guevara, the octogenarian mother
of anthropologist Sybila Arredondo, has begun a hunger strike to
demand the release of her daughter from a Peruvian prison.
Arredondo has been imprisoned in Lima for four years; her late
husband was the Peruvian novelist and poet Jose Maria Arguedas.
[Diario Las Americas 7/24/96 from AFP] Arredondo was originally
arrested in March of 1985 [DLA 8/8/96 from AFP]; she was
sentenced in November 1995 to 15 years of prison by an anonymous
and secret Peruvian court after being convicted on terrorism
charges for involvement with a support organization for the PCP.
She was already serving a 12-year prison sentence for similar
charges; she had been acquitted on two previous occasions for
lack of evidence, but her case was appealed to the Supreme Court
and she was rearrested in 1990. [El Daily News (NY) 11/13/95 from
AP] 
 
A delegation from the Chilean parliament and foreign ministry was
set to arrive in Lima on Aug. 7 to lobby the Peruvian government
on behalf of Arredondo. "It's a humanitarian mission, not of a
political or diplomatic nature," insisted deputy Zarko Luksic of
the Christian Democratic Party, before leaving for Lima on the
night of Aug. 6. [DLA 8/8/96 from AFP]
 
*10. PUBLIC DEFENDER KILLED IN HONDURAS
 
Lawyer Merlene Zepeda, a member of the Supreme Court's Public
Defense, was killed by an unknown assailant in a San Pedro Sula
restaurant on the night of June 17. The assailant fled on a
motorcycle after shooting Zepeda. The Public Defense, a group of
about 100 lawyers, was created by the Supreme Court to lend legal
services to those too poor to afford them. Zepeda was in charge
of defending 30 inmates at the San Pedro Sula prison.
 
According to the Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human
Rights (CODEH), Zepeda's assassin may be tied to the Public
Security Force, the military-controlled national police. The
lawyer had recently received threats from a gang of bank-robbers
for dropping her defense of Rito Valle Amaya, an employee of the
armed forces' post exchange, after it became clear he had been
involved in several assaults in San Pedro Sula. [CIP Central
America Update 7/15-30/96; Boletin Informativo del Comisionado
Nacional de Derechos Humanos de Honduras 6/19/96]
 
*11. FBI GRADUATES LATIN AMERICAN POLICE OFFICIALS
 
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on June 28
that 50 Latin American police officials have graduated from the
first Latin American Law Enforcement Executive Seminar at the FBI
Academy. The mid-to-senior level officials represented 17 Latin
American countries at the academy in Quantico, Virginia. Seminar
graduates include officers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru,
Uruguay, Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile,
Paraguay and Ecuador. The four-week seminar focused on
leadership, administration, investigation management and other
policing managerial duties. In addition, the FBI said, the
seminar included instruction on how to combat money laundering,
terrorism, narcotics and economic crime, and on crime scene
investigation and the collection of evidence.
 
"A solid, well-designed training program for Central and South
American countries is a critical part of the joint efforts needed
to counter growing international crime problems affecting all
parts of the Americas," the FBI said in a statement. The FBI
National Academy has trained more than 230 Latin American and
Caribbean officers since 1938. Additionally, the FBI sponsors in-
country training seminars elsewhere in the US and around the
world, the bureau said. [United Press International 6/28/96]
   
*12. IN OTHER NEWS...
 
Residents of the Bolivian departments of Chuquisaca, Potosi and
Pando held a 24-hour civic strike on July 30 to protest
constitutional reforms approved by the Chamber of Deputies which
will reduce their parliamentary representation. The strike
included roadblocks, the occupation of public buildings, and a
hunger strike in Congress by 23 deputies from the three
departments. Under the constitutional modifications, expected to
be approved imminently by the Senate, Potosi will lose four seats
in Congress and Chuquisaca and Pando will each lose two. The
redistribution was decided by a population shift that brought
residents of the country's three poorest and least populated
departments to the cities of Santa Cruz and La Paz. When the
reforms take effect with the 1997 elections, the departments of
Santa Cruz and La Paz will gain five and three seats,
respectively. [Inter Press Service 7/31/96; Diario Las Americas
7/31/96 from AFP]... Earlier this year, Costa Rican president
Jose Maria Figueres was found to have arranged a secret deal with
Israel to trade old US-supplied contra war weapons for high-tech
weapons to be used for police actions against drug trafficking
and crime. In an attempt to block the disclosure, Figueres issued
a decree which forbids the "public dissemination of information
concerning drug trafficking and money laundering, vehicles used
by drug control police in its operation, registry of weapons in
the national arsenal and government acquisition of arms." The
decree is being challenged in court. [Peace and Justice News
June/July 1996 from Tico Times 5/10/96]... On Aug. 1 an Italian
military court dismissed a case against former Nazi SS captain
Erich Priebke, who was charged in the 1944 massacre of 335 men
and boys--75 of them Jewish--in the Ardeatine caves near Rome.
Priebke lived openly in Argentina from 1948 to 1995, when the
Argentine Supreme Court ordered his extradition to Italy [see
Update #301]. Italy may now extradite him to Germany to face
other charges. Argentine president Carlos Menem says the 84-year
old Priebke will not be allowed to return to Argentina. [El
Diario-La Prensa 8/3/96 from Notimex; New York Times 8/2/96;
Washington Post 8/2/96, 8/3/96 from Reuter]... Populist Abdala
Bucaram became Ecuador's 39th president on Aug. 10 in an
inauguration ceremony that included a two-hour speech by the new
president. [ED-LP 8/11/96] Bucaram succeeds conservative Sixto
Duran-Ballen, who will serve as a special roving ambassador. [DLA
8/10/96 from AFP] Before the inauguration Bucaram made an Aug. 3-
6 trip to News York, where he courted financiers and the Inter-
American Development Bank (IBD), was photographed with members of
the Kennedy family and played soccer with Ecuadorans in the
Bronx. [ED-LP 8/4/96, 8/5/96, 8/11/96]
 
END

MISS our calendar of events? Check out the CREED NYC calendar at
http://homebrew.geo.arizona.edu/creed.html (if you don't have web
access, write to nicadlw@nyxfer.blythe.org for info).

NOW AVAILABLE: The long-awaited Annual Update Index! Available
for each year from 1991 through 1995. Ascii text versions free to
subscribers via electronic mail. Send your request to
nicanet@nyxfer.blythe.org

NOW AVAILABLE: "Immigration in the USA One Year After Proposition
187," a Weekly News Update on the Americas special report,
accompanied by a resource list and organizing leaflet. Ascii text
version free to subscribers via email. Send your request to
nicajg@nyxfer.blythe.org

1996 SOURCE LIST NOW AVAILABLE: A list of sources commonly-used
in the Weekly News Update on the Americas, along with
abbreviations and contact information. Free to subscribers. Send
your request to nicanet@nyxfer.blythe.org