WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
                   ISSUE #359, DECEMBER 15, 1996
       NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
     339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

1. Guatemala: More Political Murders, Refugees Leave Consulate
2. Peru: Retired General Freed, Fujimori on the Moon?
3. Peru: Imprisoned US Activist Gets Visit from Parents
4. Interventionist to Head UN
5. Paramilitary Violence Intensifies in Colombia
6. Colombian Congress Approves Retroactive Drug Property Seizures
7. Mexican President Tries to Revive Neoliberal Agenda
8. Mexico: PRI Defections, Bloody Protests, Pastors for Peace
9. Nicaraguan President-Elect Announces New Cabinet 
10. Panama: Government Destroys Old Prison
11. Panama: Protests Over Planned Nuclear Waste Transport
12. Brazil: Three Acquitted for Street Kids Massacre
13. Brazilian Prisoner Who Led Rebellion is Murdered
14. British TV: CIA Encouraged Contra Drug Running
15. In Other News: El Salvador, Chile, Uruguay, Haiti

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*1. GUATEMALA: MORE POLITICAL MURDERS, REFUGEES LEAVE CONSULATE

Guatemalan journalist Israel Hernandez, editor of the progressive
weekly Inforpress and a professor at the national university, was
shot to death in a vacant lot in Guatemala City on Dec. 10 by
three armed assailants who had forced him from his car at a
traffic light, according to witnesses. Inforpress staff members
said they don't know what motivated the murder, since Hernandez
had received no prior threats. Police said neither the victim's
car nor his wallet were stolen. Also on Dec. 10--international
human rights day--the body of Manuel Balam Argueta, brother of
prominent indigenous rights activist Francisco "Pancho" Cali, was
found in San Martin Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango province. Balam
had been missing for several days. According to Juan Leon of the
human rights group Defensoria Maya, Balam was shot in the head
three times. 

On Dec. 8, Guatemalan refugees ended their occupation of the
Guatemalan consulate in Chetumal, in the Mexican state of
Quintana Roo, after government representatives agreed to
facilitate their return to Guatemala. The refugees had begun a
peaceful occupation of the consulate on Dec. 5 to protest a year-
long delay in purchasing land for their resettlement in Guatemala
[see Update #358]. According to refugee representative Hermitaneo
Monzon, the estate the refugees had selected for resettlement was
larger than what the government is willing to finance. But
refugee and government representatives reached an agreement over
the weekend of Dec. 8 to transfer 200 acres from El Carmen estate
to national ownership. In return, the government has pledged to
speed up the purchase of the lands. Monzon hopes the refugees
will be able to relocate to the property by late January.
[Cerigua Weekly Briefs #48, 12/12/96]
 
*2. PERU: RETIRED GENERAL FREED, FUJIMORI ON THE MOON?

On Dec. 5, Peru's Congress approved an amnesty bill requiring the
military to release former general Rodolfo Robles, arrested on
Nov. 26 and charged by a military court with "insubordination"
and other offenses [see Update #357]. The bill passed with 89
votes in favor, seven abstentions and none opposed. [Reuter
12/5/96 via Derechos: The Week in Human Rights 12/2-8/96; El
Diario-La Prensa (NY) 12/6/96 from AP] The amnesty, proposed by
President Alberto Fujimori, also benefits 23 retired military
officers with open cases in military courts, including retired
general Jaime Salinas Sedo, who was accused of heading a group of
soldiers in a coup plot against the government. [ED-LP 12/6/96
from AP] Opposition legislator Henry Pease of the Union for Peru
(UPP) has now proposed a law that would modify the Military
Justice Code to allow retired military officers to be exempt from
the military code, so that they would be able to express
themselves as freely as any citizen. [ED-LP 12/11/96 from EFE]

Robles was freed from jail on Dec. 7. Greeting scores of
supporters, Robles stated: "At no time have I committed a crime.
I am not in agreement with a pardon or an amnesty. This has been
a political solution, not a moral one." Robles later said at a
news conference that his abduction was really an attempt by the
military to kill him and blame it on the Peruvian Communist Party
(PCP, known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path), but that he was
able to save himself by shouting out to onlookers that his
assailants were from the National Intelligence Service (SIN).
[Reuter 12/7/96 via Derechos: The Week in Human Rights 12/2-8/96]
Without citing its source, the New York-based PCP-affiliated
publication New Flag reports over the Internet that Robles had
shouted, "These are from SIN...Tell Hildebrand." Cesar Hildebrand
is a prominent journalist whose news programs are known for their
critical stance against the government; in a Nov. 21 interview
with Hildebrand, Robles had identified the members of the army-
linked squad that blew up Global TV and Radio Samoa of Puno [see
Update #356]. [New Flag, "Latest News on Peru" 12/3/96]
 
While Fujimori himself had maintained silence in the first days
after the Robles arrest, he later said that it had been a mistake
and that Robles should be pardoned. On Dec. 1 Fujimori said in a
TV interview that he hadn't known that Robles was going to be
arrested because he was away from Lima at the time. Columnist
Fernando Rospigliosi writes in the Dec. 12 edition of the weekly
magazine Caretas that this statement raises two possibilities:
"One, that this is true, which would reveal that the President of
the Republic is on the moon and that he controls nothing." "The
second possibility," writes Rospigliosi, "is that Fujimori did
know and that, therefore, he lied in the interview. And that he
had to back down, defeated by the public's reaction and
international pressures." [Caretas #1444, 12/12/96]
 
*3. PERU: IMPRISONED US ACTIVIST GETS VISIT FROM PARENTS

Lori Berenson, a US activist imprisoned for allegedly supporting
the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) rebels in Peru, was
visited by her parents for a half hour on Dec. 7. It was the
first parental visit allowed since January, when she began
serving her life sentence for "treason" at the Yanamayo prison in
Puno department. Mark and Rhoda Berenson said their daughter is
in ill health because of the cold climate at the high altitude
prison but is in good spirits. [El Diario-La Prensa 12/15/96 from
AP] US State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said on Dec. 9
that the US is willing to request that Berenson be transferred to
a US prison to serve out her life sentence, but Berenson has
flatly rejected this idea and is continuing to push for a new
civilian trial in Peru. [ED-LP 12/10/96 from AFP] On Oct. 29,
Berenson voted in the US general elections by absentee ballot
following an arrangement worked out at her request by the US
Embassy in Lima and the Peruvian government. [Lori Berenson
Update 11/13/96, posted on Internet by caston@erols.com]

 
Berenson's parents are promoting a letter-writing campaign to US
president Bill Clinton to ask him to pressure the Peruvian
government to grant their daughter a new civilian trial. Copies
of the letters should be sent to Ambassador Ricardo Luna, Embassy
of Peru, 1700 Massachusetts Ave, Washington, DC 20036. More
information on the campaign can be obtained at the web site
located at
http://www.tiac.net/users/salem/lori_berenson/letter_campaign.htm
[information posted on Internet by caston@erols.com on 12/1/96]
 
*4. INTERVENTIONIST TO HEAD UN

On Dec. 13 the United Nations (UN) Security Council unanimously
elected Ghanaian UN official Kofi Annan to a five-year term as UN
secretary general starting on Jan. 1. General Assembly approval
was expected to come within a week. The US backed Annan and
vetoed the reelection of current secretary general Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian whose preferred European language is
French. Diplomats said language was one factor in the US
opposition to Boutros-Ghali. Annan is fluent in English: he got
his college degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota
and his master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). He has been UN under secretary for peacekeeping
operations since 1993 and has been a strong proponent of
multinational interventions. [New York Times 12/14/96]
 
Also on Dec. 13, US president Bill Clinton named Rep. Bill
Richardson (D-NM) to replace Madeleine Albright as the US
ambassador to the UN; Albright will head the State Department
[see Update #358]. Richardson is bilingual in English and
Spanish; his mother is Mexican, and he was raised in Mexico City,
where his father was a Citibank executive. The first Clinton
administration used him as a sort of unofficial ambassador to
various trouble spots. [NYT 12/14/96] In the past year he has
been involved in sensitive discussions in Cuba, Peru and
Nicaragua [see Updates #316, 346, 350].
 
*5. PARAMILITARY VIOLENCE INTENSIFIES IN COLOMBIA

On Dec. 6, the bodies of 17 people were found in pits near a
garbage dump in the northern Colombian coffee-growing village of
Tolu Viejo, Sucre department. The victims had been badly beaten;
some had their hands tied behind their backs and "communist"
written in blood on their chests. On the same day, villagers in
the central department of Boyaca found the bullet-riddled bodies
of six campesinos dumped in the fields around their homes, with
handwritten messages saying: "We will kill rebel sympathizers." 
 
"All the evidence we have shows that these massacres are the work
of the paramilitary groups who operate in the regions," said
Enrique Ortega, commander of the police in Sucre. The
paramilitaries were armed by the military in 1991 to help in its
counter-insurgency war against leftist rebels. A recent Human
Rights Watch report said the CIA helped the army with setting up
the paramilitary groups [see Update #357]. [Times of London
12/7/96] 
 
The paramilitary group known as Cordoba and Uraba Campesino Self-
Defense (ACCU) claimed responsibility for the Dec. 7 murder in
San Alberto, Cesar department, of another six campesinos accused
of being guerrilla sympathizers. The six victims were dragged
from their homes and shot to death in the town square. Five young
people were murdered the same weekend in the village of Guarne,
near Medellin in Antioquia department, in another attack
attributed to rightwing paramilitary groups. The bodies of the
woman and four young men had multiple gunshot wounds to the head;
their hands were tied behind their backs with electrical wire.
Police attributed an additional seven killings to paramilitaries
over the same weekend in the towns of Abriqui, Carmen del Viboral
and Turbo, all in Antioquia. [El Diario-La Prensa 12/9/96 from
AFP; Reuter 12/8/96 via Derechos: The Week in Human Rights 12/2-
8/96]
 
Police reported two new massacres on Dec. 14, in which four
people were shot to death in Cartagena de Indias and three others
decapitated in the neighboring town of Magangue. The four killed
in Cartagena were demobilized former members of the Popular
Liberation Army (EPL) rebel group, identified as Libardo Enrique
Escalante, Santa Mariana Mendoza, Luis Antonio Marin y Orlando
Salas Rodriguez. A 20-year old woman and a one-year old baby girl
were also injured in the attack. The victims of the massacre in
Magangue were abducted from their homes by armed men who
identified themselves as ACCU members. Members of ACCU killed
another four people on Dec. 12 in Pivijay, in northern Magdalena
department. ACCU is led by Carlos Castano Gil; at the end of the
week of Dec. 9 the national government offered offered a reward
of one billion pesos (about $1 million) for Castano's capture.
[El Pais (Cali, Colombia) 12/15/96]
 
In an interview with the Medellin daily newspaper El Colombiano,
Castano denied that the paramilitaries are rightwing extremists
and said that they are helping the government reclaim areas of
the country from leftist guerrillas. [Reuter 12/8/96 via
Derechos: The Week in Human Rights 12/2-8/96]
 
*6. COLOMBIAN CONGRESS APPROVES RETROACTIVE DRUG PROPERTY
SEIZURES

On Dec. 12, Colombia's lower house of Congress voted 103 to 4 to
approve the retroactive seizure of drug traffickers' property and
assets, after having rejected the measure just 48 hours earlier.
The bill drafted by the government in July and approved by the
Senate during the week of Dec. 2 would allow the government to
seize drug-related property accumulated in Colombia over the past
20 years. But the House watered it down in a narrow 59 to 57 vote
on Dec. 10, ruling instead that property linked to convicted drug
lords would only be liable to forfeiture if it were accumulated
after the ratification of Colombia's 1991 constitution.
Government officials led by President Ernesto Samper rejected the
House vote as a national disgrace and a new vote in both houses
was called late on Dec. 12 after a congressional conference
committee agreed to throw out the earlier results. In the new
vote, the Senate approved the bill unanimously. In the House,
intense lobbying by government officials and business leaders
managed to convince 44 legislators to change their votes within a
two-day period, leading to nearly unanimous approval. [Reuter
12/12/96]

"We still think that article 32 of the...proposal is
unconstitutional, but for reasons of strict national interest, we
will go along with the government," said Liberal Party
representative Julio Bahamon, explaining why he changed his vote.
Another Liberal representative said that many legislators ceded
to the tremendous pressure from the government, which seemingly
included threats of reprisals in the appointment of positions
within the party's bureaucratic structure. [El Pais 12/13/96] 
 
Much of the pressure came from the US, whose officials had warned
that economic sanctions would be applied unless Colombia adopted
stiff new penalities for drug traffickers, including the asset
forfeiture law. "This constitutes one of the country's greatest
achievements," Samper said in a triumphant statement moments
after the House vote, which cleared the way for his signing the
bill into law. According to government estimates, drug
traffickers own or wield effective control over up to 25% of
Colombia's arable land. Much of that property is to be cut up
into small parcels and turned over to landless campesinos under
terms of the newly approved asset forfeiture law. [Reuter
12/12/96]
 
*7. MEXICAN PRESIDENT TRIES TO REVIVE NEOLIBERAL AGENDA

On Dec. 5 a joint venture consisting of the Mexican firm
Transportacion Maritima Mexicana SA and the US firm Kansas City
Southern Industries bid $1.4 billion for a 50-year concession to
operate Mexico's largest railroad, the government-owned Northeast
Railway, which connects Mexico City with Laredo, Texas. The
government is expected to accept the bid; this will be the first
major privatization sale since President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de
Leon took office two years ago. [New York Times 12/6/96] The
success with Northeast Railway is expected to set off a series of
selloffs of state-owned railroads, especially those that can be
used to create a "dry canal" between the Caribbean and the
Pacific across the Tehuantepec Isthmus in southern Mexico [see
Update #354]. President Zedillo is committed to an ambitious
privatization program, which was stalled after allegations
appeared of corruption in the equally ambitious program carried
out by his predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994).
[NYT 12/7/96]

Economic programs seemed to be on Zedillo's mind during a 24-hour
visit to New York City Dec. 8-9. [El Diario-La Prensa 12/9/96
from Notimex] The Mexican president reportedly met with:
international financier George Soros; Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
special assistant to the president in the Kennedy administration;
Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon administration;
former Chase Manhattan president David Rockefeller; Citibank
president John Reed; investment adviser Susan Kaufman Purcell;
Douglas Warner III of JP Morgan; Winthrop Smith of Merrill Lynch;
Deryck Maughan of Salomon Brothers; US treasury secretary Robert
Rubin; former Federal Reserve head Paul Volcker; and
representatives of the major media. [Memo from National
Commission for Democracy in Mexico (NCDM) 12/10/96] Zedillo also
fit in an address to the National Foreign Trade Council and a
morning stroll down Fifth Avenue. [La Jornada (Mexico) 12/10/96,
some from Notimex] The only setback seemed to come as he was on
his way back to the airport; a driver hit one of the patrol cars
in Zedillo's motorcade as it sped through Queens, injuring a
police agent and delaying the president's departure. [ED-LP
12/10/96]
 
Zedillo's visit came right after the US magazine Business Week
reported that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, has proved so unpopular
in the US that 57% of the population opposes any further trade
pacts in the hemisphere. Two years ago a hemispheric summit
proposed to extend NAFTA, which currently includes Canada, Mexico
and the US, to cover all of Latin America and the Caribbean; this
plan is now on hold. The US trade gap with Mexico has jumped 400%
since 1993, to an estimated $40 billion for 1996, largely because
of the collapse of the Mexican peso in December 1995, at the
beginning of Zedillo's term. This year Mexico will export 1
million cars to the US, mostly from US-owned Mexican plants, with
an automotive trade surplus of $11.9 billion. [BW 12/9/96]
Meanwhile, Mexico and the US have had their first trade skirmish
since NAFTA was signed. On Nov. 28 US president Bill Clinton
slapped an 11% tariff on Mexican brooms made from the straw known
as "broom corn." Mexico retaliated on Dec. 12 by raising tariffs
on US wine, wine cooler, brandy and some whiskey from 14% up to
20%. [NYT 12/13/96]
 
*8. MEXICO: PRI DEFECTIONS, BLOODY PROTESTS, PASTORS FOR PEACE
ATTACKED

Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is
continuing to suffer from desertions as the country prepares for
the 1997 midterm elections [see Update #358]. On Dec. 10 Senator
Layda Elena Sansores San Roman from the southeastern state of
Campeche formally resigned from the PRI to accept an offer from
the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to run
as an independent gubernatorial candidate next year on the
party's ticket. Sansores has been in the PRI for 30 years but
recently has voted with the opposition against increases in the
value-added tax (IVA) and against the privatization of the
petrochemical industry. Her father is a former national president
of the PRI and is considered the main cacique (political boss) in
Campeche; Sansores says she will be running with her father's
"blessing." [LJ 12/8/96, 12/11/96; Mexico Update #102, 12/11/96
from El Financiero (Mexico) 12/10/96]
 
On Dec. 11 federal deputy Virginia Betanzos also quit the PRI,
saying that in the ruling party "there is no will for change."
She officially joined the PRD. On Dec. 13 the PRI announced that
Humberto Roque Villanueva, PRI leader in the Chamber of Deputies,
has replaced Santiago Onate Laborde as the party's national
president. In his two years in office Onate had presided over
numerous PRI losses in state and municipal elections, most
notably in Mexico state last month. [ED-LP 12/15/96 from AFP; LJ
12/14/96]
 
Municipal street cleaners from Villahermosa, capital of the
southeastern state of Tabasco, are again protesting in Mexico
City, this time in sitins in front of the federal Senate building
and the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). The state
government fired 360 workers in June 1995 when they protested low
pay and a requirement to clean the homes of local officials.
After hunger strikes and other protests in Mexico City, the
workers won an agreement from the state to submit to arbitration
or rehire them within 90 days [see Updates #315, 322]. A group of
street cleaners began the new sitins last month to demand Senate
intervention against Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado,
who they say failed to honor the agreement. Seven are on hunger
strike in front of the CNDH building, while a larger group is
carrying out protests at the Senate. Eighteen street cleaners
stripped down to their underpants on Dec. 3 to dramatize their
plight to the senators. A week later, on Dec. 10, about 40 drew
their own blood with syringes and put it in plastic bags, which
they then threw at the building; they also used syringes to
squirt blood at the security guards. PRD and independent senators
have talked to the protesters; others simply walk around the
sitin on their way to the chamber. [LJ 12/4/96, 12/11/96; Diario
Las Americas (Miami) 12/12/96 from AFP]
 
On Nov. 29 about 100 indigenous people, apparently members of a
rightwing paramilitary group that calls itself Peace and Justice,
assaulted a bus carrying a group of 16 people from the US-based
religious organization Pastors for Peace through the village of
Agua Fria in the northern part of the southeastern state of
Chiapas. The Pastors for Peace delegation was delivering 12 tons
of corn, beans, medicine, shoes and school supplies to the
community of Jolnixtie, whose residents the rightists say are
linked to the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
The paramilitaries pounded on the bus but did no further damage.
The next day an armed man in military clothing fired several
times at the bus when it again passed through Agua Fria; no one
was injured but one bullet broke a bus window at head level,
according to Pastors for Peace. [LJ 12/1/96, San Francisco
Chronicle 12/2/96] Meanwhile, government talks with the EZLN are
on hold after the government suddenly tried to modify a proposed
law on indigenous rights. The Zapatistas rejected the changes,
but agreed to a Dec. 6 request from President Zedillo for two
additional weeks to study the proposal more carefully. [Mexico
Update #102, 12/11/96 from LJ 12/6/96, 12/7/96, 12/8/96, 12/9/96]
 
*9. NICARAGUAN PRESIDENT-ELECT ANNOUNCES NEW CABINET 

Nicaraguan President-elect Arnoldo Aleman announced his cabinet
appointments on Dec. 8. The new administration is to take office
on Jan. 10. Aleman told a rally that he had ignored demands for
cabinet positions from within his own Liberal Constitutionalist
Party (PLC) to form a national unity government to rebuild
Nicaragua. 
 
The new defense minister is National Assembly deputy Jaime Cuadra
Somarriba of the Conservative Party--who Reuter incorrectly said
would be "the first civilian defense minister in Nicaraguan
history." [Reuter 12/8/96] [President Violeta Chamorro--a
civilian--has served as Nicaragua's defense minister since she
became president on Feb. 25, 1990.] According to the Nicaragua
Network in Washington, Cuadra is a wealthy farm owner who was
jailed for opposition to Somoza but was released along with Tomas
Borge and other political prisoners in a hostage-for-prisoner
exchange when Sandinista rebels took legislators and the Supreme
Court justices hostage in the National Assembly in 1978. During
the 1980s Cuadra was a virulent opponent of the Sandinista
government. [NN Hotline 12/9/96]
 
The new foreign minister is Emilio Alvarez Montalvan, a
conservative political analyst. The finance minister will be
Mario Alonso, political independent and International Monetary
Fund (IMF) economist. As economy minister, Aleman appointed
Francisco Lainez, former central bank president in the 1970s,
during the dictatorship of Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The new
president of the Central Bank will be independent economist Noel
Ramirez. David Robleto, former head of the coffee-growers union
UNICAFE, was appointed Minister of Foreign Cooperation. Rightwing
academic Jose Antonio Alvarado will hold the post of governance
minister. The deputy interior ministers will be former contra
commander Jose Rivas Ruiz and former Sandinista police officer
Miguel Campos. [Reuter 12/8/96] Aleman's presidency minister will
be Lorenzo Guerrero. [Diario Las Americas 12/11/96]
 
World Bank official Francisco Javier Aguirre Sacasa was named
Nicaragua's ambassador to the US. [Reuter 12/8/96] Rightwing
Spanish-language Miami daily Diario Las Americas reports that
Enrique Bermudez--son of Enrique Bermudez Varela, the notorious
commander of Somoza's National Guard who was murdered on Feb. 16,
1991--will serve as one of two Nicaraguan vice-consuls in Miami.
The Miami consul will be Josefina Vanini, who served as consul in
Guatemala and in New York under the current administration of
President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro before joining Aleman's
PLC. [DLA 12/14/96]
 
*10. PANAMA: GOVERNMENT DESTROYS OLD PRISON

In a highly publicized move on Dec. 10, the Panamanian government
used some 250 pounds of explosives to demolish part of a 1925
building in Panama City that housed the notorious Carcel Modelo,
or Model Prison. The Model Prison was used during the rule of
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega to hold members of the political
opposition, and in recent times it continued to be plagued with
chronic violence and overcrowding until prisoners were finally
transferred out following an uprising on Nov. 8 of this year [see
Update #355]. President Ernesto Perez Balladares pushed the
button that electronically triggered the explosion. The
demolition ceremony took place in the Amelia Denis de Icaza Park-
-former central headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces
(PDF)--in the El Chorrillo neighborhood where the prison was
located. Perez called the Model Prison a "great collective shame
and a monument of offense to national dignity." At the ceremony,
Perez boasted that during his administration no Panamanians or
foreign nationals have been detained for political reasons for
legally demanding their rights. [El Siglo (Panama) 12/11/96] 

Some adjacent apartment buildings in the El Chorrillo
neighborhood where the prison was located were damaged in the
blast; the Housing Ministry has promised to take responsibility
for repairing any damages. [La Prensa (Panama) 12/15/96] The El
Chorrillo neighborhood was also heavily damaged during the Dec.
20, 1989 US invasion of Panama which ended Noriega's rule.
 
Meanwhile, the family and friends of Colombian national Luis
Ladeut are asking the Panamanian government to allow him to
return to Panama, where he had lived since age two. Ladeut was
deported to Colombia after his involvement in a protest
occupation of the Housing Ministry in October [see Update #351].
[La Prensa 11/23/96]
 
*11. PANAMA: PROTESTS OVER PLANNED NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSPORT

The National Association for Nature Conservation (ANCON) in
Panama expressed concern on Dec. 6 over the possible passage
through the Panama Canal of a ship carrying nuclear waste. The
ship is due to depart France within the next few weeks, headed
for Japan. ANCON executive director Juan Carlos Navarro said his
organization will support any initiative from the Panama Canal
Commision or from the Panamanian government to seek "definitive"
and "legal" solutions to regulate passage of ships carrying this
type of cargo through the canal. The environmental organization
Greenpeace announced on Dec. 5 in Panama that the nuclear waste
ship will soon be passing through the Caribbean Sea. Greenpeace
representative Tom Clements said that a Greenpeace boat had set
sail from Galveston, Texas to alert Jamaica and Puerto Rico about
the danger posed by the nuclear waste transport ship. In March of
last year, Greenpeace managed to stir up enough controversy that
the ship "Pacific Pintail" had to change its route to avoid the
Panama Canal to take its radioactive cargo to Japan [see Update
#260, 268]. [La Nacion (Costa Rica) 12/7/96 from ACAN-EFE]
 
Meanwhile, a Russian spacecraft carrying 200 grams of highly
radioactive plutonium appears to have crashed to earth in Bolivia
near the Chilean border, and not into the Pacific Ocean off
Chile's coast as initially believed. [New York Times 12/14/96
from Reuter]
 
*12. BRAZIL: THREE ACQUITTED FOR STREET KIDS MASSACRE

Three of those accused in the 1993 murder of eight street
children in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were acquitted by a Rio jury
on Dec. 10 after 15 hours of deliberation. Police lieutenant
Marcelo Ferreira Cortes, military police agent Claudio Luiz dos
Santos, and civilian Jurandir Gomes da Frana spent two years and
nine months in prison after being identified by survivors of the
massacre. The three were freed after police agent Nelson Cunha
testified that they were innocent; they now plan to sue the
government and demand $3 million each in compensation. Cunha was
sentenced on Dec. 3 to 271 years in prison for the murder [see
Update #358]; another of those accused, Marcus Vinicius Emanoel
was sentenced on Apr. 30 to 300 years [see Update #327]. 

Wagner dos Santos, the only living survivor of the massacre,
returned from exile in Switzerland to take part in Cunha's trial,
but then said he would not participate in any future proceedings
in the case. "The police agent that I identified was innocent,
the one that I didn't identify confessed to the crime. I was used
by the system, by the Public Ministry," he said. Angry that he
can no longer live freely in Brazil because he faces threats and
attacks for his testimony, Dos Santos said: "The next time I
witness a crime in Brazil I'll cover my eyes." [El Diario-La
Prensa 12/11/96 from AFP]
 
*13. BRAZILIAN PRISONER WHO LED REBELLION IS MURDERED

On Dec. 9 in Brazil, prisoner Leonardo Pareja and two of his
cellmates were stabbed and shot to death in their cell by four or
five other prisoners, according to police. The killings took
place at the Agroindustrial Penitentiary Center of Goias
(CEPAIGO), located in Aparecida de Goiania, in Goias state. The
inmates who killed the three were armed with a .45-caliber
pistol, a .38 revolver, ammunition, a knife, and two bullet-proof
vests from CEPAIGO prison guards. The assailants said they killed
Pareja and his cellmates in revenge because the three had opposed
a plan to escape the prison via a tunnel; the plan was then
discovered by prison administrators. Police say Pareja was
planning to escape in a different way. In 1995 Pareja, a
convicted armed robber, made the news in Brazil when he escaped
police and went on a 40-day rampage of holdups and high-speed
chases, mocking police in telephone interviews with radio and TV
stations before surrendering. This past spring Pareja drew
international media attention--and local support--when he led a
six-day rebellion at CEPAIGO from Mar. 28 to Apr. 4, negotiating
a mass escape in exchange for the release of prominent hostages
[see Updates #323, 324]. [New York Times 12/10/96 from Reuter;
Diario Las Americas 12/11/96 from AFP]

*14. BRITISH TV: CIA ENCOURAGED CONTRA DRUG RUNNING

On Dec. 10 the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released a
3,600-page report saying that an internal investigation begun in
October found "no evidence of United States government
involvement, including the CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency],
in the Los Angeles drug trafficking activities" of Oscar Danilo
Blandon Reyes in the 1980s. Blandon was a supporter of the CIA-
sponsored Nicaraguan contras; a series of articles in the Mercury
News of San Jose, California, last August charged that Blandon's
operation helped fund the contras by supplying crack to dealers
in Los Angeles' Afro-American neighborhoods. Sheriff Sherman
Block denied reports from former Sheriff's Department deputies
that federal agents improperly removed documents the deputies had
seized during 1986 raids on Blandon's gang [see Updates #343,
349]. Sheriff Block told a press conference on Dec. 10 that
"personal gain" was the motivation for Blandon's drug trafficking
and that for his department "the case is closed." [New York Times
12/12/96; Washington Post 12/12/96]
 
Two days later, on Dec. 12, the British network ITV was scheduled
to broadcast a program charging that the CIA's role in contra
drug running was in fact more active than the one suggested by
the Mercury News series. Much of the ITV report was based on
testimony from Carlos Cabezas, a Nicaraguan air force pilot under
the regime of former dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Cabezas
was arrested in the US for drug smuggling in 1983 and spent six
years in a US prison before returning to Nicaragua. He told ITV
that he personally smuggled cocaine from Central America to San
Francisco and took the profits to contra troops in Costa Rica and
to contra leader Adolfo Calero's Miami headquarters. In Costa
Rica he met a CIA agent he identified as "Ivan Gomez." "They told
me who he was and the reason he was there," says Cabezas. "It was
to make sure the money was given to the right people and nobody
was taking, you know...profits they weren't supposed to."
[Independent (UK) 12/12/96]
 
*15. IN OTHER NEWS...

Some 5,000 judicial workers in El Salvador ended an eight-day
strike on Dec. 12 without winning their key demand for a $378
bonus. Secretary general Angela Duran of the Association of
Judicial Workers (ASTOJ) told the press that the strike was
lifted after authorities of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ)
committed themselves to renewing negotiations on various economic
and social demands. CSJ president Jose Domingo Mendez said
earlier in the week that those workers who supported the strike
would have their pay docked and some could be dismissed. Duran
indicated that the subject of sanctions against strikers would be
included in the reopening of negotiations; other main agenda
items include medical and hospital insurance, life insurance,
overtime pay and the payment of two annual bonuses. [La Nacion
(Costa Rica) 12/13/96 from ACAN-EFE; Diario Las Americas 12/11/96
from AFP, 12/14/96 from EFE]... The Chilean government has warned
that it will not dialogue with public hospital workers as long as
they remain on strike. The support workers at Chile's public
hospitals went out on strike on Nov. 11 for wage increases and
other demands [see Update #355]. Public hospital doctors decided
on Dec. 11 not to join the strike after the government announced
it was sending a proposed law to Congress that included economic
improvements for hospital workers. Doctors Union president
Enrique Accorsi said on Dec. 12 that although "we don't like the
[government's] methods," the doctors had decided not to aggravate
the hospital crisis. Accorsi said the government's proposal
represents "a broad victory for the workers in the sense that
four of the five points they were demanding are in the proposed
law." [El Diario-La Prensa 12/13/96 from AP]... Voters in Uruguay
narrowly approved a set of constitutional reforms in a Dec. 8
plebiscite. Among other things, the constitutional changes
approved in the plebiscite eliminate the "Ley de Lemas," the
complicated electoral law that allowed parties to combine their
primaries with the general elections by running multiple
candidates for the same office, with victory going to the top
vote-getter of the party that accumulates the most votes. [El
Pais (Montevideo) digital edition, special feature on Plebiscite
'96, accessed 12/15/96]... On Dec. 10 US State Department
diplomatic guards arrested former Haitian drug policy adviser
Patrick Elie and returned him to a federal detention center in
Alexandria, Virginia. Elie had been freed on Nov. 26 pending his
Jan. 27 trial on charges of illegal gun possession and
impersonating a diplomat [see Update #357]. On Dec. 10 Elie's
lawyer told him that the government had just won an appeal
overturning his release. Elie went to the Haitian embassy to
request political asylum, but the embassy staff instead turned
him over to the US agents. [Haiti Progres (NY) 12/11-17/96]

END

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