WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #392, AUGUST 3, 1997 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. US Southern Army Moving To 2. US To Resume Unrestrained Arms Dealing In Latin America 3. US Congress Backs Off On Anti-Immigrant Legislation 4. Mexican Military's Secret Files Go Public 5. Mexico-US: Ambassadors, Bras, Tuna, Troops 6. Latin Left: Meetings in Brazil and Spain 7. Brazil's Police Strike Winds Down 8. Peru: "Same Old Rhetoric" 9. Nicaragua: Government and FSLN Talking 10. Honduras: New Bombing, Chorti Murderers Sought 11. Haiti: UN Stays, Banker Named PM 12. Bolivia: Ex-Dictator To Retake Power 13. Guatemalan President Reopens Military Bases ISSN#: 1084-922X. The Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A one-year subscription (52 issues) is $25. 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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 full contact information 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 CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES: http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/nsnhome.html *1. US SOUTHERN ARMY MOVING TO PUERTO RICO The Pentagon announced on July 31 that the US Southern Army will be moving its headquarters from Panama to Puerto Rico in 1998, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the US invasion of the island. The Southern Army is part of the US armed forces Southern Command (SouthCom), which must leave Panama by 1999 according to the 1977 Torrijos-Carter treaties; the headquarters will reportedly be moved to Florida [see Update #386]. According to the Pentagon, the presence of 800 more military personnel and their families will bring $80 million a year to the island's economy. Reactions from the island's politicians were mixed. The ruling New Progressive Party (PNP) was thrilled; Governor Pedro Rossello said that the move would give international prestige to Puerto Rico. However, Manuel Rodriguez de Arellana, Secretary of US Relations for the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), called the decision "an insult and a lack of respect to Puerto Ricans that at the end of the 20th century when they have to leave other countries they're coming to increase their military presence in Puerto Rico." Former political prisoner Lolita Lebron attacked the troop movement and said it would add to the island's political instability, while Carlos Gallisa, former secretary of the folded Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) said the arrival of the troops would make a mockery of next year's plebiscite on the island's relationship to the US. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 8/2/97] Although the US military is planning to move its Latin American headquarters, Panama will not be bereft of foreign military presence: Panamanian president Ernesto Perez Balladares announced on July 30 the creation of a multilateral military center, to be based in Panama, which would counteract drug trafficking in Central America. Perez said the center would not increase militarization in the region, much less become a repressive force, and he denied that the center was a pretext to keep US troops in Central America: "We would be making fools of ourselves if we allowed this proposal to serve as a doorway to keeping US troops in the region....In no way can a multilateral center be considered a base of the United States." [El Universal (Mexico) 7/31/97] *2. US TO RESUME UNRESTRAINED ARMS DEALING IN LATIN AMERICA On Aug. 1, the Clinton administration lifted a ban on the sale of advanced weapons to Latin American countries, reversing a policy begun under President Jimmy Carter in 1977. White House spokesperson Michael McCurry said the administration would now consider requests for advanced arms (including fighter jets and tanks) on a "case by case" basis--in line with US policy in the rest of the world--under the premise that most of the region's governments are now moving toward democracy. The impetus for the change in policy was the desire of the Chilean government to purchase 24 advanced aircraft for approximately $500 million. The lifting of the ban allows giant defense contractors McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed-Martin to offer F-16 and F-18 fighter planes to Chile; last year, US companies were shut out from selling fighter planes to Peru, obliging President Alberto Fujimori to purchase MiG-29 planes from Belarus. However, a few exceptions to the ban have been made throughout the years, including a sale of F-16s to Venezuela in the early 1980s, M-60 tanks sold to Brazil, and the 1995 sale of Kfir jets (Israeli-made but with US-made engines) to Ecuador, which was protested by Peru [see Update #313]. The State Department says the change in policy will not affect Peru and Ecuador, which have been involved in a border dispute that briefly flared up in 1995. [La Jornada (Mexico) 8/2/97] Though unnamed US officials told the New York Times that sales would be permitted only to those countries with firm civilian control over the military, Chile appears to fit the bill--even though Gen. Augusto Pinochet has remained commander of the military since leading a 1973 coup and appoints several of the country's senators, and the military owns much of the state copper industry. [New York Times 8/2/97] Representatives of the US defense industry were quick to applaud the lifting of the ban. Joel Johnson of the Aerospace Industries Association said, "We have had for the last two decades a policy of unilateral paternalism, in which we've told them they shouldn't have modern military equipment. And the end result is they bought it elsewhere." The decision was opposed by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), who said they will introduce legislation to renew the ban. [NYT 8/2/97] Former Carter adviser Robert Pastor called the change in policy "unfortunate," and said he supported the call for a two-year moratorium on advanced weapon purchases in the region, a call he said was endorsed by Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. Though the Clinton administration says the new policy will not provoke an arms race, Tom Cardamone of the Council for a Liveable World Education Fund says the Chilean purchase will put pressure on the Brazilian military to purchase $1 billion worth of advanced aircraft. [La Jornada 8/2/97] *3. US CONGRESS BACKS OFF ON ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEGISLATION On July 29, the US Congress and President Bill Clinton reached a budget agreement that includes restoring some social services eliminated in last year's welfare reform legislation. Disabled legal immigrants will remain eligible for Supplementary Security Income (SSI) benefits, as will immigrants present in the US on Aug. 22, 1996 who later become disabled--immigrants arriving later will still be denied benefits, as will all undocumented immigrants. Also, all non-citizen immigrants will lose access to food stamps, which will affect an estimated 1 million people. Though Clinton and moderate Republican leaders including New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani leaped to take credit for the softening of the bill, the explanation may be simpler: there are more immigrant voters than anti-immigrant voters. In the 1996 presidential election, Clinton (who went on record opposing the anti-immigrant provisions, though he signed the bill) saw his support among Latino and Asian voters rise from 61% and 31% to 72% and 43% respectively. Meanwhile, fewer than 1% of US residents name immigration as the most important issue facing the country. [NYT 8/1/97] New York City mayoral candidate Rev. Al Sharpton attacked Giuliani's record on immigration issues in a July 31 speech in Bridgetown, Barbados. "Rudy Giuliani's track record on immigrant issues is reactionary and repulsive," said Sharpton, who went on to detail Giuliani's history as third in command of the US Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, during which time Giuliani crafted the government's Haitian refugee exclusion policy. [NYT 8/1/97] In a report released on May 17, the US National Academy of Sciences found that far from hurting the US economy, immigrants benefit it by adding some $10 billion each year to the national output. But the study noted that immigrants generally receive low wages, which exert downward pressure on wages for all workers in low-skilled jobs. The gap between the wages of immigrants and other workers is widening, according to the study. [NYT 5/18/97] *4. MEXICAN MILITARY'S SECRET FILES GO PUBLIC On Apr. 3 Mexico's National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) arrested Col. Pablo Castellanos Garcia and Capt. Miguel Angel Hernandez Torres for copying secret SEDENA files onto a computer diskette. The two officers are now awaiting trial for "stealing allegedly secret information." The story of the arrests and the files themselves appeared in the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso on July 27. The files contain no military secrets; instead, they have information that would prove embarrassing to the SEDENA and the Mexican government. One analysis reveals that the military and former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) knew about the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) long before the first skirmish between the rebels and the military in May 1993. Another covers the confusion and errors that led to a spectacular fatal crash of military jets during Independence Day celebrations in Mexico City on Sept. 16, 1995. But the most embarrassing files concern drug trafficking. One details links between at least 10 Mexican generals--including counterinsurgency expert Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro Escapite [see Update #369]--and leading drug traffickers, notably "Juarez Cartel" head Amado Carrillo Fuentes (the "Lord of the Skies"), who died mysteriously after plastic surgery in a Mexico City clinic on July 4 [see Update #389]. A number of Mexican state governors are also named. The Mexican government may have been negotiating with Carrillo Fuentes; the files say that in a Jan. 14 letter to President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, the drug lord offered to give up half his possessions and keep drugs out of Mexico if the government left him alone. The files also reveal close and possibly illegal relations between the military and the US embassy. On Feb. 27 a certain John Hall from the embassy warned the SEDENA that the Miami Herald was about to publish a story by reporter Andres Oppenheimer charging that Gen. Acosta Chaparro and Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo were involved in drug trafficking. One file describes a meeting with a Paul Bradley of the embassy to discuss methods--including satellites and "modern planes"--that might be used in a surveillance operation against a certain "Pedro," his family and even his children's school. Col. Pedro Cervantes Aguirre, brother of SEDENA head Gen. Henrique Cervantes Aguirre, appears to feel that he was the target of the operation. [Proceso 7/27/97] On July 29 a motorcyclist shot and killed law clerk Irma Lizette Ibarra Navejat with six bullets as she was driving in her Ram Charger pickup truck in Guadalajara, Jalisco. A former Miss Jalisco, Ibarra Navejat held important positions in the state committee of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); she was romantically involved with Gen. Vinicio Santoyo Ferio when he headed the Guadalajara military zone, and she was named as a key witness both in the Proceso story and in the corruption case against former "drug czar" Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Ibarra Navejat had made appointments with journalists shortly before she died to discuss death threats she had received. Three days earlier, Hector Ixtlahuac Gaspar, former private secretary to former SEDENA head Juan Arevalo Gardoqui (1983-88), was killed in a similar shooting; also on July 26 there was an unsuccessful murder attempt against another witness in the Gutierrez Rebollo case, Cesareo Vazquez Tafolla. [La Jornada 7/30/97] The military scandals came just as the Attorney General's Office (PGR) was trying to lay another case to rest: the March 1994 murder of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta. On July 24 Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, the latest special prosecutor in the case, announced that the government was going back to its original theory that only one person, Mario Aburto Martinez, shot Colosio; Gonzalez Perez said that this finding did not rule out a conspiracy. [LJ 7/25/97] The New York Times describes Gonzalez Perez' report as "filled with scientific certainty and precise detail." The prosecutor "quashed all rumors that the man in jail [Aburto] was a dupe who had replaced the real killer." [NYT 8/2/97] Shortly after the PGR's announcement, the Mexican financial daily El Financiero carried statements from a former Mexican police agent and current US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, Enrique Plascencia, that he had evidence that the real assassin was Aburto look-alike Jorge Antonio Sanchez Ortega, an agent for Mexico's Center for Investigations and National Security (CISEN) [see Update supplement "The Mexican Murder Mysteries," parts 1 and 2, 9/2/95, 9/9/95]. He is now said to go by the name Tomas Jaso. [El Diario- La Prensa 7/28/97 from AFP] *5. MEXICO-US: AMBASSADORS, BRAS, TUNA, TROOPS On July 23 US president Bill Clinton formally nominated Massachusetts governor William Weld to be ambassador to Mexico, a post that had already been vacant for one month. [Washington Post 7/24/97] Weld resigned his governorship on July 28 to campaign full-time for the post. Rightwing senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) has vowed that Weld will not be confirmed; Helms has the power to ensure this, since as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee he can refuse to schedule confirmation hearings. Helms reportedly feels that Weld--a Republican "fiscal conservative" who imposed strict austerity measures on Massachusetts--is too liberal in his support for lesbian and gay rights and for the medical use of marijuana. Washington journalists spent the next few days arguing the pros and cons of Weld's seemingly hopeless bid for the Mexico City post. Many feel the effort is part of Weld's longterm campaign for the White House. [New York Times 7/29/97, 8/1/97, 8/2/97, 8/3/97; WP 7/29/97, 8/1/97, 8/3/97] The previous ambassador was former American Stock Exchange president James Jones, who left Mexico on June 23 to head the international division of Warmaco, the women's underwear giant. His new company makes Olga brassieres, which are stitched in a maquiladora in Sonora state in northwestern Mexico. [John Ross, Mexico Barbaro #73, 7/18-28/97] On July 30 the US Senate voted 99-0, with one abstention, to overturn an embargo on tuna from Mexico and other countries whose fishing industries use encircling nets; these frequently catch and kill dolphins swimming with the tuna. The House of Representatives voted against the embargo in the spring. The Senate version--the Dolphin Conservation Act (S.39)--would keep tuna cans from being labeled "dolphin safe" until 1999, when a study is to be done showing the encircling nets' impact. The House version made no reference to the study, but the House is expected to accept the Senate's bill. [LJ 7/31/97; NYT 7/31/97; WP 7/31/97 from Reuter] On July 29 US defense secretary William Cohen suddenly suspended all anti-drug operations by the US military on the Mexican border, withdrawing some 240 soldiers. Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon said the policy was being reviewed, especially the question of the soldiers' liability for criminal acts committed while they are on border patrols. A grand jury was to meet on July 30 to study possible criminal charges against a four-member Marine patrol that shot and killed a Redford, Texas youth, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., on May 20 as he was tending goats near the border [see Updates #385, 386]. [LJ 7/30/97; WP 7/30/97; NYT 7/31/97] Maria Jimenez of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) border monitoring group in Houston called the suspension "a first step," but said that her organization feels there has to be a permanent end to military activity in civilian police functions. [LJ 7/30/97] *6. LATIN LEFT: MEETINGS IN BRAZIL AND SPAIN Representatives from 130 Latin American leftist political parties and other groups gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to begin three days of talks in the seventh annual meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum. The "star of the event," according to reporters, was Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano of Mexico's center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Cardenas, who was elected mayor of Mexico City on July 6, told reporters in Porto Alegre that "my commitment now is to work for the city." But his son, Lazaro Cardenas Batel, admitted that "it would be naive to think that whoever governs the most important city in the country isn't a natural or potential candidate for the presidency" in 2000. Another star was Hector Silva, elected mayor of San Salvador in March by a coalition including the ex-guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN). [La Nacion (Costa Rica) 8/2/97 from AP] Cardenas and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, president emeritus of Brazil's leftist Workers Party (PT), agreed that the role of the left at this point is not to reject "globalization" or foreign investment but to give neoliberalism a "human face." Did this mean the left had given up the old idea of taking power, Lula was asked. "No," Lula answered. "I have this idea in my head. But meanwhile we have to look for responses" to the current situation. [Clarin 8/3/97] Mexican leftists also starred at a very different sort of meeting, the Second Gathering for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, called by Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and held in Spain from July 25 through Aug. 3, starting in Madrid but with sessions in Barcelona, Almunecar, Ruesta and Cadiz. [Casal de la Solidaritat (Barcelona) communique (7/25/97] Although tied down by the Mexican military in the southeastern state of Chiapas, the EZLN managed to keep an earlier promise to "break the circle" by sending representatives to the meeting in Europe. Two Tojolabal indigenous Zapatistas, "Dalia" and "Felipe," arrived wearing scarves over their faces to read a greeting from the EZLN in Chiapas. [La Jornada 7/27/97] The EZLN representatives said that their "people didn't vote in the last elections" on July 6 and that "with these elections we see that things are not changing; they're the same; we don't know the political parties because they don't come to our communities." The two announced that the EZLN had decided to break off negotiations with the Mexican government. [El Mundo (Spain) 7/28/97 from EFE] EZLN leader "Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos" seemed to be able to play the media as well in Europe as he has in Mexico. The August edition of France's prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique featured in its entirety Marcos' lengthy and idiosyncratic article on neoliberalism, under the title: "Why We Fight: World War Four Has Begun." [Le Monde Diplomatique August 1997] *7. BRAZIL'S POLICE STRIKE WINDS DOWN Most striking Brazilian civil police and militarized police (PM) reached salary agreements and returned to work by July 29, ending strikes which had spread across most of the country during the last month [see Updates #388, 389, 391]. [Washington Post 7/29/97 from Reuter] The Ministry of Justice announced that 600 PMs and 100 civil police would be expelled from the security forces for having organized the strikes, which were illegal. Justice Minister Iris Rezende said, "Making an armed protest isn't pressure, it's aggression. That crossed the line." [El Diario-La Prensa 7/31/97 from Notimex] On July 31, the government of Ceara state dismissed 70 PMs and 26 civil police, and jailed 23 more in connection with the strike which began on July 29 and ended on July 31. During a July 29 protest march, shots were exchanged between army troops and strikers, wounding five people, including PM commander Col. Mauro Benevides. [Brasil Online 7/31/97 from Agencia Folha] But in Pernambuco, governor Miguel Arraes of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and new PM commander Col. Gustavo Monteiro dropped plans to hire 1,000 permanent replacements for striking PMs after police ended their 12-day strike on July 27. [Brasil Online 8/1/97 from Agencia Folha] Sen. Jose Roberto Arruda of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) said on Aug. 1 that Congress ought to restructure the country's security forces to prevent further breaches of discipline, even to the point of changing the Constitution. In response, Josophat Marinho of the rightwing Liberal Front Party (PFL), which is also part of the ruling coalition, said that the government ought to be concerned with paying the police rather than restructuring them; long- overdue back wages were the impetus behind many of the state strikes. [Brasil Online 8/1/97 from Agencia Folha] Meanwhile, Cpl. Julio Cesar Gomes dos Santos and Sgt. Washington Fernando do Rodrigues, the PM officials who led the first strikes in Minas Gerais, have decided to run as legislative candidates in next year's elections, competing for the federal chamber of deputies and the state assembly respectively. Strikers in Minas Gerais won raises of up to 50%. [El Diario-La Prensa 7/28/97 from EFE] *8. PERU: "SAME OLD RHETORIC" Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori delivered his state of the union address before Congress on July 28, Peru's independence day, with his popularity at its lowest point in his seven-year presidency. Rather than address the corruption and human rights scandals that have plagued his administration over the past months, Fujimori said that "the subordination of the armed forces to the president is an indisputable fact," and announced a package of pay raises for civil servants and tax cuts for businesses. Public employees including teachers, police and health care workers would receive a 15% pay increase and shares in a new $1.3 billion mutual fund, while employer payroll taxes and some agricultural and consumption taxes would be cut. He also said his government would respect human rights and the freedom of the press. Opposition legislator Jorge Avendano of the Union for Peru (UP) said, "It was the same old rhetoric. Fujimori only talks about the great economic successes, which have only benefited a few, and says nothing about ending the political crisis." Other legislators spoke of Fujimori's creating a "pinata" to distract Peruvians from the political crisis. Fujimori did not mention armed forces head Gen. Nicolas Hermoza or National Intelligence Service adviser Vladimiro Montesinos--called "the power behind the throne" by opposition legislators--or the current controversy regarding the president's birthplace. [New York Times 7/29/97; El Diario-La Prensa 7/31/97 from Notimex] Responding to charges by journalist Cecilia Valenzuela about irregularities in Fujimori's birth documents, Pedro Mascaro, director of the Lima Maternity Hospital, confirmed that an obstetrician named Julia Pacheco had worked at the hospital in 1938. Valenzuela had disputed that such a person--whose name appears as attending physician to Fujimori's mother Mitsue Fujimori de Fujimori--had ever worked for the hospital. Once the hospital document was released, Valenzuela appeared on television and said the document raised more questions than it answered, because Pacheco's signature on the hospital paperwork did not match the signature on Fujimori's birth record. [Diario Los Andes 8/1/97 from DPA] Meanwhile, journalist Alfredo Barnechea said he was fired from Lima's Canal 9 because he was investigating the issue of Fujimori's birthplace. [ED-LP 7/28/97 from AFP] *9. NICARAGUA: GOVERNMENT AND FSLN TALKING Despite the crisis atmosphere in Nicaragua since the end of June, the country's two main forces--the government and the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)--have continued to negotiate secretly on the most contentious issues, according to a report in the centrist daily La Tribuna on July 29. A legal commission from the two sides has reportedly reached 90% agreement on a new law to settle disputes over property confiscated or privatized under the 1979-1990 FSLN government and the 1990-1997 centrist government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Rightwing president Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo confirmed the same day that the "conversations have continued" despite the FSLN's boycott of a separate "national dialogue" sponsored by the government. "My dream is that as soon as possible a new law will result from them," he said. [Notifax 7/29/97 from La Tribuna 7/29/97; Reports by Toby Mailman (Managua) 7/29/97, 7/30/97] Easing the tensions further, the US has extended for one year the period within which the Nicaraguan government must settle 1,622 property claims by US citizens (mostly rightwing Nicaraguans who fled to the US after the 1979 revolution). Nicaragua faces an aid cutoff if the disputes aren't settled. [Mailman 7/29/97] Meanwhile, the student protests that started in late June have quieted down, although the main budget issues remain unresolved and violence flared up again during a march on July 23. Seven police agents were wounded in an incident students say was caused by "people having nothing to do with the protests." [Barricada (Managua) 7/26/97] Tensions may rise again after the government signs a new Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The new round of austerity will include the "redimensioning" of the National Development Bank (BANADES), the privatization of the phone company ENITEL, and a tax law reform. The plan is for the ESAF to be signed in September, probably before the IMF and World Bank's annual meeting, to be held this year from Sept. 17 to Sept. 25 in Hong Kong. [Mailman 7/29/97; Barricada 7/29/97, 8/1/97] Four nephews of former dictator Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle are preparing to sue to recover property seized after the 1979 Revolution. Luis Ramon Sevilla Somoza, son of Somoza's sister Liliam Somoza Debayle, said, "We are prepared with our teams of lawyers and specialists to present our claim." Nicaragua's attorney general Julio Centeno supports the claim, saying that "the government can't exclude the Somozas from the process of recovering confiscated property" because "it would be unconstitutional." FSLN leader Bayardo Arce opposed the claim, saying: "We don't accept any kind of negotiation with this family, which is the symbol of decades of oppression...." One of the four nephews, Eduardo Sevilla Somoza, was recently named by the Aleman government as ambassador to Argentina. [La Nacion 8/2/97 from Reuter] *10. HONDURAS: NEW BOMBING, CHORTI MURDERERS SOUGHT A bomb caused minor damage to the headquarters of the Central Bank of Honduras, near the Congress building in Tegucigalpa, in the early morning of July 18. This was the first successful bombing of a government building in 1997; a bomb was found at the National Electric Energy Company (ENEE) earlier in the year but was deactivated before it could explode. [La Prensa (Honduras) 7/19/97] One person was killed and 20 wounded in a series of some 39 bombings last year. Many suspect that military officers are behind the bombings, which started after President Carlos Roberto Reina ended the draft and removed the profitable Honduran Telecommunications Company (HONDUTEL) from the military's control. Some bombings have been attributed to the Movement of Solidarity with Central America (MOSCA), which is thought be headed by Cuban-born rightwinger Luis Posada Carriles. [El Diario-La Prensa 7/19/97 from Notimex] Posada was jailed in Venezuela in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, in which 73 people died. After bribing his way out in 1985, Posada worked in El Salvador as logistics chief in the US government's clandestine supply operation for the Nicaraguan contras. After the contra operation was exposed in 1986, Posada had various security jobs in El Salvador and Guatemala, where he was wounded in an unexplained 1990 assassination attempt. Posada then went into hiding in Honduras, although he emerged again in 1992 to testify to US agents at the US embassy about the contra supply operation. [The Consortium 1/6/97] Honduras' Public Ministry announced on July 26 that it had asked Guatemala to arrest Honduran Jesus Guerra for the murder last March of Ovidio Perez, a leader of the Chorti indigenous group. Another government bureau, the Ethnic Groups and Cultural Inheritance Prosecutor's Office, charges that the April murder of Chorti leader Candido Amador [see Update #377] was carried out by Guatemalans in the pay of Honduran landowners. The Chorti claim 9,000 hectares in Copan and Ocotepeque departments, near the borders with Guatemala and El Salvador; they say they will begin land occupations if the government doesn't start turning the land over to them within 15 days. [Reuter 7/26/97] *11. HAITI: UN STAYS, BANKER NAMED PM On July 30 the United Nations Security Council voted to extend the UN military mission in Haiti for another four months, reducing the total international force from 1,600 to 950--300 in the UN force and 650 sponsored by Canada and the US. [New York Times 7/31/97 from AP] The move came despite a general strike grassroots and left groups held against the military occupation on July 28. Organizers say the strike was observed by 70% to 80% of the population in Port-au-Prince and was more successful in Cap-Haitien, Les Cayes and Jacmel. Even the pro-government Miami- based weekly Haiti en Marche said that the action was "partially observed" and that "public transport was generally paralyzed... in the capital and the country's main cities." On July 25 Haitian president Rene Preval announced his choice to replace outgoing prime minister Rosny Smarth, who offered his resignation on June 6. Preval nominated Eric Pierre, an economist and an official at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The nomination is expected to run into opposition from groups fighting the neoliberal agenda promoted by international lending institutions like the IDB; these are generally the same groups that led the July 28 strike. [Haiti Progres (NY) 7/30-8/5/97; Haiti en Marche 7/30-8/5/97] *12. BOLIVIA: EX-DICTATOR TO RETAKE POWER On Aug. 4, Bolivia's Congress will select the country's next president, almost certain to be Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez of the Nationalist Democratic Action party (ADN). Though Banzer won only 22.3% of the votes cast, he negotiated support for his candidacy from all major parties except for the ruling Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR). The new president will be sworn in on Aug. 6 [see Update #383]. Banzer, a graduate of the US Army's School of the Americas, led two coup attempts against left- leaning Gen. Juan Jose Torres (who nationalized US-owned tin mines and expelled the Peace Corps) in 1971; the second attempt, supported by the US Air Force, was successful, and he ruled the country until 1978. During that time Banzer cut ties to Cuba, privatized the tin industry, tortured and executed political opponents, and created a plan to counter the Liberation Theology movement which became known as the Banzer Plan, and was adopted by nine other Latin American dictatorships in 1977 at a meeting of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation. After Banzer was ousted by Gen. Juan Pereda Asburn in 1978, he maintained close ties with cocaine trafficker Roberto Suarez and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie (whom Banzer had protected from extradition to France). They backed another coup in 1980 that put Gen. Luis Garcia Meza and Luis Arce Gomez into power. Suarez was convicted of drug trafficking in 1988; Barbie died in a French prison in 1992; Garcia Meza is in prison in Bolivia [see Updates #169, 268]; and Arce Gomez is serving a drug trafficking sentence in Miami. But Banzer has reinvented himself as a populist, telling Argentine daily La Nacion on June 4 that he wanted to "humanize the neoliberal model," and that privatization was behind the increase in poverty and unemployment. The US State Department is pressuring Banzer not to appoint officials who "in other eras have been directly involved in narco-trafficking"--thought to be a reference to Banzer himself-- if he wants to avoid the US disapproval meted out to Colombian president Ernesto Samper [see this week's Update supplement on the US Drug War]. [The Consortium 8/11/97] On July 28, Banzer's projected vice president Jorge Quiroga announced that the new administration would eradicate drug production by the end of Banzer's five-year term in 2002. [El Diario-La Prensa 7/29/97] *13. GUATEMALAN PRESIDENT REOPENS MILITARY BASES Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu ordered the reopening of military bases which were closed in December of 1996 under peace accords ending the country's 36-year civil war. Arzu said the step was necessary to combat armed groups of common criminals in the country, and said they would be used together with the country's civilian police force to fight crime. [Diario Los Andes 7/31/97 from Reuter] About a thousand Guatemalans participated in a "March for the Truth" in Guatemala City on Aug. 1, to celebrate the opening of a commission to investigate human rights abuses committed during the war. Emilia Garcia, an activist from the Truth Convergence, a coalition of 11 human rights groups and 16 popular organizations, said that the march was organized so that "the commission would feel the support of all the families of the victims of the repression, and know that we all are interested in knowing the truth." The Truth Commission was established as part of the peace accords between the government and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) rebels; Garcia said the coalition would provide the Commission with a list of at least 25,000 cases of human rights violations. [La Nacion 8/1/97 from AP] A Guatemalan court sentenced three former government officials and one police agent in the Nov. 11, 1994 killing of student Mario [or "Alioto"] Lopez Sanchez during a demonstration at the University of San Carlos [see Update #251]. After being shot by security forces, Lopez was dragged out of an ambulance and beaten; he died from the beating. Former interior minister Danilo Parrinello, his deputy Mario Alfredo Merida and former police chief Salvador Figueroa were sentenced to 10 years each. Police agent Carlos Escobar, who was captured on videotape kicking Lopez on the ground, was sentenced to 30 years. The former officials are being held without bail but may appeal their sentences. [Washington Post 8/1/97] Corrections: Update #391 misspelled the name of Honduras' second largest city, San Pedro Sula. Another item incorrectly described Cuban Gen. Raul Castro Ruz as President Fidel Castro's elder brother. Raul is younger. Still another item reported that the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton shut down a Web site the university's network was hosting for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) but failed to give the FARC site's new location: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~farc-ep END For New York area events, check out the CREED NYC calendar at http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/creed.html (if you don't have web access, write for info). 1996 INDEX OUT NOW!!! ANNUAL UPDATE INDEX available for each year from 1991 through 1996. Ascii text versions free to subscribers via electronic mail. Send your request to (specify which year or years you want--each is over 100kb). Each index will be sent as a separate text message (not an attached file) unless you request otherwise. STILL AVAILABLE: "Immigration in the USA One Year After Proposition 187," a Weekly News Update on the Americas special report, dated March 1996, accompanied by a resource list and organizing leaflet. Ascii text version free to subscribers via email. Send your request to 1996 SOURCE LIST STILL 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 ======================================================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * wnu@igc.apc.org =======================================================================