WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #669, NOVEMBER 24, 2002 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Mexico: Farmers in New NAFTA Protests 2. Mexico: Teachers Protest, Marcos Writes 3. Mexico: Rebel Groups Reappear? 4. Peru: Opposition Sweeps Elections 5. Peru: New Trial for Ex-Rebel Leader 6. Peru: Death Squad Leader Nabbed 7. US: 10,000 Protest Army School 8. Chile: Mapuche Protests Continue 9. Bolivia: One Killed in Land Conflict 10. Bolivia: Massacre Verdict Protested 11. Ecuador: Ex-Colonel Wins Runoff 12. Haiti: Thousands March Against Aristide 13. US: Poindexter In, Reich Out? VOLUNTEERS NEEDED for Weekly News Update on the Americas, to help 1-2 hours a week in our NYC office with clipping newspapers, filing and organizing the office. Please contact Jane or David at 212-674-9499, nicajg@panix.com or nicadlw@earthlink.net. 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 . Back issues and source materials are available on request. 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 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 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 . *1. MEXICO: FARMERS IN NEW NAFTA PROTESTS Mexican farmers blocked the entrances to the Senate building in Mexico City with sacks of grain for three hours on Nov. 21 to demand renegotiation of the sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) affecting agriculture. The protesters, organized by the National Union of Agricultural Workers, the National El Barzon Movement and the Coalition of Democratic Urban and Campesino Organizations, opposed NAFTA's scheduled elimination of a number of tariffs on agricultural products on Jan. 1. Trade between Mexico and the other two NAFTA members, Canada and the US, is "severely distorted" by the subsidies Canadian and US farmers get from their governments, the protesters charged. The farmers ended the demonstration after senators agreed to try to increase the budget for the agricultural sector. In Washington, assistant secretary of agriculture J. B. Penn announced that the US rejects "any opening or renegotiation of NAFTA." Speaking in a Nov. 18 video conference through the US embassy in Mexico City, Penn advised the Mexican government "to focus on structural reforms in the countryside and not on constructing barriers against trade." [La Jornada (Mexico) 11/22/02] NAFTA weakened Mexico's system of agricultural tariffs when it went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994. Most of the remaining tariffs are to be removed at the beginning of 2003, with only corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk tariffs remaining in place for the time being. On Nov. 18 Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), announced a plan for "armoring" the agricultural sector by reducing electricity and diesel prices for farmers and making payments to grain producers if market prices fall below certain levels. But Fox's agricultural budget for 2003 is $10.25 billion, a real increase of just 3.9% over 2002. By contrast, earlier this year the US passed a $180 billion farm bill. [New York Times 11/19/02; LJ 11/22/02] Critics say the combination of NAFTA and a 1992 neoliberal "reform" that weakened the ejidos (communal farms) has devastated Mexican agriculture. In 1990 Mexican agriculture produced 84% of the national consumption of basic grains, meat and dairy products; in 2001 national producers accounted for only 68%, according to the National Agricultural Council (CNA). [Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News and Analysis 11/19/02] The Finance and Agricultural Secretariats say that the portion of the rural population living in extreme poverty rose from 44.6% in 1992 to 46.08% in 2001. [LJ 11/24/2002] Ironically, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which imposed NAFTA and the 1992 reforms at a time when it virtually monopolized governmental power, is now trying to lead the growing opposition to these policies. On Nov. 23 Sen. Enrique Jackson, the PRI's Senate coordinator, proposed forming a national front to demand renegotiation of NAFTA and a larger agricultural budget. [LJ 11/24/02] Federal Deputy Maricela Sanchez, PRI coordinator in Morelos state, was heavily involved in a 30-hour blockade of the Mexico- Cuernavaca highway starting at noon on Nov. 20. Some 250 campesinos were demanding government payments of 3,500 pesos (about $347) for each of the 20,000 hectares of farmland they say have been damaged by this year's drought. Agriculture Secretary Javier Usabiaga says that just 9,742 hectares were damaged and that the government has already paid out 1,000 pesos (about $99) for each hectare. The blockade ended with an agreement for further negotiations. [LJ 11/22/02; CNN en Espanol 11/21/02 from Reuters] *2. MEXICO: TEACHERS PROTEST, MARCOS WRITES Some 30,000 Mexican teachers marched in Mexico City on Nov. 22 in a protest organized by the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), a dissident caucus in the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), the largest single union in Latin America. The demonstration demanded the democratization of the union and the expulsion of former SNTE leader Elba Esther Gordillo, now general secretary of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Organizers said the rally was the start of a campaign that would include other demonstrations and possibly a sit-in in front of the Congress. On Nov. 23 the CNTE was to sponsor a meeting of more than 70 unions and social organizations to form a national front against neoliberalism, with emphasis on opposing the government's proposed reforms to the labor code and privatization of the electrical and educational sectors. The meeting was to be held near Mexico City in San Salvador Atenco, where in August campesinos won a 10-month campaign against government plans to confiscate their land for a new international airport [see Update #653]. [La Jornada 11/23/02] *3. MEXICO: REBEL GROUPS REAPPEAR? On Nov. 21 Antonio Echevarria Dominguez, governor of Nayarit state in western Mexico, confirmed that the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) was investigating the possibility that guerrilla groups were carrying out attacks in the state's mountain range, including a recent one in which two local officials in La Yesca municipality, Samuel Morales Corona and his wife, Claudia Segura Jaime, were wounded. [La Jornada 11/22/02] On Nov. 18 the left-leaning daily La Jornada published a September letter from "Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos," spokesperson for the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). The EZLN leadership has refused to make public statements since the spring of 2001, when Congress passed an indigenous rights law the rebels considered inadequate [see Update #587]. In the ostensibly private letter to Fernando Yanez Munoz, an EZLN adviser, Marcos laughed at rumors that he was sick or dying and at the characterization of the EZLN as "moderate" and "reformist." "It can now be seen that, for being in silence, we are talking quite a bit," he wrote in what appeared to be a warning that the rebels were still active. [LJ 11/18/02, translated by "irlandesa"] *4. PERU: OPPOSITION SWEEPS ELECTIONS Peruvian opposition forces dominated local and regional elections held on Nov. 17, reflecting wide dissatisfaction with the government of President Alejandro Toledo. The elections were organized as part of a new decentralization or "regionalization" plan seeking to increase local political control in Peru. Voters chose "presidents" and "vice presidents" of 25 newly created regions (made up of Peru's 24 departments and the former province of Callao), along with 1,800 mayors and 229 members of regional councils. The biggest winner was the Peruvian Aprista Party (formerly known as APRA, the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) led by ex- president Alan Garcia Perez. The Apristas got nearly 25% of the vote nationwide, winning 11 of the 25 regional presidencies, while local independent parties or alliances won eight of the top regional posts, and other parties won the rest. Toledo's Possible Peru coalition got 13% of the vote nationwide, winning only one regional presidency: Rogelio Canches Guzman will govern the region of Callao, the port city adjoining Lima, although the municipal government of Callao will continue to be run by mayor Alexander Kouri Bumachar, relected on the ticket of a local political group, Chim Pum Callao. Luis Castaneda Lossio of the conservative National Unity Alliance won the race for mayor of Lima, defeating incumbent Alberto Andrade Carmona of Somos Peru (We Are Peru), considered a Toledo ally. [La Republica (Lima) 11/18/02, 11/19/02; New York Times 11/18/02; Miami Herald 11/19/02] In the northern coastal region of Lambayeque, the new president will be leftist Yehude Simon Munaro, who surprised observers by winning one of the largest vote counts of any candidate, running on the ticket of the Union for Peru-Broad Front alliance (UPP- FA). Simon spent eight years in Miguel Castro Castro prison charged with terrorism for alleged links to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA); he was pardoned and released late in 2000 [see Update #629]. [LR 11/18/02, 11/19/02, 11/22/02] [The UPP was founded by presidential candidate and former UN secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar for his 1995 campaign; its alliance with the more recently formed FA came in July of this year. [LR 7/23/02]] According to the New York Times, the election results were seen as a rejection of the neoliberal economic policies Toledo has pushed, especially privatization. In Arequipa, where the APRA fought to halt the privatization of state-run electric companies Egasa and Egesur in May and June of this year [see Updates #642, 646, 647], Aprista candidates won both the regional presidency and the mayoral race in the regional capital. "We showed that Arequipa did not want any more neoliberalism," said mayor-elect Yamel Romero. [NYT 11/18/02; LR 11/18/02, 11/19/02] *5. PERU: NEW TRIAL FOR EX-REBEL LEADER On Nov. 19, Judge Delia Revoredo of Peru's Constitutional Court ordered a new civilian trial for jailed Maoist rebel leader Elena Iparraguirre ("comrade Miriam") after annulling as unconstitutional the life sentence Iparraguirre received from hooded judges in a military tribunal in 1992. Iparraguirre, considered the second-in-command of the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP, better known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path), has been imprisoned since September 1992 at the Callao Naval Base, where her only contact is with her longtime partner, PCP top leader Abimael Guzman Reinoso. She will remain jailed during her new trial, but will likely be transferred elsewhere and placed under a special closed prison regime. Guzman and Iparraguirre both filed court motions challenging their convictions by a military court. A decision has yet to be issued on Guzman's case. [La Republica 11/20/02; BBC News 11/21/02] *6. PERU: DEATH SQUAD LEADER NABBED On Nov. 18 Peruvian Interior Ministry intelligence agents arrested fugitive former army major Santiago Enrique Martin Rivas, leader of the paramilitary "Colina Group" death squad that operated under the government of ex-president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Martin was picked up at his apartment in the coastal district of San Miguel, near Lima; police also seized two computers and numerous documents from the apartment. [La Republica 11/19/02; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 11/22/02 from AP] Martin, who used the nickname "Kerosene," was ordered arrested in April 2001 in connection with the November 1991 massacre of 15 people at a family barbeque in Barrios Altos, and for the June 1992 murder of journalist Pedro Yauri Bustamante. He is also sought in a separate case for the July 1992 abduction and murder of nine students and a professor from Enrique Guzman y Valle ("La Cantuta") University; the March 1997 torture, murder and decapitation of his ex-lover, former Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agent Mariella Barreto, with whom he fathered a child; the December 1992 murder of union leader Pedro Huilca Tecse; and the February 1992 forced disappearance of nine landless campesinos in the district of El Santa. [LR 11/19/02] Martin took a cadet orientation course from the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Panama in 1977. [SOA Watch list of graduates] Family members of the El Santa victims staged a protest march on Nov. 19 to demand justice in the case, including a life sentence for Martin. The bodies of the victims were never found; their relatives are demanding that Martin reveal where they were buried. [LR 11/20/02] *7. US: 10,000 PROTEST ARMY SCHOOL Over 10,000 people from around the US (or 6,500 according to Associated Press) gathered at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Nov. 17 to take part in the 13th annual protest against the former US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which trains Latin American military personnel. The SOA, which has operated at Fort Benning since 1985 (before that it was in Panama), was taken over by the Department of Defense in January 2001 and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). The yearly protests are timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989 murders of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador; the killers had been trained at the SOA. Demonstrators turned Fort Benning's main gate into a memorial wall for the victims of SOA/WHISC graduates, and thousands engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience by "crossing the line" onto the military base. A total of 96 people--including at least six nuns--were arrested as they attempted to cross a fence to get farther into the base. Those arrested were arraigned before federal judge G. Mallon Faircloth, who over the past two years has sentenced more than 50 SOA resisters to prison, fines and probation. For the first time in 13 years of nonviolent civil disobedience at the school, those arrested were held on $5,000 bond. As of 6pm on Nov. 19, two people were still being held in Muscogee County Jail in Columbus, Georgia; the rest had been freed after posting 10% of their bond. The trial is scheduled for Jan. 27; the protesters face up to six months in prison and $5,000 fines. [SOA Watch Email Messages 11/18/02, 11/19/02; AP 11/17/02] *8. CHILE: MAPUCHE PROTESTS CONTINUE Protests continued in Chile during the week of Nov. 18 over the killing by police of 17-year old Mapuche activist Edmundo Alex Lemun Saavedra. Lemun died on Nov. 12, five days after being shot by Carabineros agents on the Santa Alicia estate in La Araucania [see Update #668]. At least 500 Mapuches marched on Nov. 18 to the mayor's office in the regional capital, Temuco; some of the demonstrators clashed with police, and 25 people were arrested. Eight more people were arrested in related incidents during the day in Temuco, for a total of 33 arrests. One detainee refused to identify herself and went on hunger strike; all the others had been freed as of Nov. 19. [La Tercera (Chile) 11/19/02; El Mostrador (Chile) 11/19/02; Email Message from Francisco Caquilpan 11/19/02] *9. BOLIVIA: ONE KILLED IN LAND CONFLICT Late on Nov. 16 or early on Nov. 17, at least 30 hooded and armed assailants entered the Los Yukis union settlement in Ichilo province, some 70 kilometers from Yapacani in Santa Cruz department, Bolivia. The attackers opened fire, killing campesino Luciano Jaldin Fermin with a bullet to the chest. The Colonizers Federation of Yapacani responded by blocking a local highway in protest. The Los Yukis settlement was established some 30 years ago. Federation executive secretary Cimar Victoria said the government has joined with local landholders in efforts to provoke campesinos and justify installation of a base in Yapacani for the Mobile Rural Patrol Unit (UMOPAR). According to Victoria, some three weeks before Jaldin was shot, army troops and police agents used machine guns and rifles to attack the Los Majos union settlement, where they beat and tortured the residents, then burned their homes in an attempt to force them off the land. About two weeks later, hooded and armed individuals attacked the La Merced union settlement, where they again tortured campesinos and burned down their houses. Campesinos blame the attackers for the disappearance of 18-year old agricultural worker Wilber Nunez Flores; he has not been seen since Nov. 11, and his parents have filed a complaint with the Technical Judicial Police (PTJ). [Los Tiempos (Cochabamba) 11/19/02 from El Deber; El Diario (La Paz) 11/20/02] In a Nov. 14 attack in Sara province, former deputy mayor Angel Paz sent 10 hired killers to destroy homes and crops in the campesino settlement of the New Jerusalem union. The residents fled to a neighboring community, where they took four police agents hostage in an attempt to pressure Paz to negotiate so they could return to their homes. The campesinos have been charged with kidnapping; Paz faces no charges for the destruction of campesinos' property. [Joint Communique 11/20/02 from Coordinador de Pueblos Etnicos de Santa Cruz (CPESC), Federacion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Santa Cruz (FSUTC-SC) & Movimiento de los Trabajadores Sin Tierra (MST)] Hugo Salvatierra, legal adviser for the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), blamed the recent attacks on a minority which is trying to steal land in Santa Cruz department from indigenous people and campesinos. Salvatierra criticized a group of farmers and ranchers who marched on Nov. 19 to the Santa Cruz offices of the National Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA) to demand the agency stop restoring indigenous land rights. [ED 11/22/02] *10. BOLIVIA: MASSACRE VERDICT PROTESTED Hundreds of marchers from Bolivia's Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) arrived in the city of Tarija on Nov. 21 after walking for nine days to demand justice for the Nov. 9, 2001 massacre in Pananti, in which paramilitaries hired by local landowners murdered at least six campesinos and wounded some 20 others [see Updates #616, 617]. If departmental authorities don't respond to their demands, the marchers say they will be joined by others and will continue on to Sucre or La Paz. In a Nov. 20 communique, the MST, along with the Coordinating Committee of Ethnic Peoples of Santa Cruz (CPESC) and the Only Campesino Workers Union Federation of Santa, protested the recent sentencing of the Pananti killers to three years, with the possibility of serving part or all of the sentence outside of prison. The organizations are also angry that several campesinos who survived the massacre were sentenced to eight years in prison for beating to death the military commander who led the massacre. [Communique 11/20/02; El Diario 11/13/02; Los Tiempos 11/22/02] *11. ECUADOR: EX-COLONEL WINS RUNOFF After analyzing nearly 100% of the ballots, Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced on Nov. 24 that retired colonel Lucio Gutierrez Borbua had won that day's presidential runoff with 54.34% of the valid votes cast, compared to 45.66% for his opponent, millionaire banana mogul Alvaro Noboa Ponton. Ecuador has some 8.2 million registered voters. Since leading the first round on Oct. 20 [see Update #665], Gutierrez has rushed to ease the concerns of foreign investors by promising to impose fiscal discipline and maintain the country's use of the US dollar as its currency. [CNN en Espanol 11/24/02 from Reuters] *12. HAITI: THOUSANDS MARCH AGAINST ARISTIDE Thousands of Haitians marched in the northern city of Cap-Haitien on Nov. 17 against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his left- populist Lavalas Family (FL) party. The Miami Herald put the number at over 15,000, while the New York-based leftist weekly Haiti Progres estimated 8,000. The demonstration--held on the 199th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, the last major battle in the struggle against the French army--was organized by the Citizen Initiative (IC). This group includes former Port-au- Prince mayor Evans Paul ("K-Plim") of the center-right Democratic Convergence, human rights activist Jean-Claude Bajeux and former Haitian army colonel, Himmler Rebu, who led a brief coup attempt in 1989. At a press conference on Nov. 17, Rebu called for Aristide's removal from office. The Miami Herald reports that the demonstration was the largest ever against Aristide and the FL, and the largest popular demonstration since Aristide first ran for office in 1990. A sizeable group of protesters were reportedly from the city's poor seaside neighborhoods and were responding to the economic crisis, which the government blames on the US's blockage of $500 million in international aid. After years of attacks from the right and the US, in the past few months Aristide has also faced protests from the poorer sectors that have been his traditional base [see Update #654]. [MH 11/18/02; HP 11/13/02, 11/20/02] *13. US: POINDEXTER IN, REICH OUT? The Homeland Security Act, which is expected to be signed into law on Nov. 25, will create a "Total Information Awareness (TIA)" computer database, which rightwing New York Times columnist William Safire calls "the supersnoop's dream" and compares to a "far-out Orwellian scenario." Control over this database will go to former admiral John Poindexter, who heads the Defense Department's Information Awareness Office. As national security adviser to former US president Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), Poindexter was behind the "Iran-contra" plan to sell missiles to Iran and use the proceeds for illegally funding the rightwing contra rebels in Nicaragua. A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 of five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements; an appeals court overturned the conviction on technical grounds. [NYT 11/14/02] Otto Reich, who headed domestic propaganda operations in support of the contras in the 1980s, suddenly lost his position as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs when Congress adjourned on Nov. 22. US president George W. Bush appointed Reich during a congressional recess in January, after it became clear that the Democratic-controlled Senate would not confirm him [see Update #624]. As a "recess appointment," Reich had to step down when the session ended. He is now a "special envoy" for Secretary of State Colin Powell. Some analysts expect Bush to nominate Reich again for the Western Hemisphere position, since Bush's Republican Party will control the Senate in 2003, and should have the votes to confirm Reich. But there are rumors of tensions with Powell that could jeopardize Reich's renomination. In late September, the Cuban- born Reich complained about Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's plans for going to an agricultural trade show in Havana and publicly warned him not to engage in "sexual tourism" there. "Such remarks reportedly cooled relations between Reich and Powell, who is thought to prefer a more tactful career diplomat in the Latin America post," writes the Miami Herald. [MH 11/23/02] END VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED to help research and write the Weekly News Update on the Americas via email (from anywhere). We need people who are regular Update readers to send us news sources and to write articles for the Update. If you're interested, send your inquiry to and we'll send you the details. CHECK US OUT on the Resource Center of the Americas website at http://www.americas.org ALSO SEE OUR OWN WEBSITES: http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/nsnhome.html For New York area events, check out the CREED NYC calendar at http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/creed.html (if you don't have web access, write for info). ======================================================================= 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/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html * wnu@igc.apc.org =======================================================================