WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #670, DECEMBER 1, 2002 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Bolivia: Campesinos Tortured, Killed 2. Dominican Republic: 15 Hurt in Strike 3. Haiti: US Plans to Replace Aristide? 4. Colombia: US Gets Admiral Dumped 5. Colombia: Paramilitary Ceasefire? 6. Colombia: Court Limits Special Powers 7. Argentina: Piqueteros March 8. Venezuela: Referendum Wrangle 9. Mexico: Women Protest Murders 10. Mexico: Rebels Breaks Silence Again 11. El Salvador: Violence in Doctors' Strike 12. Puerto Rico: Navy Choppers Haze Peace Camp 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. 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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 *1. BOLIVIA: CAMPESINOS TORTURED, KILLED On Nov. 24 a search and rescue team found the corpses of three Bolivian campesinos who had disappeared, apparently in connection with an attack by hooded gunmen on the Los Yukis (or Los Yuquis) union settlement in Santa Cruz department on Nov. 16 or 17 [see Update #669]. The bodies of Ricardo Rojas Carvallo, Martin Condori and Wilber Nunez Flores were found with their hands tied and showing signs of torture; autopsies confirmed the torture and that they died from asphyxia. Their disappearance had been reported the previous week to the Technical Judicial Police (PTJ) in Yapacani [note that sources used in Update #669 indicated that Nunez was reported missing on Nov. 11]. [Los Tiempos (Cochabamba) 11/25/02 from El Deber; El Diario (La Paz) 11/26/02] Cimar Victoria, executive secretary of the Colonizers Federation, confirmed that the three victims were residents of Los Yukis, and that they had been abducted by the hooded assailants. Another community member, Luciano Jaldin Fermin, was killed in the same attack. Victoria identified Silverio Cazon, Roberto Coca and Johnny Mejia as three of the gunmen who killed Jaldin, under orders from Samuel Rioja, a large landowner in the Yapacani region. Rioja is currently under arrest, charged with the murder of Jaldin; he claims that the three men whose bodies were found Nov. 24 had worked for him and that the Los Yukis residents had killed them as revenge for Jaldin's murder. Rioja said he was the one who first reported the three as missing. Given the conflicting claims, Freddy Sanchez, the PTJ prosecutor assigned to the case, is investigating both sides. Minister of Campesino Affairs Amparo Velarde confirmed that violence in the region comes from landowners and ranchers who are seeking to maintain control of their vast holdings by forming paramilitary groups to keep out landless campesinos. [ED 11/26/02; LT 11/26/02, some from El Deber] *2. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: 15 HURT IN STRIKE Residents of the Dominican towns of Salcedo and Tenares, both in Salcedo province, and San Francisco de Macoris, in neighboring Duarte province, staged a 48-hour strike on Nov. 26 and 27 to protest constant electricity blackouts and to demand public works, including reconstruction of the highway linking the cities. The strike was called by grassroots organizations including the Coordinating Committee of Popular Organizations, the Union of Neighborhood Committees, the Community Alliance, the Broad Front of Popular Struggle (FALPO) and unions representing transport drivers who cover the route between Tenares and San Francisco de Macoris. Strikers damaged electricity meters and burned tires, and several clashes with police were reported. Seven people were arrested in Tenares and one in Salcedo on Nov. 26. The next day in San Francisco de Macoris, 15 people were wounded by birdshot, bullets or makeshift bomb fragments, and 30 people were arrested. Among the wounded were three police agents, hit by bullets or bomb fragments after armed, hooded individuals entered the neighborhood of Los Espinola. Also wounded was a one- year old girl. [El Nacional (Santo Domingo) 11/27/02, 11/28/02] *3. HAITI: US PLANS TO REPLACE ARISTIDE? After more than a week of competing protests by his opponents and supporters, Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide announced on Nov. 28 that he would not resign and that he would not be overthrown by a coup, as he was during his first term in 1991. "Lavalas is a great majority," Aristide said, referring to his left-populist Lavalas Family (FL) party. "The opposition is a little minority. I invite them both to express themselves freely." But the administration of US president George W. Bush apparently expects the government to collapse. Haiti is "turning into a non- country," an unnamed US official told the Miami Herald. "Haiti is unraveling. We're meeting to look at what our options are, which are pretty bleak," the official said. "Given the lack of a clear post-Aristide leader," the Herald writes, "some US officials wonder quietly whether Haiti should be declared a `failed state' and be handed over to the United Nations or the Organization of American States for temporary administration." [MH 11/29/02, 11/30/02] The current round of protests started with a large anti-Aristide demonstration in the northern city of Cap-Haitien on Nov. 17. In contrast to the generally weak demonstrations previously organized by the pro-US center-right Democratic Convergence (CD), the Nov. 17 march drew strong support from the poorer neighborhoods which formerly supported Aristide and the FL [see Update #669]. On Nov. 20 several thousand high school students marched through the streets of Petit Goave in the southwest to demand Aristide's resignation; about 10 people were reportedly wounded by gunshot, presumably fired by the police. College students demonstrated in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 21 to defend the autonomy of the State University of Haiti (UEH) against plans by the government to increase its control on the campus; the protesters chanted: "Down with Aristide!" Pro-Aristide forces responded on Nov. 22 by blocking Port-au-Prince streets with barricades of burning tires; the activists, mostly members of Popular Power Youth (JPP), Ti Kominote Legliz (TKL, "Grassroots Church Community") and other groups, effectively shut the capital down. Meanwhile, seven reporters in the northwestern city of Gonaives announced that they had gone into hiding on Nov. 21 because of death threats, apparently from Aristide supporters. [Haiti Progres (NY) 11/27/02; Haiti en Marche (Miami) 11/17/02] Protests continued on Nov. 25, with more than 1,000 high school students and others marching against Aristide in Petit Goave. A pro-Aristide group known as the "Cannibal Army" broke up an anti- government march in Gonaives on the same day. The Cannibal Army is led by Amiot ("The Cuban") Metayer, who over the past few months has wavered back and forth between supporting Aristide and opposing him [see Updates #653, 654]. A total of six people were reportedly shot during the Nov. 25 demonstrations across the nation, including a high-school student who was seriously wounded. On Nov. 28 Metayer's supporters attacked thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Gonaives with sticks, metal spikes and whips. On the same day, a judge from Aristide's party, Lozama Christophe, was reportedly shot dead in a clash in Las Cahobas, near the Dominican border; he was from the nearby town of Belladere, the site of several recent attacks on Lavalas officials [see Updates #640, 644, 649]. [MH 11/26/02, 11/27/02, 11/29/02, 11/30/03] There is no Haitian army; the 24,500-member Dominican Army is the only standing military force on the island that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. On Nov. 25 the Miami Herald reported that the US is sending the Dominican military 20,000 M-16 assault rifles starting in January and that US troops will join Dominican soldiers in patrols along the Dominican-Haitian border. Groups of 900 US soldiers will do 15-day rotations, with a total of 8,000 US soldiers involved over the course of 2003. The Dominican military initially denied the report, but Dominican president Hipolito Mejia confirmed it on Nov. 28 during a visit to Japan. [HP 11/27/02; MH 11/25/02; Hoy (Santo Domingo) website 11/28/02] *4. COLOMBIA: US GETS ADMIRAL DUMPED On Nov. 26, shortly after meeting with US Ambassador Anne Patterson, Colombian defense minister Martha Lucia Ramirez announced that Adm. Rodrigo Alfonso Quinones Cardenas, Colombia's military attache in Israel, had resigned from the armed forces amid accusations of involvement in drug trafficking. The announcement came two days after the Colombian weekly magazine Cambio published a transcript of an audiotape from 1992 or 1993, when Quinones was the director of intelligence for the Colombian Navy, in which he allegedly discussed shipments of "coffee" to the US, in reference to drugs. Quinones vehemently denies the claims. [Miami Herald 11/27/02; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 11/27/02; AP 11/26/02; El Tiempo (Bogota) 11/27/02] On Nov. 19, the US government confirmed that nearly a month earlier, the State Department withdrew Quinones' visa after US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Christopher Miller testified that Quinones' wife had accepted money from drug trafficker Victor Patino Fomeque. [ET 11/20/02; ENH 11/24/02] Patino was released from prison in Colombia in August 2001 after serving half of a 12-year sentence. In August 2002, the US Attorney General's Office in Miami indicted Patino on drug charges and the US requested his extradition from Colombia. [MH 11/22/02; ENH 8/25/02] Colombia's Supreme Court of Justice authorized Patino's extradition on Nov. 20. [ENH 11/22/02 from AFP] The government of President Alvaro Uribe Velez signed the extradition order on Nov. 26. [ENH 11/27/02] While Defense Minister Ramirez said Quinones had requested his "voluntary resignation," military sources confirm that the Colombian government forced him out following the meeting with Patterson, the US ambassador. [El Espectador (Bogota) 11/27/02] "The drug allegations were the end of the road," according to Robin Kirk, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, which has sought to expose Quinones' links to paramilitary massacres and other atrocities. But "it was pressure from the human rights groups that spurred it," she said. [MH 11/27/02] In March of this year the Colombian attorney general's office filed charges against Quinones and other officers for "deliberate inertia" in relation to the Chengue massacre, in which a group of 80 paramilitaries used rocks and machetes to kill 27 campesinos in Chengue, Sucre department, on Jan. 17, 2001. According to the charges, the Navy Infantry's First Brigade, which Quinones commanded, was alerted to the paramilitary incursion and failed to intervene [see Updates #573, 575]. Quinones is also accused of having led a death squad between January 1992 and February 1993 that assassinated at least 56 union activists, human rights workers and community leaders in the oil port city of Barrancabermeja, while he headed Navy Intelligence there; a military court cleared him of those charges for lack of evidence. [ENH 11/25/02; EE 11/27/02; MH 11/27/02] The Barrancabermeja murders were allegedly carried out via a front operation created with Navy funds, Comercial Maritima y Fluvial Limitada. Quinones was registered as manager of the business. Prosecutor Yolanda Paternina of the attorney general's office was assassinated on Aug. 29, 2001 while pursuing the Chengue case; two investigators working for her disappeared in June [see Update #606]. Another investigator on the case, Oswaldo Enrique Borja, was murdered this past February. The lead prosecutor from the attorney general's office human rights section who took over the investigation, Monica Amparo Gaitan Munoz, resigned in March after having been forced off the Chengue case. [ENH 11/25/02] In April of this year, shortly after being charged, Quinones was sent to Israel to serve as military attache, presumably to protect him from prosecution [see Update #640]. *5. COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY CEASEFIRE? On Nov. 29, the rightwing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) announced it will begin an open-ended, unilateral nationwide ceasefire on Dec. 1, in order to pursue peace talks with the government. In an open letter directed to President Alvaro Uribe Velez, High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo, and Cardinal Pedro Rubiano, president of the Bishops' Conference, the AUC asked the government to protect the areas under its control; the paramilitaries say they will retain the right to defend themselves if the guerrillas enter their territory. The AUC also asked the government to drop all charges against its members who would serve as negotiators. The AUC asked the Catholic Church, the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the "international community" to support the peace talks. The document was signed by the political and military leadership of the AUC: Carlos Castano Gil, Salvatore Mancuso, Jose Vicente Castano and Ramon Isaza; and by most of the local or regional paramilitary organizations that make up the AUC. Three groups did not sign the truce: the Bolivar Central block is said to be preparing a separate ceasefire announcement, while the Metro block of the Campesino Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU), which operates in the area around Medellin, and the Campesino Self-Defense Groups of Casanare both said they would not sign. [El Espectador (Bogota) 11/30/02; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/02 from AFP, DPA, Reuters] US officials announced on Nov. 27 that Secretary of State Colin Powell would visit Colombia during the week of Dec. 1, for the first time since taking office. [Reuters 11/27/02] *6. COLOMBIA: COURT LIMITS SPECIAL POWERS On Nov. 26, Colombia's Constitutional Court announced it was overturning a number of the measures included under a state of emergency which President Alvaro Uribe Velez decreed on Aug. 12 [see Update #655]. One of the measures rejected by the court allowed the military to carry out arrests and raids without seeking permission from the courts. "For the military to be able to act as judicial police, there has to be a constitutional reform," Constitutional Court president Marco Gerardo Monroy told reporters. The court also overturned a rule requiring foreign reporters to seek permission every time they entered a specially designated war zone; the court said the measure violated the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. The government has been planning legislation to make the military's emergency powers permanent. [Reuters 11/27/02] *7. ARGENTINA: PIQUETEROS MARCH Some 10,000 unemployed Argentines marched on Nov. 26 to the government palace in Buenos Aires to demand jobs and social programs. The piqueteros ("picketers") marched from the southern suburb of Avellaneda in Buenos Aires province, across the Pueyrredon bridge into the capital, to demand justice in the case of Dario Santillan and Maximiliano Kosteki, members of the Anibal Veron Unemployed Workers Movement who were killed by police following a similar protest last June 26 on the same bridge [see Update #648]. Federal judge Maria Servini de Cubria had ordered police to search every piquetero for weapons, and tensions surged when hundreds of police agents with dogs and water cannons blocked the demonstrators from crossing the bridge into the capital. The marchers refused to submit to searches, and the standoff with police lasted seven hours. Finally the march organizers reached an agreement with the government: Judge Servini softened the order to require only searches of bags and backpacks, and the government agreed to let the demonstrators into the capital. According to the left-leaning Buenos Aires daily Clarin, when the marchers finally were allowed to enter the city, police made no effort to search bags. [CNN en Espanol 11/26/02 from AP; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/27/02 from correspondent; Clarin (Buenos Aires) 11/27/02] *8. VENEZUELA: REFERENDUM WRANGLE On Nov. 28 Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) blocked plans for a nonbinding Feb. 2 referendum on whether President Hugo Chavez Frias should remain in office. The National Electoral Council (CNE) had scheduled the vote based on a petition presented on Nov. 4 which organizers said had 2 million signatures. The Supreme Court ruled that the CNE needed at least a 4-1 majority to declare the referendum legal, not the simple majority by which it passed. On Nov. 30 the CNE ratified its original decision in favor of the referendum. Opposition forces are planning an open-ended general strike to start on Dec. 2 in a continued attempt to force the left-populist president's resignation. This is the fourth strike against the government since Dec. 10, 2001. Cesar Gaviria, general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), worked through the night of Nov. 29-30 to negotiate with government officials and members of the Democratic Coordinating Committee, the group organizing the strike; the most powerful members are the Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV) and the Chambers of Commerce Federation (Fedecamaras). No agreement was reached. [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 12/1/02 from AFP; New York Times 11/29/02 from correspondent, 11/30/02 from Reuters] *9. MEXICO: WOMEN PROTEST MURDERS Mexican women marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov. 25 with demonstrations protesting the authorities' failure to solve the murders of some 300 women and girls over the last nine years in Ciudad Juarez, at the US border in Chihuahua state. More than 1,000 women marched through Mexico City on the evening of Nov. 25 dressed in black and holding candles; they were joined by families and friends of the victims as well as politicians and celebrities. In Juarez itself, non-governmental organizations sponsored three marches from different parts of the city to the assistant state attorney's office, where hundreds of protesters set up 286 wooden crosses painted pink and inscribed with the names of the murdered women. The organizers said that there may be many more victims but the state judicial police has been keeping the full list classified. Prayer services were held for the murdered women in at least a dozen Catholic churches in Juarez and across the border in El Paso, Texas. Protesters in Ecatepec, Mexico state, also set up crosses with the Juarez victims' names; activists Azucena Cisneros Coss and Silvia Solis noted the high incidence of violence against women in Mexico state, where 1,312 cases of sexual violence were reported in October alone. About 100 activists marched in Cuernavaca, Morelos, to demand justice for the Juarez victims and for human rights attorney Digna Ochoa, who was shot dead in her Mexico City office in October 2001; the protesters rejected the hypothesis by a former prosecutor that Ochoa committed suicide [see Updates #612, 645, 647]. In Culiacan, Sinaloa, some 200 women marched for the Juarez victims and to demand that the state allocate more funds to agencies for the defense of women and to shelters for battered women. There was also a march in Merida, Yucatan. [BBC News 11/26/02; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/26/02] *10. MEXICO: REBELS BREAKS SILENCE AGAIN "Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos," spokesperson for Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), captured headlines for the second time in a week on Nov. 25 when the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada published a letter dated Oct. 12 which the rebel leader wrote to Spanish rock musician Angel Luis Lara ("El Ruso"). The EZLN has maintained public silence since spring 2001 to protest the failure of Congress to pass an indigenous rights law incorporating points the rebels had negotiated with the government; Marcos broke the silence with an ostensibly personal letter that La Jornada published on Nov. 18 [see Update #669]. The new letter--which congratulated Spanish activists on establishing an "Aguascalientes," or Zapatista center, in Madrid- -generated new controversies for the rebels. In it Marcos dismissed Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon as a "grotesque clown" whose efforts to detain former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Britain in 1998 had been a "con man's story" which only resulted in giving the general an "expense-paid vacation" in London. According to Marcos, Garzon showed his "true fascist vocation by denying the Basque people the right to struggle politically for a cause which is legitimate." Garzon has imposed a ban on the Basque pro-independence Herri Batasuna party, which the Spanish government says is the political wing of the armed independence group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). [LJ 11/25/02, 11/27/02] *11. EL SALVADOR: VIOLENCE IN DOCTORS' STRIKE Salvadoran police and striking medical workers for the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS) fought at the Rosales and Oncology Hospitals in San Salvador on Nov. 27 in the worst violence since protests started in September against government plans for partial privatization of the health care system. The confrontation came when some 1,000 doctors and other medical workers in the ISSS Workers Union (STISSS)--supported by grassroots organizations and politicians and activists from the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN)-- were marching on the Legislative Assembly, which was to consider an amnesty bill for the strikers. A decree passed by the Assembly on Nov. 14 met most of the workers' demands on privatization, but they have continued the strike to push demands for rehiring of fired strikers [see Update #668]. As the marchers approached the Oncology Hospital at about 10:30 am, a dispute developed with the Order Maintenance Unit (UMO) of the National Police over control of the north entrance. Police agents began firing tear gas and rubber bullets, while strikers threw rocks and other objects; each side accused the other of provoking the violence. The authorities claimed that 19 police agents were injured, while an unknown number of strikers and passers-by were affected by tear gas. Patients, including 20 newborn infants, had to be evacuated from nearby hospitals, including Maternity and First of May. After negotiations with the Human Rights Attorney's Office (PDDH), the police withdrew and the marchers resumed their march at about 12:30 pm. When they reached the Legislative Assembly, a group of protesters seized the building for about 30 minutes. [La Prensa Grafica (San Salvador) 11/28/02] Violence flared up again on Nov. 28 when riot police tried to clear a roadblock that strike supporters set up at a highway connecting the capital to the east and central regions. Police agents fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters. [CNN en Espanol 11/28/02 with info from AP] *12. PUERTO RICO: NAVY CHOPPERS HAZE PEACE CAMP Four people were injured the night of Nov. 25 when a US Navy helicopter hovered at a low altitude over the Luisa Guadalupe Peaceful Resistance encampment on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. The wind from the helicopter, which was reportedly flying at 40 feet, knocked down a number of structures in the camp. The four people injured, all Vieques residents, were treated at a local clinic and released. Activists say this was the latest in a series of attacks on the camp, which was set up as part of ongoing protests against the Navy's use of part of the island as a bombing range. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 11/27/02, 11/28/02 from correspondent; Hoy (NY) 11/28/02 from news services] 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. 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