WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #829, DECEMBER 18, 2005 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Brazil: Guarani-Kaiowa Evicted 2. Bolivia: Campesino Wins Presidency 3. Chile: Ruling Coalition Wins 4. Colombia: Logging OK'd, No Trade Deal 5. Colombia: Government Meets with Rebels 6. Colombia: Sentence in Activists' Murder 7. Haiti: Dominican Prez Protested 8. Haiti: Maquila Contract Signed 9. Mexico: Environmentalist Kidnapped 10. In Other News: Peru, Guatemala ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. If this issue was forwarded to you, please write to wnu@igc.org for a free one-month subscription. 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BRAZIL: GUARANI-KAIOWA EVICTED On Dec. 15 some 100-200 Brazilian federal police agents, backed by a helicopter and armed with tear gas and rifles that fire rubber bullets, forcibly evicted more than 500 Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous people from their homes on the officially recognized 9,300-hectare territory of Nande Ru Marangatu, in Antonio Joao municipality, Mato Grosso do Sul state. The community did not put up physical resistance to the eviction. After police and human rights observers left the scene, the ranchers who claim the land arrived and set fire to the community's homes. One of the evicted Guarani men described the scene to Survival International: 'Helicopters flew very low over the area. Children were screaming and crying. Three people fainted and were taken to hospital. Everyone was crying and standing on the side of the road with nothing in the baking sun. We have nothing to eat. The ranchers when the police weren't there burned all our food, our clothes and documents. They burned 15 houses. The only things we have left are the clothes on our bodies." A Guarani-Kaiowa woman who was six months pregnant became startled by the low-flying helicopter, and fell down and suffered a miscarriage. Two journalists from Netherlands state television were arrested during the eviction. The government sought to relocate the Guarani-Kaiowa to a 26- hectare section of the territory, but community leaders say that plot is a swamp, infested with toads and unfit for human habitation or crop cultivation. The evicted families have instead begun setting up makeshift homes along the highway, where they are unprotected from the rainy weather. They are surviving on donated food. Antonio Joao mayor Junei Marques said he will propose to the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) that the Guarani-Kaiowa be housed temporarily on land belonging to the army. For years the Guarani-Kaiowa barely survived on a nine-hectare plot--much too small for their traditional subsistence agriculture--while campaigning for the return of their territory. On Mar. 29 of this year, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva finally signed off on the demarcation of Nande Ru Marangatu, and the community spent the subsequent months planting crops on the land. But the Supreme Federal Tribunal subsequently issued a preliminary decision suspending the demarcation, and a subsequent court ruling ordered the land returned to the ranchers who claim ownership of it. [Survival International Press Release 12/16/05; Adital (Brazil) 12/16/05; Agencia Brasil 12/16/05, 12/17/05] Meanwhile, 29 people have been detained in Operation Rio Pardo, Brazil's first ever investigation into the genocide of indigenous peoples. The former governor of Mato Grosso state, Wilmar Peres de Farias, and former elite police commander Roberto de Almeida Gil are among the public figures accused in a plot by land grabbers and logging companies to eliminate the uncontacted Rio Pardo tribe. Speaking from the city of Cuiaba, public prosecutor Mario Lucio Avelar told Survival he believed there were sufficient grounds to prosecute for genocide. In November Brazilian TV showed the first known images of the Rio Pardo tribe; no outsiders know who they are or what language they speak. FUNAI found camps inside the territory with land measuring equipment, and bombs and ammunition to intimidate the indigenous residents. Invaders admit they found 30 hurriedly abandoned indigenous shelters. [Survival International Press Release 12/14/05] *2. BOLIVIA: CAMPESINO WINS PRESIDENCY A projection released by the polling firm Apoyo after more than 80% of ballots were counted in Bolivia's Dec. 18 presidential elections gave indigenous Aymara campesino coca grower Evo Morales Ayma of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) 51.3% of the votes, enough to win the presidency outright. The same projection gave rightwing candidate Jorge Quiroga 31%. A projection by the Mori polling firm gave Morales 51% of the vote against 30% for Quiroga. [AFP 12/18/05] Reuters reported around 8:30pm that Quiroga had accepted defeat and had congratulated the MAS on its successful campaign. [Reuters 12/18/05] When no candidate wins more than 50%, Congress must decide among the top two vote-getters. In the last presidential election in June 2002, Morales came in second with about 20%--less than two percentage points behind Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who was elected president by the Congress but later ousted by popular protests in October 2003 [see Updates #648-650, 716]. *3. CHILE: RULING COALITION WINS Socialist Party (SP) candidate and former defense minister Michelle Bachelet Jeria, representing the ruling Concertacion alliance, came in first in Chile's Dec. 11 elections with 45.95% of the vote. Sebastian Pinera Echenique of the rightwing National Renewal (RN) party was in second place with 25.4%. Bachelet and Pinera will face off in a second round of voting on Jan. 15; the winner will begin a six-year term in March, replacing current president Ricardo Lagos of the SP. Former Santiago mayor Joaquin Lavin Infante of the ultra-right Independent Democratic Union (UDI)--who narrowly lost the January 2000 runoff to Lagos--came in third this time with 23.22%. Tomas Hirsch Goldschmidt of Together We Can Do More, an alliance of the Humanist and Communist parties, got 5.4%. [La Jornada 12/13/05 from correspondent] Abstention was 13.58%, while 3.67% of the ballots cast were blank or void; both these figures were up slightly from the last general elections in 1999. [Adital 12/13/05 from CLAJADEP] The Concertacion won a clear victory in Congress; for the first time since 1990 it will have a majority, with 20 of the 38 seats in the Senate and 65 of the 120 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Within the Concertacion alliance, the more progressive sectors gained strength: the SP increased its seats to 16 (up from 12) in the Chamber of Deputies and eight (up from five) in the Senate; the Party for Democracy (PPD) won 22 deputy seats (up from 21) and three senate seats (up from two), while the Radical Social Democratic Party won six deputy seats and three in the Senate. In contrast, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), which represents the more conservative sector of the Concertacion, lost six of its 12 Senate seats and three of its 24 deputy seats. On the right, the UDI lost two seats each in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, bringing its totals to nine and 33 seats respectively. The RN kept its eight seats in the Senate but lost five seats in the lower house, bringing its total number of deputies to 19. [LJ 12/13/05 from correspondent] The left parties which supported Hirsch have no representation in Congress. The Communist Party announced on Dec. 12 that it would only support Bachelet in the runoff if her backers introduce an reform proposal in Congress which would replace Chile's "binominal" electoral system with a proportional one, allowing smaller parties to win legislative seats. On Dec. 16 the government introduced the reform proposal, and Bachelet challenged Pinera to support it. The proposal causes problems for Pinera, since he needs support from the more rightwing sectors which oppose any change to a system that has benefited them. The rightwing opposition has been in a clear minority since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ended in 1990, but the "binominal" system has given it nearly the same representation in Congress as the ruling coalition. [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 12/18/05 from AP; LJ 12/13/05 from correspondent] On Dec. 17 thousands of ruling coalition politicians and grassroots supporters hit the streets in a nationwide door-to- door campaign to win votes for the runoff. Bachelet toured poor neighborhoods in Puente Alto, near Santiago, accompanied by Soledad Alvear--a former foreign minister under Lagos and competitor for the Concertacion's presidential nomination--who won a Senate seat in the vote. Pinera kicked off his runoff campaign the week of Dec. 12 by announcing that several politicians from past Concertacion governments are supporting him over Bachelet. At the same time, Sergio Onofre Jarpa, who served as interior minister under Pinochet, announced his support for Pinera. [ENH 12/18/05 from AP] *4. COLOMBIA: LOGGING OK'D, NO TRADE DEAL On Dec. 13, Colombia's Chamber of Deputies voted 81 to 11 to approve a bill which opponents say will open the country's forests to logging by multinational companies. The Senate already passed a version of the "Forest Law"; the two bills will now be reconciled and the final version presented to Uribe for his signature. Uribe had lobbied for the bill; it is fiercely opposed by Colombia's environmental, indigenous, African-descended and campesino communities, who say they will challenge it in court. [El Tiempo (Bogota) 12/14/05; Censat Agua Viva website] On Dec. 16, in response to a legal challenge to a "free trade treaty" (TLC) being negotiated between Colombia, the US, Ecuador and Peru, the Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca department ordered Uribe's government "to abstain from the partial or total signing...of any agreement which would have a harmful impact on collective rights." It is a preliminary injunction; the departmental court with jurisdiction over Bogota has not yet made a decision about whether the TLC is in fact harmful to collective rights, natural resources, indigenous culture and campesino activities, as claimed by grassroots activists. [EFE 12/16/05] The legal challenge was brought by Efrain Barbosa, a professor at the National University of Colombia who has also been active against the Forest Law. [EFE 12/16/05; Censat Agua Viva website] The injunction was announced a day after Trade Minister Jorge Humberto Botero announced that no final agreement on the TLC had been reached this year and that negotiations would resume in mid- January. The two sides have yet to reach a deal on the issues of agriculture, healthcare and intellectual property. [EFE 12/16/05] On Dec. 11, Uribe--who faces reelection in 2006--announced that in 2006 his government would approve a "generous" increase in Colombia's minimum wage. The Unitary Workers Federation (CUT) responded by pointing out that some 8.1 million Colombian workers receive less than the legal minimum wage--some because their employers are breaking the law, others because they work in the informal sector. [AP 12/12/05] On Dec. 14, a tripartite commission made up of the CUT, the government and business sector reached an agreement on wages and price controls for basic goods and services, among other issues. [Text of Agreement posted by CUT 12/14/05 on Colombia Indymedia] *5. COLOMBIA: GOVERNMENT MEETS WITH REBELS On Dec. 16, representatives of the Colombian government and Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel organization met in Havana, Cuba, to begin a round of "exploratory dialogues" to discuss a possible peace process. The governments of Spain, Norway and Switzerland are acting as observers at the talks; delegates of Colombian civil society are also represented. The talks were inaugurated by famed Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. [ENH 12/17/05 from AFP] On Dec. 13, Uribe and his government's High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, announced that the government had agreed to demilitarize 180 square kilometers on the border between the departments of Valle del Cauca and Tolima in order to pave the way for an exchange of prisoners with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Under the exchange, military and civilian hostages held by the FARC would be exchanged for 300 rebels held in Colombian prisons. The FARC would also have to withdraw troops from the zone, and international observers would verify compliance before the two sides meet to work out details at a public school in the village of El Retiro in Florida municipality, Valle del Cauca. The "humanitarian exchange" was proposed by an international commission made up of delegates of the governments of France, Spain and Switzerland. "The government accepts this proposal," said Uribe at a press conference. "I confess humbly that this implies a concession from the government. I do it humbly but also with responsibility. We accept this modification to the positions we have maintained... because we trust in the international community." When Uribe began his term in 2002, he insisted he would make no deals with the FARC. [ENH 12/14/05 from correspondent] *6. COLOMBIA: SENTENCE IN ACTIVISTS' MURDER On Dec. 13, Judge Floreddy Gonzalez in Bogota announced the sentencing in absentia of FARC military chief Jorge Briceno Suarez, known as "Mono Jojoy," for ordering the 1999 abduction and murder of three US indigenous rights activists in the eastern Colombian department of Arauca. Briceno was sentenced to 39 years in prison and a fine of 102 minimum monthly salaries for ordering the killing. Indigenous rights activists Ingrid Washinawatok, Terence Freitas and Lahe'ena'e Gay were visiting the territory of the indigenous U'wa people as the Uwa's invited guests when they were kidnapped by the FARC's 45th Front on Feb. 25, 1999; their bodies were found a week later, on Mar. 4, on the Venezuelan side of the border. The FARC subsequently admitted that its forces had carried out the killings. Briceno's brother, German Briceno Suarez ("Grannobles"), headed the FARC's 45th and 10th fronts and was in control over the area where the activists were abducted. The conviction of Jorge Briceno--the FARC's top military commander--was based on a recording in which his brother German apparently said: "Settle this thing, the boss authorized this matter of the gringos, that it should be done on the other side so as to not leave traces." The judge acquitted Nelson Vargas Rueda, a campesino from Saravena, Arauca, for lack of evidence that he participated in the crime. [In May 2003 Vargas was extradited to the US to face trial there for the murder; the US government later dropped its case against him for lack of evidence and returned him to Colombia on July 1, 2004--see Update #754.] [El Nuevo Herald 12/14/05 from AP] *7. HAITI: DOMINICAN PREZ PROTESTED Hundreds of protesters clashed with Haiti's riot police unit, the Company of Intervention for the Maintenance of Order (CIMO), outside the National Palace in Port-au-Prince on Dec. 12 during a demonstration against a brief official visit by Dominican president Leonel Fernandez. Demonstrators burned tires, and some began throwing stones when a convoy carrying Fernandez emerged from the National Palace at about 3 pm; one car was damaged. Security forces, which included units from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), fired in the air and attacked the protesters with tear gas and nightsticks. At least three people were treated in the hospital with gunshot wounds, including the student Harisma Jean Pierre. MINUSTAH denied that its members caused any of the injuries. The protests came less than a week after a wave of attacks broke out in the Dominican Republic against Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent, and at the end of a year in which Fernandez's government has deported thousands of Haitians [see Update #828]. "You are not welcome! Go back home!" chanted the crowd. "The Haitian people cannot welcome Fernandez when Haitians are being killed and treated like animals in the Dominican Republic because of Fernandez's racist policy," said Jean Wilson Junior, a student leader. Fernandez cut his visit short soon after the protest turned violent, missing a reception at the Dominican embassy that included some 30 presidential candidates for the January Haitian elections. Dominican ambassador Jose Serulle Ramia demanded an explanation from the interim Haitian government for security lapses, which he said were "a very serious mistake." The protest--which brought out thousands of people, according to the weekly Haiti Progres--was organized largely by human rights organizations and students and included members of a student tendency popularly known as the "GNB" (for Grenn nan Bounda in Creole) which led demonstrations against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before he was ousted in February 2004. [Haiti Support Group News Briefs 12/12/05 from Reuters; Miami Herald 12/13/05 from AP; Agence Haitienne de Presse 12/12/05, 12/15/05; Haiti Progres (NY) 12/14/05] Two Dominican journalists, Huchi Lora of Telesistema and Hector Cabral of the news chain RNN, charged that the protest was organized by the notorious paramilitary Guy Philippe, now the presidential candidate of the rightwing National Reconstruction Front (FRN). Philippe told a Dominican radio program on Dec. 14 that he was present at the protest but had not organized it. On Dec. 17 Haiti-based US journalist Kevin Pina charged on the "Haiti: The Struggle Continues" program on New York radio station WBAI that the protest's organizers were the GNB, Philippe's paramilitary group and Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), a labor group. In a Dec. 18 letter to WBAI, Batay Ouvriye denied that it had been involved in organizing the protest; the organizers had invited it to participate, Batay Ouvriye wrote, adding that it considered the demonstration "very positive." According to the Batay Ouvriye letter, Philippe left the protest after being "harassed by the students, who did not approve of his presence." [AHP 12/15/05; Batay Ouvriye 12/18/05] On Dec. 13 some students went to Port-au-Prince's impoverished Bel-Air neighborhood, a center of support for Aristide's left- populist Lavalas Family (FL) party, to ask for the residents' participation in protests they were planning at the Dominican consulate. Samba Boukman, a Lavalas spokesperson in Bel-Air, said the students should renounce violence if they want the backing of Bel-Air residents, but he indicated he was happy that some students had rejected the support of backwards sectors-- presumably referring to Philippe. [AHP 12/15/05] Haitians attending college in the Dominican Republic reported receiving threats after the Dec. 12 protest. "Go back home, we don't want you any more," one note said. Police agents reportedly detained two Haitian students the evening of Dec. 14 and mistreated one of them. A number of Haitian students have left the Dominican Republic without finishing the semester, or are in the process of leaving. [AlterPresse 12/16/05] *8. HAITI: MAQUILA CONTRACT SIGNED On Dec. 13 the Dominican company Grupo M signed a contract with the union at its Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in Ouanaminthe near the Dominican border in eastern Haiti. The agreement follows a nearly two-year struggle by workers supporting the Ouanaminthe Codevi Workers Union (SOKOWA), during which the unionists suffered firings and even physical assaults at the hands of management. The Codevi plant is a maquiladora (a tax-exempt assembly plant producing for export) in a "free trade zone" (FTZ) inaugurated in April 2002 by the Haitian and Dominican governments as what was expected to be the first of a number of FTZ's in which Dominican companies would use cheap Haitian labor to produce goods intended for the US market [see Updates #640, 785, 807]. Under the contract the base wage was raised from 432 gourdes a week ($10.16) to 900 gourdes ($21.17), and management agreed to increase it by another 45% over the next three years. There were also agreements on union recognition, working conditions, health, hygiene, security, pregnancy protections and sexual harassment. SOKOWA is affiliated with the Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") labor organization, which noted the importance of solidarity activists "who contributed to the resolution of this labor conflict." [Batay Ouvriye press release 12/14/05] *9. MEXICO: ENVIRONMENTALIST KIDNAPPED On Dec. 16 the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH) reported that a campesino active in the environmental movement in the southern state of Guerrero, Diego Bahena Armenta, hasn't been seen since Nov. 8, when he was kidnapped by eight hooded men in a Nissan van without license plates as he was working with his nephew cleaning the road near the Riscalillo ranch, in Zihuatanejo municipality. His family reported his disappearance immediately to the state police but has received no information on him. Bahena Armenta was a member of the Ecological Organization of the Sierra de Petatlan and Coyuca de Catalan (OESP), a campesino group which has defended the local forests since 1998. Its members have faced repeated attacks from the authorities and others; two children of an OESP leader, Albertano Penalosa Dominguez, were killed in an ambush in May, and another leader, Chico Mendes award winner Felipe Arreaga Sanchez, was imprisoned from November 2004 to September this year on murder charges that were finally dismissed [see Updates #800, 816]. Bahena Armenta himself was arrested by the Mexican army's 19th Infantry Battalion on Sept. 5 for possession of illegal weapons and was released on Sept. 13. He is a former member of the militant Southern Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS). Guerrero attorney general Eduardo Murueta Urrutia has described him as "an alleged sympathizer of the [rebel] Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI)." LIMEDDH is urging activists to ask for Bahena Armenta's release in calls or faxes to officials including Guerrero governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo (+52-747-472-7041, fax +52-747-472- 3125) and Guerrero Human Rights Commission president Juan Alarcon Hernandez (phone and fax +52-747-471-2190 or 471-0378, email codhum@prodigy.net.mx) [LIMEDDH urgent action 12/16/05; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/16/05] *10. IN OTHER NEWS... On Dec. 16, a criminal court in the town of Tingo Maria in Peru's Huanuco region convicted campesina coca grower (cocalera) Nancy Obregon of crimes against public peace for leading a cocalero strike last May [see Update #801] and sentenced her to three years of probation and reparations of 13,000 nuevos soles ($3,782) to the government. The court acquitted Obregon of apology for crimes. Both Obregon and the prosecutor are appealing. [AFP 12/16/05]... Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsperson Sergio Morales is investigating 3,248 cases of human rights violations which took place in the first 10 months of 2005. Most of the violations are attributed to the National Civilian Police (PNC), said Morales in a report issued for international human rights day on Dec. 10. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 12/11/05 from EFE] END Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update items are available in searchable form at http://americas.org Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs, and can opt to receive a separate service, the weekly Centr-Am News. 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