WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #832, JANUARY 8, 2006 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Chile: Mine Workers Block Roads 2. Haiti: UN Mission Head Found Dead 3. Mexico: "Other Campaign" Kicks Off 4. Mexico: Drive to Free Maquila Activist 5. El Salvador: Torture Verdict Upheld 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. 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 people will know how to find us. Send us a copy of any publication where we are cited or reprinted. The Update is produced by an all-volunteer team and is funded solely through subscription contributions. For a one-year subscription (52 issues) via email, we ask for a suggested donation of $25. Make checks or money orders payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012 (for tax deductible donations or to send money from overseas, contact us for details.) *1. CHILE: MINE WORKERS BLOCK ROADS More than 3,000 Chilean copper mine workers began a strike on Dec. 29 around a demand for a 500,000 peso bonus (about $970) for each mine worker because of the high price of copper on international markets in 2005. The workers are employees of companies that contract with the state-owned copper mining enterprise, National Copper Corporation of Chile (Codelco); they are not covered by the same labor protections as Codelco's own employees and make less than half as much in wages. The strike affected two of the company's four divisions, Andina and El Teniente; the others are Codelco Norte and Ventanas. After the government refused to discuss the bonus, which would cost it some $27 million, the National Contract Workers Coordinating Committee started a nationwide open-ended strike of all 28,000 employees of CODELCO contractors on Jan. 4. Some 2,000 workers blocked the Cobre highway, which provides access to the El Teniente division, about 80 km south of Santiago. In the city of Rancagua, 42 strikers were arrested and two police agents injured when some 200 strikers marched on a police station to demand the release of six workers arrested earlier. More than 12 strikers were arrested in Rancagua on Jan. 5, and barricades were set up on several of the main avenues. On Jan. 5 both union leader Danilo Jorquera and government officials indicated they might be able to compromise on an agreement providing better pay and conditions for the contract workers. Complicating the situation is the Jan 15 runoff between rightwing presidential candidate Sebastian Pinera Echenique and Socialist Michelle Bachelet Jeria of the ruling Concertacion center-left alliance. The workers have traditionally supported the Concertacion ticket, but with the government opposing the strike, Pinera has come out in support of the strikers--as has the Communist Party (PC), which supports the Concertacion. [Prensa Latina 12/30/05, 1/4/06, 1/5/06, 1/6/06; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 1/5/06 from EFE; Resumen Latinoamericano #685, 1/7/06] *2. HAITI: UN MISSION HEAD FOUND DEAD Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, the Brazilian head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), was found dead in his room at Port-au-Prince's Montana Hotel on Jan. 7 after apparently shooting himself in the head, according to United Nations (UN) officials. The Brazilian military initially described the incident as a "firearm accident," while reports circulated that Teixeira had killed himself the evening of Jan. 6 after a dispute with the UN general secretary's special representative in Haiti, the Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes. On Jan. 7 Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a thorough investigation but said Brazil had "total confidence" in the work of the 9,000-member MINUSTAH, which Brazil has headed since it started in June 2004. [The first MINUSTAH commander, Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, left after one year; he reportedly resisted UN pressure to stay on, saying he wanted another Brazilian general to share his experience in Haiti--see Update #804.] Gen. Teixeira's death came as criticism grew against UN agencies for the failure to organize national elections originally scheduled for November, for the mounting crime rate and for civilian deaths in police and military operations that were supposed to bring criminal gangs under control. Valdes had announced on Jan. 6 that MINUSTAH troops would occupy Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince's most dangerous neighborhood, and warned that civilians could be harmed. "We are going to intervene in the coming days. I think there'll be collateral damage, but we have to impose our force, there is no other way," Valdes told a local radio station. Some UN officials reportedly said Teixeira had opposed Valdes' plan for Cite Soleil. [Haiti Support Group News Briefs 1/7/06 from Reuters; AlterPresse 1/7/06] There were at least 27 murders and 43 kidnappings in Port-au- Prince from Dec. 12 to Jan. 3, according to police sources. Haitian National Police (PNH) head Mario Andresol blamed Colombian drug traffickers. "Since it has become more difficult to conduct their drug activities, Colombian traffickers have turned to the kidnapping activity in Cite Soleil, where they took refuge," Andresol told Reuters on Jan. 5. At the same time, he suggested the violence was partly an attempt to destablilize the country before the elections; he failed to identify suspects. [HSG 1/5/06 from Reuters] On Jan. 5 Dr. Reginald Boulos, president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti (CCIH), announced a general strike for Jan. 9 to protest the level of insecurity. The call was backed by a number of professional and political groups that oppose the left-populist Lavalas Family (FL) party of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But the strike call was strongly opposed by anti-FL groups on the left, including the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), which has been organizing demonstrations against the high cost of living, and the labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle"), which accuses the business groups of supporting "the blind massacres the MINUSTAH is carrying out in our neighborhoods." [AlterPresse 1/7/06; Batay Ouvriye communique 1/7/06] On Jan. 7 the interim government that replaced Aristide in 2004 published the latest schedule for elections. The first round of presidential and legislative voting is to take place on Feb. 7, with run-offs on Mar. 19, and the president is to take office on Mar. 29, the anniversary of the approval of the Constitution in 1987. Municipal and local elections are now scheduled for Apr. 30. [Haiti Press Network 1/8/06] *3. MEXICO: "OTHER CAMPAIGN" KICKS OFF Hundreds of masked but unarmed members of Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) launched the group's new political offensive, "The Other Campaign," with a rally at La Garrucha community in the southeastern state of Chiapas on Jan. 1, the anniversary of the group's 1994 armed uprising. The Other Campaign--a non-electoral counterpart to the official campaign leading to the July 2 national presidential and congressional balloting--will bring Zapatista delegates to all 31 Mexican states and the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) over the next six months to advance a push towards a broad alliance of leftist and grassroots groups the EZLN first announced in a June 2005 communique [see Updates #804, 805, 810, 811]. Traveling in a caravan of buses, the delegation made its first stop later on Jan. 1 in San Cristobal de las Casas, the main city in the Chiapas Highlands, where thousands of supporters overflowed the Plaza de Resistencia. On Jan. 3, some 4,000 masked followers greeted the tour in Palenque, the site of famous Mayan ruins. The EZLN spokesperson formerly known as "Insurgent Sub- Commander Marcos," who has now taken the pseudonym "Delegate Zero" to stress that the non-military thrust of the new campaign, told the crowd that "change doesn't come from above, it comes from below and to the left." [World War 4 Report 1/2/06; El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 1/2/06 from AP; San Diego Indymedia 1/3/06; AP 1/4/06; New York Times 1/6/06] The tour was suspended for two days because of news of the sudden death of EZLN leader "Commander Ramona" from natural causes on the morning of Jan. 6. Ramona had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1996 but recovered after receiving a kidney transplant in Mexico City from her brother in November of that year [see Update #357]. The EZLN delegates were at rally in the Chiapas coastal city of Tonala when they got the report. "Commander Ramona snatched 10 years from death," Marcos announced. "[T]he world lost one of those women who give birth to new worlds." [La Jornada (Mexico) 1/7/06] *4. MEXICO: DRIVE TO FREE MAQUILA ACTIVIST On Jan. 4 state criminal judge Horacio Bravo Negrete in Puebla, capital of the central Mexican state of Puebla, formally charged Martin Barrios Hernandez, president of the Tehuacan Valley Human and Labor Rights Commission (CDHL), with blackmail and ordered him kept in prison in Tehuacan. State police arrested Barrios, who is also a local adviser to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), on Dec. 29 on charges that he asked Puebla business owner Lucio Gil Zarate for $14,000 to end activism by former workers at Gil's maquiladora (tax-exempt assembly plant producing mostly for export). Tehuacan is a major center for blue jeans production for the US market [see Update #831]. After the judge left on Jan. 4, more than 100 workers, activists and intellectuals from Tehuacan demonstrated at the courthouse to demand Barrios' release. Some 70 riot police guarded the building. Earlier in the day Barrios' supporters had presented the judge with a video of Barrios leading a protest in Ajalpan municipality at the time that Gil claims the activist was at Gil's home in Tehuacan demanding money. [La Jornada de Oriente (Puebla) 1/5/06] Labor rights activists have begun an international campaign to support Barrios. The Canadian-based Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) reports that Dan Heenkle, vice president for social responsibility at the San Francisco-based apparel transnational Gap Inc., has written to Puebla governor Mario Marin Torres to ask for "immediate measures" to investigate Barrios' case and guarantee his security. "Gap seeks to work in countries that respect labor rights," Heenkle wrote. [LJO 1/7/06, quotes translated from Spanish] The MSN is asking for labor rights supporters to send letters to Gov. Marin Torres (email gobernador@puebla.gob.mx, fax 011-52-222-213-8805; a sample letter in Spanish is available at www.maquilasolidarity.org). [MSN Urgent Action 1/3/06] *5. EL SALVADOR: TORTURE VERDICT UPHELD On Jan. 4 a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta reversed its own earlier ruling and upheld a jury's $54.6 million verdict against two retired Salvadoran generals accused of responsibility for torture by soldiers under their command. The same panel threw the verdict out on Feb. 28, 2005, saying a 10-year statute of limitations had expired. But the panel reversed its decision after concluding that it had made factual errors on the dates. "I have never, ever heard of such a thing," the defendants' attorney, Kurt Klaus, Jr., said on learning that the panel had reversed its own decision. Three Salvadorans living in the US filed the suit on May 11, 1999 under the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act against former defense ministers Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia, who both left El Salvador in 1989 and now live in Florida. A federal jury found the generals liable for torture in July 2002 [see Updates #652, 788; Update #825 incorrectly cited Update #762]. Vides Casanova left office as defense minister on May 31, 1989, less than 10 years before the suit was filed. In addition, in its new ruling the panel decided that the statute of limitations did not apply until 1992, when the Salvadoran government signed a peace accord with the rebel Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), since until then the government "remained intent on maintaining its power at any cost and acted with impunity to do so." [New York Times 1/8/06] END Your support is appreciated. 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