Author: David Bloom

THE QUEENS BLACKOUTS: KENNETH LAY’S REVENGE?

by Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT

It’s a neat little ironic juxtaposition of headlines that the July 5 passing of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay—while awaiting sentencing on securities fraud and a host of related charges—came just days before several neighborhoods in the New York City borough of Queens were plunged into darkness and sweltering heat. Certainly the Queens blackouts are nothing so dramatic as those which plagued California in 2000-1, when Enron and its ilk were riding high. Nor are they likely as intentional—although the degree to which Enron contrived the California crisis was never revealed until months after the fact. But the chaos and misery in Queens is likewise the bitter fruit of energy deregulation.

On July 21, when many Queens residents had been without power for five days, local politicians began calling for dramatic action. Assemblyman Michael Gianaris of Astoria demanded a “criminal investigation of Con Edison on the grounds of reckless endangerment.” City Councilman Peter Vallone, also of Queens, chimed in: “Heads need to roll. Con Ed has sent us back to the dark ages. People of this community want to storm Con Ed with…pitchforks.”

Con Ed estimated that 25,000 customers were without power in the neighborhoods of Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City and Hunters Point. Streetlights were dead and usually bustling commercial districts were deserted. Even Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had been giving the utility the benefit of the doubt, said he was “annoyed” that its original estimate of those without power was just 25,000. Bloomberg said that 25,000 paying customers translated into 100,000 people without electricity.

On July 19, when the blackouts were at their worst, even local subway lines were slowed. Brutally, this also corresponded with the peak of a local heat wave. Con Ed, which claimed not to know the cause of the failure, reported that day that 10 of the 22 feeder cables that supply the area with power were down simultaneously

On July 21, New York’s WABC News reported that a check of New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) data showed continued under-spending on maintenance. In a three-year period in which Con Ed budgeted $32 million dollars for maintenance in Queens and Brooklyn, the utility actually only spent $27 million, the report found. Gerald Norlander of the Public Utility Law Project told ABC: “Maintenance data suggests that Con Ed is spending less on regular preventative maintenance in the system and that needs to be investigated.”

WABC also quoted Ariel Antonmarchi, a former Con Ed worker who said he was fired for blowing the whistle on poor maintenance: “It’s not only the feeders. That’s what Con Ed is leading the public to believe. It’s the whole infrastructure. In Queens, and in certain areas, it is not being kept up.” Con Ed, of course, disputed the claims, insisting it has spent billions upgrading the system.

But as early as January, 2003, Con Ed and other New York utilities were petitioning the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for new rules that would reduce their legal liability for damages arising from blackouts or system failures.

The New York PSC already exempts Con Ed from liability for “ordinary” negligence. Lawyers for the City of New York were able to prove “gross” negligence on Con Edison’s part following the devastating July 1977 New York blackout, even though it was initially precipitated by a lightning strike. However, the liability of utilities for damages due to the August 2003 Northeast blackout—the first significant outage of the post-deregulation era—remains uncertain.

The very structure of deregulation makes the grid more vulnerable, many experts warn. FERC’s Order 888 mandated the “wheeling” of electric power across utility lines as one of the first steps towards deregulation in 1996. Order 888 was held up in litigation until March 2000, when it was approved by the US Supreme Court and took effect. But critics—including some in the federal government—warned that the new policy would have a destabilizing effect. “The system was never designed to handle long-distance wheeling,” Loren Toole, a transmission-system analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory told The Industrial Physicist journal in an article following the 2003 blackout.

The bitter irony is that, having effectively gotten out of the generation business under New York state’s deregulation plan, nearly all Con Ed has to do these days is to maintain the cables. The 2003 blackout—although apparently originating from a power surge at Ohio’s Toledo Edison—was the first indication that New York’s grid was seriously vulnerable.

Under the deregulation regime, which took effect in New York in the summer of 1999, out-of-state companies are encouraged to purchase or build local power plants and sell the electricity to the local utility, which is to serve as a broker rather than a producer. So California’s Pacific Gas & Electric was compelled to purchase from Texas-based Enron, and finally forced into bankruptcy by the power disruptions. This same PG&E was simultameously building a natural gas plant at Athens, on New York’s Hudson River—to sell power to Northeast utilities, which are likewise getting out of the local generation biz. (After PG&E’s bankruptcy, the Athens plant was taken over by a consortium led by Morgan Stanley.)

Queens residents are especially miffed that their communities host a disproportionate share of the city’s power plants, which have been the focus of local citizen campaigns around their health impacts. The three plants currently operating in the western Queens area have all been sold off by Con Ed. The largest is the 1,753-megawatt Ravenswood Generating Station, owned by KeySpan Energy; the 1,090-megawatt Astoria Generating Station is owned by Orion Power Holdings, and the 1637-megawatt Poletti Power Plant is owned by the New York State Power Authority (which actually purchased it from Con Ed when it was first built in the ’70s).

KeySpan, owner of the massive Ravenswood, is the successor company to the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), which was forced to relinquish control of the grid in Long Island’s suburban Nassau and Suffolk counties by state regulators in 1998 as the price of a bailout of its debt-crippled Shoreham nuclear power plant. Just days after the deal was closed, it was revealed that LILCO had awarded its top executives a severance package of more than $67 million, including $42 million to CEO William J. Catacosinos. The payments came despite the fact that Catacosinos and his fellow officers had secured similar positions in KeySpan. New York state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer charged that “a pattern of deception by the company’s CEO and senior officers, as well as a dereliction of duty by the company’s board, led to an outrageous giveaway.” (The bad publicity shamed Catacosinos, at least into stepping down—but not relinquishing his golden parachute.) Relieved of its Shoreham debt, LILCO’s new incarnation moved from suburban Long Island to inner-city Queens. KeySpan is now seeking approval from federal and state authorities for its pending $11.8-billion takeover by the British energy giant National Grid. Rather than progress towards accountability to the consumer, it looks more like an elaborate game of musical chairs.

In June 2000, after a brief blackout on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, then-City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (the incumbent councilman’s father) publicly suggested that Con Ed, in connivance with its new deregulation partners, was using power disruptions to pressure the state PSC to approve new power plants. And the new plants were proposed, not surprisingly, for poor areas of city, including post-industrial and gentrifying but still-bleak Long Island City. Other targeted neighborhoods are Brooklyn’s immigrant enclaves of Williamsburg and Sunset Park, and the Harlem River Yards and Port Morris in the South Bronx. Con Ed is also proposing increased capacity at the 14th Street plant on the Lower East Side (not yet divested), adjacent to low-income public housing projects, to make up for the closure of its plant up the East River near the United Nations–where developer Donald Trump wants to build a luxury residential high-rise.

And notwithstanding the brief incident on the upscale Upper East Side, it was generally the low-income areas that were hit with the blackouts. Manhattan’s Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights was without power for 18 hours in the midst of a heatwave in July 1999, just weeks before the state deregulation hit in—again due to feeder cables burning out.

In its investigation of the Washington Heights blackout, the state PSC found that “managers had been told to reduce the operation and maintenance budget in each of the four years leading up to the black out.” And Gerald Norlander of Public Utility Law Project, in words almost identical to those he would utter after the 2006 Queens blackout, stated: “The company, despite growing demand for service, [was] spending less and less each year on maintenance.”

There were certainly reasons for discontent with the status quo ante. Con Ed charged among the highest rates in the country. In August 1994, New York Newsday, citing leaked documents, revealed the Con Ed was paying bonuses of up to $20,000 per executive to the very mangers who had slashed spending on pollution control citing budgetary constraints. The costs for these bonuses were passed on to the rate-payer. Deregulation was pushed as a formula to bring down rates.

But in August 2000, in the first summer after deregulation, New York’s consumers were shocked to find that rates were actually 40% higher over the previous summer—resulting in city officials blasting the provision allowing Con Ed to base its rates on wholesale market costs (a supposed hedge against California-style chaos). The Public Service Commission blamed high oil princes, and the temporary closure of Con Ed’s Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor some 30 miles up the Hudson River—a frequent occurrence. Indian Point was soon to be divested under the deregulation plan, but its shut-downs would remain frequent—and Con Ed’s rates would remain among the nation’s highest.

In the wake of the Queens blackouts, concerns were raised of Enron-type market manipulations under the deregulation regime. Assemblyman Paul Tonko, chair of the state Assembly’s Energy Committee, told Newsday July 27 that KeySpan and the other generating companies had clearly “gamed” the market “at the expense of the consumers.” He pledged his committee would “fully investigate these market manipulations that are artificially raising electric prices, and make those who are responsible for this disgrace accountable.”

Health and safety concerns were also dire under the old regime. In 1995, Con Ed was slapped with a $2 million fine for lying about the release of asbestos at an August 1989 steam pipe explosion at Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, in which two workers died. In a November 1999 settlement, Con Ed again paid $2 million to 270 New York firefighters and rescue workers exposed to toxic chemicals when they responded to a fire at the utility’s Arthur Kill plant on Staten Island the previous September. In October 1999, Ravenswood (by then owned by KeySpan) was evacuated following a spill of a cleaning compound outside the plant, sending acrid fumes into the building.

The daily functioning of these plants is ultimately a greater concern. In April 2000, Rep. Carolyn Maloney complained to the Queens Tribune: “More than 35,000 Queens schoolchildren already suffer from asthma and a 1998 federal study found that the presence of three dirty power plants, two major airports and six major highways has made air quality in Queens particularly toxic.”

The three Queens plants, already under construction, were “grandfathered” in when the Clean Air Act took effect in 1970, exempting them from the new standards. Therefore, they can continue to emit quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) that would be illegal in newer plants. Although Ravenswood was built to burn coal, it has now switched to natural gas and may at this point be in compliance with the Clean Air Act—even though it is still not required to be. This progress has been the fruit of a long activist campaign by Queens residents—not deregulation.

After the Queens blackouts, a July 26 New York Times story found that the affected areas, especially Long Island City, had a disproportionate rate of cable failures, and some local cables had parts that were up to 67 years old. For all the emphasis on shiny new generators, the aging transmission system was being allowed to deteriorate—and, not surprisingly, being allowed to deteriorate the fastest in the very neighborhoods slated for the power plants.

One of the real tragedies of the push to build new generators in the city’s low-income neighborhoods is that it has pitted urban clean-air activists against upstate opponents of nuclear power. The closure of Indian Point would make the new power plants in the city inevitable, the argument goes, and the health impacts shouldn’t be shifted to low-income urban residents. However, given that Indian Point is far closer to New York City than Chernobyl was to Kiev, the safety issues at the reactors should be a concern to down-staters too.

In 2000, the Louisiana-based Entergy Corp. bought the Indian Point 3 reactor from the public New York Power Authority (which had relieved Con Ed of it following massive cost-overruns in 1975), and the following year purchased Indian Point 2 from Con Edison. (Indian Point 1 had been permanently closed when the Power Authority took over reactor 3.) Since 9-11, local residents in Peekskill, NY, and surrounding communities have been increasingly demanding the plant be closed down—or at least the airspace above it be closed to commercial flights. Entergy has responded by officially changing the facility’s name from the “Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant” to the “Indian Point Energy Center.” All area signs indicating the plant have been changed, removing the word “nuclear,” and the utility has also launched a local PR blitz plugging the plant’s supposed “safety.” One recent newspaper ad urged readers to “Take confidence in the security of Indian Point Energy Center.”

The Indian Point reactors are among the oldest and most decrepit in the country, and Entergy’s record in keeping them up and running has been little better than Con Ed’s or the Power Authority’s. The most recent shut-down of Indian Point 3, prompted by an electrical mishap, came on July 21—in the very midst of the Queens blackout. The reactor was brought back on line the next day, and Entergy claimed it had no impact on consumers.

Westchester County’s Rep. Sue Kelly has introduced a measure in Congress to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point—a measure advocated by the local Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, which has collected 5,000 signatures in support of the bill.

The Queens blackout will doubtless be used as propaganda against both advocates of closing Indian Point and opponents of the new urban generators. With nerves still frayed, it may be a while before the argument can be made openly. However, while local Queens politicians play to their pissed-off constituency, New York’s Sen. Charles Schumer is not only a proponent of the new plants, but is calling for deregulation to be mandated at the national level by federal legislation. (Nearly half the states have already imposed some kind of deregulation plan, although the pace has slowed since the Enron scandal.)

Mayor Bloomberg has already played a blackout card in a bid to wear down public resistance to new plants and pylons. “Nobody wants to have a power line going through their backyard, but we have to face the issue that if you want to have electricity—and we really have no choice, we have to have electricity, our society depends on large amounts of electricity and it has to be reliable—that means building power plants, upgrading power plants and building transmission lines,” Bloomberg said in the aftermath of the 2003 blackout.

But the 2003 blackout was caused by a breakdown in the transmission system, and the 2006 blackout by a failure in the distribution network—neither by insufficient generation. And today we all understand (hopefully) that the 2000-1 California blackouts were not caused by a deficit of power any more than Stalin’s bureaucratically-induced Ukraine famine was caused by a deficit of grain.

New York’s deregulation program was supposedly designed more cautiously than California’s. But the same measures which allow the utilities to pass increased costs on to rate-payers as a hedge against bankruptcy and chaos also hurt the consumer—canceling out the still-ephemeral savings of the “spot market” overseen by the New York Independent System Operator. This is the entity created by the PSC for the deregulation regime, which supposedly directs the cheapest power where it is needed at a given moment.

The California Independent System Operator’s own records indicate that blackouts were happening when demand was considerably below peak—indicating that supplies of electricity were being held back. Meanwhile, at the very height of the California crisis in early 2001, Kenneth Lay was meeting with Dick Cheney—who then headed the White House energy task force. The task force report, explicitly invoking “electricity shortages and disruptions in California,” called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, harnessing the oil resources of post-Soviet Central Asia, and a “renewal” of the nuclear industry. And although Cheney’s task force was not so indiscrete as to mention it, the California crisis helped set the tone for a war for oil in the Persian Gulf.

Despite growing public skepticism of the energy giants and deregulation, this dynamic still seems to be at work. Conveniently, on July 26, just as power was being restored to the last suffering residents of western Queens, blackouts hit several communities in Staten Island, leaving an estimated 16,000 consumers without power for several hours. Meanwhile, 80,000 households in Missouri and Illinois were without power after storms brought down power pylons. Right on cue, the US Senate began debate on an energy bill that would expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and seems assured of passage. The House version goes even further in removing federal controls on offshore drilling.

The Queens blackouts may not have been as contrived a crisis as that which shook California five years ago. If Con Ed was a monolithic bureaucracy under the old regime, today it is the public face of a Kafkaesque labyrinth of often out-of-state companies with no roots in the communities they now serve. While the California blackouts were the design of the out-of-state firms like Enron to make a mint and (it seems) create a political climate conducive to war and corporate resource-grabs, the Queens blackout really seems the work of the old utility that still controls the lines. But it has similar roots in the erosion of public accountability under the deregulation dogma. More ominously, it may end up helping to serve similar aims.

RESOURCES:

“Why is Con Ed having all these problems?” WABC Eyewitness News, July 21, 2006
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=investigators&id=4388181

“States pull the plug on electricity dereg,” by Eric Kelderman, Stateline.org, July 21, 2005
http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&conten tId=44242

“What’s wrong with the electric grid?” by Eric J. Lerner, The Industrial Physicist, October-Novemeber 2003
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html

“After the Blackout: Going Back to the Experts,” by Kate Stohr, The Gotham Gazette, Aug. 18, 2003 http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/feature-commentary/20030818/202/496

“Does the Power Kill? Balancing the Energy Environment,” by Josh Kaufman, the Queens Tribune, April 20, 2000 http://www.queenstribune.com/archives/featurearchive/feature2000/0420/

“Report Finds LILCO Payout Irretrievable,” New York State Attorney General’s Office, April 29, 1999
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/1999/apr/apr29a_99.html

Public Utility Law Project
http://www.pulpny.org/

See also:

“The Real Culprit in Northeast Blackout: Deregulation,” WW4 REPORT #92, September-October 2003
/static/92.html#shadows3

“Two Counties Pull Out of Indian Point Emergency Plan,” WW4 REPORT #84, May 5, 2003 /static/84.html#nuke2

Special Issue on Enron and Energy, WW4 REPORT #19, Feb. 2, 2002
/static/19.html

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VENEZUELA: CAMPESINOS MASSACRED

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

According to a communique from the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ), on July 20 a soldier supposedly with the Venezuelan army murdered six adults and a child, members of a campesino family, on the Rancho Adi estate in the Los Pajaros sector of Urdaneta parish in Paez municipality, in the western Venezuelan state of Apure. The victims were apparently shot, then sprayed with gasoline and set on fire. The FNCEZ is demanding that the government immediately clarify whether any members of the Venezuelan military were in fact involved in the incident, then launch a thorough investigation and punish those responsible. (FNCEZ Communique, July 22)

Braulio Alvarez, a campesino leader from Yaracuy and legislative deputy for the ruling Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), survived an assassination attempt at about 3AM on July 22, as he was returning from a meeting. A group of people opened fire on the vehicle Alvarez was traveling in; according to Prensa Latina the vehicle, driven by Alvarez’s son, was hit by 20 bullets, one of which grazed Alvarez’s jaw. Other sources, including Union Radio, suggest that Alvarez was driving and lost control of the vehicle during the attack, and his mouth was injured in the crash. He was treated in San Felipe, then taken to the military hospital in Caracas, where he was said to be in stable condition.

Alvarez was shot and wounded in a previous assassination attempt on June 23, 2005 [see WW4 REPORT #111]. He has been part of a special commission in the National Assembly investigating murders, torture and disappearances during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; he has also been part of a commission investigating attacks by hired killers against campesinos, indigenous people and fisherpeople. Agriculture and Land Minister Elias Jaua condemned the latest attack on Alvarez; he blamed large landholders for it and said his office would respond by speeding up land reform. (FNCEZ Communique, July 22; Prensa Latina, July 22; Diario El Dia [Coquimbo, Chile], July 23; Union Radio, July 22)

Venezuelanalysis.com reported on July 11 that the government of President Hugo Chavez Frias has set aside $10 million to compensate the families of campesino activists murdered since Venezuela’s land reform program began in 2001. Assassins hired by landowners have killed at least 150 campesino leaders, according to campesino organizations. Jaua, the agriculture minister, says the funds will be spent on projects to improve the standard of living of the victims’ families and to make sure that “those guilty of the killings pay for their crimes”. Since the agrarian reform program was launched, some 1.5 million people have received plots of land. (Green Left Weekly, July 19; PL, July 23)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 23

VENEZUELA: PRISONERS WIN STRIKE

Prisoners at seven Venezuelan prisons began a hunger strike on July 10 to demand changes to legislation that limits access to parole. Prisoners at another nine prisons joined the strike over the subsequent days, bringing the total number of prisons involved to 16. Venezuela has 30 prisons holding 18,701 people, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons (OVP). Only 43% of the prisoners are serving sentences; the rest are awaiting trial. OVP coordinator Humberto Prado said that so far this year, 150 prisoners have died violently and 350 have been wounded by firearms, sharp objects and grenades. During 2005, 408 prisoners died and 720 were wounded.

The hunger strike ended on July 14 at all 16 prisons after a group of hunger strike leaders negotiated an agreement with authorities, Interior Minister Jesse Chacon announced. Mayerling Rojas, director of human rights for the Interior Ministry, said authorities agreed to suspend article 508 of the Penal Process Organic Code, which restricted parole access, as well as to install facilities in all 30 prisons to examine prisoners, and to take over a center where psychosocial studies are being carried out on prisoners. (AP, July 15; Adital, July 12)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 16

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COLOMBIA: INDIGENOUS DISPLACED, KILLED

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Thousands of civilians have been displaced and many more are trapped by fighting between Colombian government forces and leftist rebels in the southwestern department of Narino, bordering Ecuador, and in the northwestern Pacific coast department of Choco. In Narino, the fighting has forced at least 1,300 people from their homes [in mid-July]. In Choco, civilians have been killed and wounded, and people are trapped in the area and unable to flee. Most of those affected are indigenous people, including children and pregnant women. (IDP News Alert, July /20) The combat in Choco has left indigenous communities along the Truando river stranded and incommunicado. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is especially concerned about some 137 Embera indigenous people trapped there for over a week. (Adital, July 19)

In Narino, the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CPDH) reports that at least four teachers have been killed or disappeared in recent weeks. In Samaniego municipality, Efren Alonso Motta Acosta, a teacher in the Bellavista rural school, has been disappeared since June 27. Luis Hernando Chiran, a teacher in the El Guadual rural school in Ricaurte municipality, was abducted and his body found six days later showing signs of torture. Francisco Ernesto Garcia, who taught at the El Tambillo educational center in Sandona municipality, was found dead on July 6 in an abandoned rural area along the road to Samaniego. On July 10, teacher Ivan Nanez Munoz died, hit by seven bullets, on his way to work at the Bellavista educational center in San Pablo municipality.

The CPDH Narino section also reports that the Colombian Air Force has been bombing and strafing Awa indigenous communities in Ricaurte and Barbacoas municipalities, causing massive displacement. Hundreds of people have sought refuge in the villages of Cumbas and Guadual, where they are stranded without any food or supplies. (Comite Permanente de Derechos Humanos-Seccional Narino, July 13 via dhcolombia.info)

According to the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), three indigenous people have died in the bombings and combat in Narino between the Colombian Army’s 29th Brigade and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Ricaurte and Cumbal municipalities. The victims include Luis Arsecio Valenzuela, a former indigenous governor of Cumbal, and another community leader, Campos Paguay. Their families have been unable to recover their bodies because the combat is continuing. Not even the Red Cross has been able to enter the area, which is being blockaded by the military. (CRIC, July 19 via Adital)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 23

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ECUADOR: OIL PROTESTS CONTINUE

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Some 22,000 residents of the northeastern Ecuadoran province of Orellana began a “progressive strike” on June 28 to protest environmental damage by the French oil company Perenco and repression by the military. The protest began with residents of the provincial capital, Francisco de Orellana, blocking roads leading to one of Perenco’s installations and threatening to block all the roads in the province, where much of the country’s oil production is concentrated. “The number [of protesters] will grow with the actions, because the communities will no longer put up with disrespect from the government and the oil companies,” Orellana province prefect Guadalupe Llori told the media.

Confrontations between the protesters and some 300 soldiers increased after protesters seized the area around the Coca airport and blocked the roads leading to it. Llori charged the military had violated the law by entering Francisco de Orellana, where it had no jurisdiction, and using rubber bullets and tear gas “against an unarmed civilian population”; two people were wounded. “[T]he soldiers made an attempt on my life,” Llori said. “They nearly killed me when they aimed a gun at me; the truth is, I don’t know how I escaped.” Later the soldiers deployed outside Coca municipality, where residents said they detained three local people.

The protesters were demanding that Perenco leave the province and pay for the damage they say it has caused. They also wanted the military to end a “state of exception” (state of emergency) it had enforced in the province for 105 days and to release human rights activist Wilmer (or Wilman) Jimenez Salazar.

According to human rights groups, the police seized Jimenez near a Perenco facility on June 19 when he was acting as a human rights observer at a protest by some 200 local campesinos, who were blocking access. Jimenez was one of two people wounded by rubber bullets. The police turned him over to military authorities, who held him for two days before notifying his family and defense attorneys. Joint Task Force #4 commander Gonzalo Meza denied a habeas corpus petition, saying Jimenez was “encountered in a fragrant act” (an error for “flagrant act”). The army says he will be tried for sabotage before a military tribunal. (El Comercio, Guayaquil. June 28; Prensa Latina, June 29; Univision, June 28 from EFE; El Universo, Guayaquil, July 1)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 2

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PERU: TRADE PACT PASSES, CAMPESINOS PROTEST

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

In the early morning of June 28 Peru’s Congress voted 79-14 with six abstentions to ratify the Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA, known locally as the Free Trade Treaty, or TLC), a trade pact Peru signed with the US in December. Some 1,000-2,000 protesters began a march in the streets of Lima to reject the TLC, which they said will destroy Peruvian agriculture and industry through competition with US products. The night before, as Congress was debating the ratification, a group of political leaders from the party of nationalist former presidential candidate Ollanta Humala pushed their way into the Congress building and forced legislators to suspend the session for a half hour.

At the June 28 march, Congress member Javier Diez Canseco, leader of the Socialist Party, said that “struggle and social pressure” were ways of attacking the accord but that he would work on legal action to have the ratification declared unconstitutional.

Other politicians pushed for legislation to mitigate the effects of the TLC. Congress has approved bills providing $171 million worth of compensation for the agricultural sector, and other measures are under discussion. Legislators from the social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) voted for the TLC, but PAP leader Alan Garcia, who takes office as president on July 28, has promised to renegotiate parts of the accord. (Punto de Noticias, Venezuela, June 28 from AFP; Univision, US, June 28 from EFE; Prensa Latina, July 1)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 2

Peruvian campesinos blocked roads and held street demonstrations on July 4 to protest the TLC. In the southern city of Pisco, police used tear gas to disperse protesters who were blocking the Panamerican South highway with stones. Campesinos in the south said on July 5 they would continue an open-ended strike and road blockades to protest the TLC.

Some 500 people marched on July 4 through the center of Lima to protest the TLC. The protesters later rallied peacefully outside the bunker-like home of US ambassador James Curtis Struble, which was guarded by 1,000 police agents, while inside the complex President Alejandro Toledo praised the TLC at an event honoring US independence day. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 5 from AP; AFP, July 4; Prensa Latina, July 5; Adital, July 5) Toledo flew to the US on July 9 to begin lobbying members of the US Congress to approve the trade pact. (El Comercio, Peru, July 9)

The US hopes that AFTA will eventually include Colombia and Ecuador.

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 9

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PARAGUAY: U.S. MARINES BACK PARAMILITARIES?

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Thousands of Paraguayan campesinos continued to occupy estates and block roads during the week of July 17 to demand that the government of President Nicanor Duarte Frutos address the problems they face. The protests began on July 12 as part of a National Campaign for Integral Agrarian Reform.

On July 19, at least 800 campesinos from the National Coordinating Committee of Campesino Organizations (MCNOC) blocked Route 8 at a crossroads in Numi district, on the border between Guaira and Caazapa departments. Police responded with violent repression: in a communique issued the same day, MCNOC reported that eight people were badly hurt and taken to the hospital in Villarrica, Guaira, including a man with a serious head injury; 51 people were detained at the Villarrica police station, including children, a pregnant woman and two MCNOC leaders; and 200 campesinos, men and women, “were savagely tortured for more than two hours, naked, face down,” by police and possibly soldiers. (MCNOC communique, July 19 via Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales; Adital, Brazil, July 20; La Nacion, Paraguay, July 20)

The Paraguayan daily La Nacion reported that 38 people were arrested–including nine infants and children, detained with their parents–and 12 people were injured in the police crackdown at Numi. Villarrica prosecutor Perla Caceres de Bataglia issued the order to forcibly remove the protesters, and police from Guaira and Caazapa carried it out. Caceres is threatening to bring charges against the campesinos for organizing the blockade of the route, and to charge parents for allegedly using their children as “shields.”

In Itapua department, campesinos said they would blockade Route 6 in the area of Maria Auxiliadora to impede participation in a mayoral primary election for the ruling Colorado Party. Between 300 and 1,000 campesinos have been blocking Route 6 intermittently on a daily basis near the 8 de Diciembre settlement in Tomas Romero Pereira district. There have also been intermittent blockades of Route 7 in Jose Domingo Ocampos district, Caaguazu department. (LN, July 20)

Also on July 19, some 3,000 campesinos from the MCNOC marched along Route 10 in Capiibary, San Pedro department, to protest a police attack on protesters there the previous week which left several people injured. Among those hurt was Fidelina Aquino, who was eight months pregnant and lost her unborn child as a result of the attack. (LN, July 20; Prensa Latina, July 20)

Meanwhile, more than 300 indigenous people from the Mbya Guarani nation have been camped out since July 6 in the main plaza of the city of San Juan Nepomuceno, Caazapa department, demanding “land and freedom” as well as autonomy for indigenous peoples. The protesters are from Karumbey, Kokuere Guazu and other communities in Caazapa. They are also demanding the removal of missionaries from their communities. (Adital, July 21)

From Weekly News Update, July 23

The occupations began on July 12, when some 5,000 landless families invaded 20 estates owned by Paraguayans and foreigners in seven of Paraguay’s 17 departments, in a coordinated action to demand a speedy agrarian reform. “The occupation of private properties is a legitimate action; it may not be legal, but it’s the only way to get the attention of the authorities,” said Luis Aguayo, a leader of the MCNOC. (AP, July 12)

The owners’ claims to the 20 properties occupied by MCNOC members on July 12 are of “spurious origin,” said Aguayo, since the lands were “adjudicated to characters connected with the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989),” and many lack legal titles. The occupied estates are located in the departments of Caaguazu, Caazapa, Itapua, Canindeyu, Misiones, San Pedro and Paraguari. The date of the land invasion was chosen because July 12 marks the 20th anniversary of the murder of two campesinos by soldiers, Aguayo noted. (Notimex, July 12)

Aguayo said that a year ago the MCNOC presented President Duarte Frutos with a plan for expropriating large tracts of idle lands owned by foreigners. “We did the same with the legislators, but we haven’t received a favorable response, so we have no other option than to occupy the lands,” Aguayo explained. There are 300,000 landless families in Paraguay, according to Aguayo. (AP, July 12) Official statistics show that 80% of the land in Paraguay is in the hands of less than 10% of the population. (Adital, July 14)

Duarte reacted to the land occupations on July 12 by holding a meeting with Agriculture Minister Carlos Santacruz; Santacruz then announced that the government would increase a credit line for campesino cotton producers who had suffered drought losses. (Notimex, July 12)

Virgilio Barboza, chief of public order for the National Police, said his agency was implementing “dialogue as a way to avoid frictions or violent actions; through conversations with the campesino leaders we are trying to persuade them to start leaving the private properties peacefully.” Barboza said the police had managed to peacefully end two of the occupations so far.

“We won’t use force because it won’t be the solution, besides which the National Police doesn’t have enough agents to control all the invasions,” said Barboza. (AP, July 12) However, according to press reports, some 100 police agents intervened to remove a group of 3,000 campesinos from the MCNOC who were blocking a highway in Capiibary, San Pedro department. Two people were arrested and nine injured. The campesinos have camped out nearby and say they will invade other estates. (Adital, July 14)

U.S. MARINES BLAMED FOR DEATHS

On July 12, Paraguayan campesino groups and social organizations held a press conference to announce that US Marines and special groups acting as paramilitaries “are responsible for more than 30 disappearances and deaths” since April of workers and campesinos in Paraguay. “In less than three months there were more than 30 disappearances and several deaths, all at the hands of the landowners of each place,” Nicolas Barreto of the Paraguayan Campesino Movement (MCP) told the Argentine news agency Telam. (Telam, July 12)

Paraguayan armed forces spokesperson Col. Elvio Antonio Flores Servin told Telam the charges were untrue: “There is not a single US Marine here in Paraguay,” he said. But according to Barreto, “in Paraguay, the army and the paramilitary groups act in the evictions with brutal repression against campesinos, leaving people wounded, dead and disappeared, with the direct control and intervention of [US] marines. (Territorio Digital, Posadas, Misiones [Argentina], July 14)

“Recently the boy Silvino Talavera died in Itapua from toxic agrochemicals, his mother reported it and in vengeance they dismembered her brother and threw him out there so everyone could see what these people are capable of doing,” Barreto explained. That incident apparently took place in Mariscal Estigarribia, where activists charge the US Southern Command has posted a force of 2,800 Marines. In the same area, the Paraguayan government has created a Citizen Security Guard, a special group that acts as a sort of legalized paramilitary group. Barreto said the paramilitary groups recruit their members from among the children of the campesinos. When human rights groups recently called on the government to dismantle the groups, deputy interior minister Commissary General Mario Agustin Saprisa responded: “in the United States and Colombia [similar groups] exist and have had good results.”

Barreto said the violence has emerged in response to stepped-up campesino struggles. “With his announced zero tolerance policy, President Duarte Frutos militarized the struggle and gave it a framework of unusual violence,” said Barreto. “To such a point that the Marines participate in the repression and even occupy agricultural schools. That is, they act like a true occupation army.” (Telam, July 12)

“The Marines are the ones who are instructing the Paraguayan forces for repression, linking campesino organizations with terrorist cells whose existence has never been proven,” agreed Vidal Acevedo of the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ) of Paraguay. Acevedo said the repression consists of “a joint action to stop campesino organizations.” (TD, July 14)

The US Southern Command had permission to stay in Paraguay until the end of 2006, but Vice President Luis Castigilione announced that the permission has been extended for an additional year. In Mariscal Estigarribia, a 3,800-meter-long airstrip has been built to handle large planes. Mariscal Estigarribia is in the Chaco region of northwestern Paraguay, close to lithium mines in Argentina’s Salta province and the largest gasfields in the region, across the border in the Bolivian department of Tarija. (Telam, July 12)

The US embassy in Asuncion responded to the criticisms on July 12 with a communique, insisting that the US soldiers in Paraguay are carrying out “humanitarian and medical assistance to poor communities as well as military training,” and that the US “has no intention whatsoever to establish a military base anywhere in Paraguay.” (Agencia Periodistica del Mercosur, July 13) US Embassy press attache Bruce Clainer told Telam the accusation about the military base “is a complete myth.” (Telam, July 12)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 16

——

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also:

“Paraguay: march against US troops,” WW4 REPORT, June 21
/node/2113

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingPARAGUAY: U.S. MARINES BACK PARAMILITARIES? 

CENTRAL AMERICA: DEADLY REPRESSION AS CAFTA HITS IN

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

GUATEMALA: TRADE PROTESTERS SEIZE ESTATES

The Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) went into effect in Guatemala on July 1 amid protests against the US-sponsored pact, which seeks to bring Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the US together in a trade bloc. The agreement took effect in El Salvador on March 1, and in Honduras and Nicaragua on May 1. Costa Rica’s legislature has not yet approved the pact. (Yahoo en Espanol, July 1 from AFP)

DR-CAFTA was scheduled to go into effect in the Dominican Republic on July 1, but the implementation was delayed by a disagreement over US demands for legislation protecting industrial secrets for pharmaceutical companies. “We’re not giving in,” Marcelo Puello, Dominican assistant secretary for foreign trade, said on June 30. “The negotiating team closed this chapter, and the people in charge of implementation agree that we won’t give in on something that would be outside the text of the treaty.” (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, July 1)

For DR-CAFTA to go into effect in Guatemala, Congress had to meet US demands by passing an Implementation Law and by ratifying three international treaties: the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, enforced by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).

Under DR-CAFTA, 94% of Guatemala’s exports to the US will be exempt from tariffs, while 82% of US exports to Guatemala will be exempt, according to Economy Minister Marcio Cuevas. Guatemala imports about twice as much from the US as the US imports from Guatemala; in 2005 total Guatemalan exports were worth $3.378 billion, with 52.5% going to the US; Guatemala’s imports were worth $8.815 billion, with 38.7% coming from the US. Cuevas predicted that the trade pact could generate 10,000 new jobs in its first year, but Guatemalan-US Chamber of Commerce executive director Carolina Castellanos warned: “Let’s remember that the free trade pact isn’t a magic wand which goes into effect on Saturday and on Sunday we all already have jobs and are exporting.” (Yahoo, July 1 from AFP; Cadena Global, Venezuela, July 1)

On June 30 Guatemala’s National Coordinating Committee of Campesino Organizations (CNOC), the Social Organizations Collective and other groups announced plans for protests against DR-CAFTA on July 1. “The TLC [Free Trade Treaty] will submerge millions of people in extreme poverty, especially in the countryside,” CNOC leader Aparicio Perez charged. Some sectors had pushed for Congress to pass a Rural Development Law and other compensatory legislation that would help Guatemalan producers meet the competition of heavily subsidized US agricultural products, but Congress postponed discussion of the laws. (Prensa Latina, June 30, July 2) [CNOC experienced two break-ins in offices it was using in May 2005; see WW4 REPORT #110.]

Hundreds of campesinos started protesting even before July 1, occupying five government-owned estates on June 29. CNOC coordinated the occupations, which were carried out by two of its affiliates, the Campesino Unity Committee (CUC) and the Verapaz Union of Community Organizations (UVOC). According to CNOC the estates were: La Nube, in Gualan, Zacapa department, occupied by 50 families; San Jose las Lagrimas, Esquipulas, Chiquimula department, invaded by 120 families; Santa Ines, in Santa Cruz Verapaz, Alta Verapaz department, occupied by 22 families; Sexan, in Chisec, Alta Verapaz, invaded by 80 families; El Zapotal, in Chisec, Alta Verapaz, invaded by 25 families. As of July 2 campesinos had occupied a sixth estate.

At least one of the estates, San Jose las Lagrimas, belongs to the military. According to Aparicio Perez, the occupations were also intended to protest the military, which was about to celebrate Army Day, June 30. “We reject the plundering of lands that community members suffered at the hands of the military governments during the [1960-1996] armed conflict, and today we are demanding that the lands be returned,” he said. CNOC also condemned the role of the military in the evictions of landless campesinos who have invaded estates in the past. (Prensa Libre, Guatemala City, June 30; PL, July 2; Yahoo Argentina, June 26)

This year the military held its first public Army Day parade in Guatemala City since the civil war ended in 1996. Some 300 human rights activists protested, shouting “Murderers, murderers” at the soldiers. The parade came as Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz was visiting Guatemala in connection with genocide charges that activist Rigoberta Menchu Tum filed against four former military officers and two civilians in 1999. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, June 30 from AP) [See related story, below.]

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 2

ALTA VERAPAZ: NINE DEAD IN LAND STRUGGLE

At least nine Guatemalan campesinos were reportedly killed on July 7 during an attempt by some 230 families to occupy the Moca estate in the community of Senahu in the northern department of Alta Verapaz. The health center in nearby La Tinta municipality reported that it had received at least 21 people injured in the confrontation. Police agents and representatives of the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office were sent to the estate on July 8 to investigate.

According to local media and activists, the families had already occupied and been driven from the estate three times, the most recent in April. The estate has “historically been the property of our great-great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers and now us,” local indigenous leader Mateo Yat Caal said. When the families tried to invade again, the owner sent 800 workers and private security guards to stop the occupation, according to Yat. Daniel Pascual, leader of the Campesino Unity Committee (CUC), charged that the owner had provided the guards with arms for the attack. Local radio stations reported that the guards had automatic rifles and pistols.

Campesinos continue to occupy some 20 private estates and 10 government-owned estates to push demands for the government to distribute land to them. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 9 from AFP; Prensa Latina, July 8; El Diario-La Prensa, NY, July 9 from EFE)

On July 5, Constitutional Court (CC) secretary Martin Guzman announced that Guatemalan president Oscar Berger had filed for an injunction with the court to prevent a law from taking effect that would guarantee a minimum pension for about 60,000 seniors. The law is already on hold because of a suit filed by a private lawyer. A group of seniors have been participating, in shifts, in a hunger strike outside government offices in downtown Guatemala City to demand that the law be allowed to take effect. (El Nuevo Herald, July 5 from AP)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 9

SPAIN INDICTS GUATEMALAN EX-OFFICERS

On July 7 Spanish National Court judge Santiago Pedraz issued arrest warrants for eight former Guatemalan officials accused of genocide during a 1960-1996 civil war. The judge also issued an order to freeze the defendants’ assets. The defendants named on the arrest warrants are former dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, former head of government Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, former defense minister Gen. Angel Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, former National Police director Pedro Garcia Arredondo, former police chief German Chupina Barahona, former head of Army General Staff Gen. Benedicto Lucas Garcia, former governance minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and former president Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia. Lucas Garcia died in May in Venezuela, but his case remains open until Spain is officially notified.

Judge Pedraz took this action after returning from Guatemala on July 1 after a one-week visit. He had expected to interrogate the defendants during his trip, but he was thwarted when they filed last-minute appeals with the Guatemalan Constitutional Court. Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled on Oct. 5, 2005, that under the “principle of universal jurisdiction” Spain can try people for genocide or crimes against humanity, even if the crimes occurred outside Spain and no Spanish nationals were involved. (Center for Justice and Accountability press release, July 7; Adital, July 11; New York Times, July 7 from Reuters)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 16

HONDURAS: LENCA LEADERS ACQUITTED

On June 23, the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice acquitted Lenca indigenous activists Marcelino and Leonardo Miranda of the murder of Juan Reyes Gomez. The Miranda brothers are leaders of the Lenca community of Montana Verde in Lempira department; they were arrested in January 2003 in a violent raid on the community, and were convicted of the Reyes Gomez murder in December 2003 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Last January, Amnesty International declared the Miranda brothers to be prisoners of conscience and began an international campaign to win their freedom [see WW4 REPORT #119].

Their actual release is expected to take several weeks, since the ruling must be officially certified by the Supreme Court Secretariat and must then go back through the judicial system to the appeals court in Santa Rosa de Copan and the local court in Gracias. In a June 22 press release announcing the court decision, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Civic Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) said the brothers’ acquittal “would not have been achieved if not for solidarity and pressure on a local, national and international level.” Human rights groups say Honduran authorities fabricated charges against the Montana Verde leaders in reprisal for their work to win communal land titles.

Another Montana Verde leader, Margarito Vargas Ponce, was released from prison on June 28. He had been jailed since January 2006. In the end he was cleared of more serious charges but sentenced by Judge Hermes Moncada of the Gracias court to three years for complicity in battery against Demetrio Reyes Benitez, one of the community’s longtime persecutors. Under the new penal code, his sentence may be served in “provisional liberty” (parole). Vargas must present himself before local judicial authorities every two months, and if found guilty of any other crime within the next five years, will have to serve time in jail for both charges.

Rights Action, a North American group working in solidarity with the Montana Verde community, reports that less than 24 hours after his release, Vargas was participating with other members of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) in a struggle to defend communities’ rights, lands and development from the threat of the El Tigre binational hydroelectric dam that will flood entire communities in southwestern Honduras. (COPINH press releases, June 22, 28; Amnesty International Public Statement, June 30; Rights Action, June 23, 30; Honduras News in Review, July 3)

ATLANTIDA: GARIFUNA LEADER THREATENED

On June 22, a man entered the home of Jessica Garcia, a leader of the Honduran Garifuna community of San Juan, on the Tela Bay in Atlantida department. Garcia is the president of the San Juan Tela Patronato, a local group representing community interests to government institutions. The intruder offered Garcia money to sign a document stating that her community recognizes the rights of the private real estate and tourism company Promotur to San Juan’s communally-owned lands. When Garcia refused, the man held a gun to her head and forced her to sign the document.

The San Juan community’s attempts to win legal recognition of its territorial rights have resulted in ongoing conflicts with Promotur and its owner, Jaime Rosenthal Oliva, a powerful businessperson and Liberal Party politician. Rosenthal is one of the richest men in Honduras; according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia he owns Grupo Continental, Banco Continental, several maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing mainly for export), a cement company, the Hotel Intercontinental Tegucigalpa, the El Tiempo daily newspaper and a television network. Rosenthal’s son, Yani Rosenthal Hidalgo, is currently the presidency minister under President Manuel Zelaya, and is a key investor in the Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort, a massive tourism complex planned between the Garifuna communities of Tornabe and Miami, next to San Juan in the Tela Bay. The Los Micos project is financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE) and investors from Italy and Spain.

The June 22 incident was the latest in a series of attacks against the San Juan community and its leaders. Last November, the home of San Juan Lands Defense Committee president Wilfredo Guerrero was burned to the ground, with all of his possessions and the committee’s archives inside. The homes of other community members were destroyed this past March and April.

Last Jan. 14, Promotur representatives entered the community accompanied by a number of hooded men armed with AK47 semi-automatic assault rifles (which are apparently illegal in Honduras). Last Feb. 25, young San Juan community members Epson Andres Castillo and Yino Eligio Lopez were detained near Tornabe by agents of the public security forces allegedly assigned to protect the zone for the Los Micos tourism project. The bodies of the two young men were found the next day in a lagoon near the community of La Ensenada, along the Tela Bay.

The Garifuna community is demanding an investigation into those deaths, and immediate protection for Garcia. Rights Action urges people to send messages protesting the attacks against the San Juan community, urging protection for Garcia, Guerrero and other community leaders and their families, and pressing for the recognition of the San Juan community’s legal rights to their full communal territory. Messages can be sent to the Honduran embassies in the US (embassy@hondurasemb.org) or Canada (embhonca@magma.ca); to the Honduran special prosecutor for ethnic groups, Jany del Cid Martinez (janydelcid@yahoo.es, fax +504-221-5620); and to the public prosecutor’s office in Tela (fax +504-448-1758). (Rights Action, June 30; Honduras News in Review, July 3 from Hondudiario, June 28, COPINH press release, June 29)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 9

PRIDE MARCH IN SAN PEDRO SULA

On June 18, hundreds of people marched through the streets of San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city and main commercial center of Honduras, to demand respect for gender diversity and an end to discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. Ramon Valladares, one of the leaders of the march, promised that Article 60 of the Honduran Constitution, which prohibits discrimination, would be used to proceed legally against those who continue to violate LGBT rights. Valladares referred specifically to religious and political leaders who discriminate against the LGBT community. (Honduras News in Review, July 3 from Proceso Digital June 19)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 16

EL SALVADOR: DEATHS IN STUDENT PROTEST

On July 5, Salvadoran student protesters occupied a busy intersection outside the gates of the National University of El Salvador (UES) in San Salvador during morning rush hour to protest a $0.05 increase in bus fares and a 14% electricity rate hike. The protest held up traffic for blocks. A large group of high school students from the Francisco Menendez Institute (INFRAMEN) marched peacefully to join the demonstration, and riot police massed in preparation to break up the protest. When police violently grabbed and tried to arrest two 15-year-old students from the march, other protesters responded with rocks, while some attacked a bank ATM. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, and amid the chaos a sudden volley of gunshots erupted. Two agents from the Order Maintenance Unit (UMO), an elite riot squad of the National Civilian Police (PNC), were killed by bullets, apparently from a semi-automatic, high-caliber weapon, and seven other agents were hospitalized. An undetermined number of students were wounded, and some sources reported that as many as three students were killed.

Most of the students sought refuge inside the university gates. Police helicopters then fired on protesters inside the university complex, injuring Herbert Rivas, director of multidisciplinary faculty. Police locked down the university–in violation of laws protecting the institution’s autonomy–and threatened to search its buildings and arrest anyone who remained there. Students were allowed to leave the university grounds only after being searched by police agents. According to one witness, a number of students were arrested at another police checkpoint near the university; police appeared to target students who had beards or long hair, or t-shirts with the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara or with phrases in English that the agents couldn’t understand.

Human Rights Ombudsperson Beatrice Alamani de Carrillo said: “I’m still waiting for a complete report, and from no point of view can one identify with the use of violence. The deaths of the agents are reprehensible, just as the increase in bus fare is reprehensible.” (Christians for Peace in El Salvador- CRISPAZ, July 7; Eyewitness report sent by a UES professor via e-mail, July 5; Message from Comunidades de Fe y Vida-COFEVI, July 5 via Adital)

The government of President Elias Antonio Saca was quick to blame the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) for the violence, although at the time of the incidents most of the FMLN leaders were in Suchitoto, 45 miles northeast of San Salvador, offering their condolences to longtime FMLN activist and Radio Venceremos co-founder Marina Manzanares for the death of her parents. (Eyewitness report sent by a UES professor via e-mail, July 5) On July 2, Francisco Antonio Manzanares and Juana Monjaras de Manzanares were brutally tortured for hours before being murdered in their home in Suchitoto. Their bodies were slashed and lye had been spread on their faces. Marina Manzanares said the family had been the target of multiple death threats in recent months. The week before her parents were killed, a box of bones arrived at their home with a note that said, “This is how you’ll receive your daughter’s bones.”

Police suggest the murder was carried out as part of a common robbery, because valuables were allegedly taken from the Manzanares home. But the killings have sparked terror in the community and rumors of a resurgence in death squad activity. “This is a crime that revisits all of the markings of the crimes committed by death squads back in the times of military dictatorship and the years of the armed conflict,” said FMLN legislative deputy Sigfrido Reyes. Alamani de Carrillo, the ombudsperson, said death squads began to resume activities in 2005; she urged the attorney general and police to undertake a serious investigation. (CRISPAZ, July 5)

On June 30, PNC agents arrested student Ricardo Gonzales Hernandez in San Salvador as he was on his way to school. Gonzales is the nephew of Frankie Flores, who represents the FMLN in California, is a member of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) International and is active with School of the Americas Watch. According to Flores, Gonzales was taking a bus to class at the Industrial Technical Institute (ITI) when he saw a group of students preparing to demonstrate over transport hikes, so he ran to catch another bus to avoid getting stuck in traffic. The bus he boarded was stopped a few blocks later by PNC special forces agents, who arrested Gonzales, claiming he had planned to commit a robbery on the bus. Flores said his nephew has never been in trouble, and divides his time between home, school and church. Flores, who lives in Los Angeles, has himself received death threats recently after writing articles about the resurgence of death squads in El Salvador. (Message from Flores, undated but probably July 1, via Resumen Latinoamericano, July 2)

At 4 PM on July 5, the Union Coordinating Committee of Salvadoran Workers (CSTS) held a press conference at its offices, pointing to the police violence at the student march as further evidence of a wave of repression against the country’s labor and grassroots movements. At 3 AM on July 6, police raided the CSTS offices without a warrant, holding CSTS press and propaganda secretary Daniel Ernesto Morales for three hours and hitting him on the head and face while demanding to know “where the weapons were.” The agents searched the offices and took equipment, cameras and $2,000 in cash. In the end they arrested Morales, supposedly because of a pistol they found in the CSTS offices, although the gun was legally registered and was at the site because it belonged to a member of the union that represents private security guards. (Centro de Estudios y Apoyo Laboral-CEAL, El Salvador, July 6) The raid took place a day after the Salvadoran government was informed that the CSTS intended to participate in a hearing before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission on the government’s systematic violation of labor rights. (UnionVoice action alert, undated)

The protests against the fare hikes continued on July 7, with hundreds of people blocking major roads in and around the capital and elsewhere in the country. The protests were called by the Social Popular Bloc (BPS) of El Salvador, which represents labor, student, campesino, veteran and religious groups, among others. The BPS blames the July 5 violence on “infiltrators” trying to damage the image of the social movements. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, July 8)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 9

FMLN BLAMED FOR VIOLENCE

Fallout continued in El Salvador during the week of July 10 over the shooting death of two police agents at a July 5 student protest. Over the weekend of July 8, the police finally left the University of El Salvador campus, and 20-30 students arrested July 5 were released due to lack of evidence. On July 11, Union Coordinating Committee of Salvadoran Workers (CSTS) press and propaganda secretary Daniel Ernesto Morales was released; he had been arrested during a police raid on the CSTS office in the early hours of July 6.

Police have arrested a man they say was giving cover to the person who fired an M-16 during the demonstration, and are searching for Mario Belloso Castillo, who they claim fired the weapon. Both men have been members of the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN); the ruling right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) is blaming the FMLN for the attacks and calling it a terrorist organization. The FMLN responded by condemning the use of violence at protests and pointing out that it cannot control the individual actions of its 100,000 party members.

News photos apparently show Belloso wielding an M-16 at the July 5 demonstration, but Human Rights ombudsperson Beatrice Alamani de Carrillo said on July 13 that the media footage isn’t proof that he killed the two riot agents. Alamani said the government’s only source of information–an anonymous informant–is insufficient, and only a thorough investigation will reveal who killed the agents. Alamani said “the deaths appeared to be very exact sniper executions that hit one police officer in the head and the other in the heart, to kill. This indicates that there has been a specific will to provoke this outcome.” (CISPES Update, July 13)

Meanwhile, FMLN activist Marina Manzanares Monjaras reported from Suchitoto on July 13 that she has been receiving continuing threats and intimidation since the July 2 murder of her elderly parents, Francisco Antonio Manzanares and Juana Monjaras de Manzanares. (Message from Marina Manzanares, July 13)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 16

——

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also WW4 REPORT #123
/node/2145

“Latin America: protests against Israeli attacks,” WW4 REPORT, July 24 /node/2229

“Guatemalan war criminal dies a free man,” WW4 REPORT, May 30 /node/2022

UnionVoice on CSTS repression in El Salvador http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/elsalvador

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCENTRAL AMERICA: DEADLY REPRESSION AS CAFTA HITS IN