Author: David Bloom

EL SALVADOR:

No Business as Usual as CAFTA Takes Effect

by Paul Pollack

SAN SALVADOR, March 1 — There was little fanfare and much protest today as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) went into effect in El Salvador. The country is the first Central American nation to honor CAFTA and for the second straight day, thousands marched and traffic was snarled throughout San Salvador. Five other signatory nations have failed to meet US requirements necessary to join the agreement.

The day before, Salvadoran President Tony Saca proclaimed the start of CAFTA by announcing to George Bush (who was not present), “Come with your basket empty and take it home full.”

Today’s march started at the Salvador del Mundo Plaza and streamed for blocks to the Civic Plaza, in the heart of downtown San Salvador. Vendors of pirated CD’s and small farmers took to the streets next to unionists, students and anarchists. All declared their opposition to CAFTA, or the “TLC,” as it is known in Spanish.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) political party announced that it intended to repeal CAFTA legislation, based on its inconformity with the Salvadoran constitution. The party submitted a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of Justice, but acknowledged that without a majority in the country’s Legislative Assembly behind them, there was not much hope for success.

Many people are looking towards the March 12 elections to decide CAFTA’s fate. If CAFTA opponents can gather 43 votes in the Legislative Assembly, they will be able to repeal enacting laws that the US deems essential for CAFTA participation.

CAFTA regulates trade in goods, services and investment, and forces governments to extend “national treatment” to foreign corporations. The agreement creates special courts to adjudicate trade disputes. These courts allow corporations to sue governments for “anticipated lost profits” if they can prove that local laws impede business. Protesters say that CAFTA will destroy local agricultural production by allowing cheap produce and grain from the US to enter tariff-free.

Perhaps the most heartening resistance to CAFTA in El Salvador has come from the informal sector. Months ago, the US demanded that El Salvador pass more stringent laws protecting copyright and brand-name logos. National police immediately launched a campaign to eliminate vendors who sold copies of popular CD’s, DVD’s and other name-brand merchandise. Instead of closing up shop however, vendors organized and fought back for their right to sell the gray-market merchandise. These vendors were in the streets yesterday in full force. One sign read: “No to originals!”

Protesters vowed to continue the fight and very few in the crowd felt that CAFTA was permanent.

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This piece originally appeared in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/221/1/

See also:

“El Salvador: Protests as CAFTA Starts,” Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5
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“Water Privatization for El Salvador?” by Paul Pollack, WW4 REPORT #119
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“CAFTA’s Assault on Democracy,” by Tom Ricker and Burke Stansbury, WW4 REPORT #119
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingEL SALVADOR: 
Palestine

Israeli election roundup

The final results of Israel’s Knesset election are as follows: Kadima, the party created by Sharon and now led by Ehud Olmert has 29 seats, a disappointment considering polls had projected up to 43 seats at one point. Labor, led… Read moreIsraeli election roundup

Issue #. 119. March 2006

Electronic Journal & Daily Weblog FROM BAGHDAD TO TOKYO Japanese Anti-War Movement Hosts Iraqi Civil Resistance by Bill Weinberg “OPERATION GREEN COLOMBIA” Coca Eradication Brings War to Threatened National Parks by Memo Montevino THE NEW BOLIVIAN EXPERIENCE Grassroots Activists Take… Read moreIssue #. 119. March 2006

CAFTA’S ASSUALT ON DEMOCRACY

The New Corporate Agenda for Central America

by Tom Ricker and Burke Stansbury

What does tightening intellectual property laws have to do with “free” trade? That’s the question many people in Central American and the Dominican Republic are asking as the United States trade representative continues to insist on dramatic changes to constitutional laws in the six countries involved in the US-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (otherwise known as CAFTA).

As if the agreement itself weren’t bad enough for the region—critics say CAFTA will hurt small farmers, worsen workers rights, and lead to environmental degradation, among other negative effects—the US is manipulating the implementation process to demand even further concessions by the six countries involved.

January 1, 2006 marked the date that the Bush Administration set for CAFTA implementation. However, progress has been frustrated due to US insistence on significant constitutional reforms in the CAFTA countries. CAFTA approval in the US Congress is sited by the Bush administration as one of its few legislative successes of 2005, despite the fact that the two-vote margin was the closest ever for such an agreement. In fact, the flawed implementation process lumps CAFTA in a series of administration failures on trade which include stalled negotiations towards the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Doha round of the WTO.

One country has achieved the reforms necessary for implementation: El Salvador. But much like El Salvador’s turbulent ratification of the agreement—which occurred at 3:00 in the morning in an assembly surrounded by riot police—the process has been fraught with problems. In December the National Assembly rammed through 14 constitutional changes without any substantial debate, leading to the eruption of massive protests by informal-sector market vendors a few weeks later. The reforms will impose fines and even jail time for those who sell and purchase pirated goods, thereby destroying the livelihood of many poor Salvadorans who depend on the informal economy.

The Salvadoran executive introduced the CAFTA reforms just two days prior to the vote, prompting legislators from the largest opposition Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) to abstain from the vote and walk out of the Assembly session. Said Salvador Arias, a leading economist and deputy for the FMLN, “The right is giving our national legislation a coup de grace by putting it completely at the service of transnational corporations’ commercial interests, to the detriment of the common good.”

The Bush administration continues to demand that intellectual property rights protections be tightened in the other CAFTA countries before they can be certified to join the agreement. The US government is criticizing Guatemala’s pending intellectual property law for not being strict enough, using CAFTA implementation to pressure for tighter restrictions on drug patents—benefiting pharmaceutical corporations but certainly not poor people in need of affordable drugs. It’s no wonder that in Guatemala 20,000 protestors demonstrated against the National Assembly’s vote in favor of CAFTA last March.

Despite such popular opposition, the Central American governments continue to promote CAFTA as the great savior of the Central American people, bringing jobs, investment and opportunities for all. But resistance to CAFTA in the region continues to grow, and polls show that Central Americans believe that CAFTA will not improve their economic situation.

Perhaps more embarrassing for the Bush administration is that Costa Rica, representing one of the largest economies in the region, has yet to vote on CAFTA. Opposition has been fierce and is growing stronger. The new US ambassador in Costa Rica recently criticized that country for not having moved forward on CAFTA, and threatened that it could lose its textile export benefits under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) if it fails to approve the trade deal.

Similarly, in September 2005 under Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was sent to Nicaragua to threaten cuts in development aid should that country not pass the accord. CAFTA was introduced, “debated,” and voted on in one afternoon the week following Zoellick’s visit. Indeed, such threats have been the norm throughout the CAFTA negotiation, ratification, and implementation process.

Meanwhile, legal challenges have accompanied popular mobilization in the region. In Nicaragua, the National Workers Front (FNT) challenged CAFTA implementation before the Supreme Court, identifying 15 specific requirements of CAFTA that contravene the country’s constitution, including the provision granting transnational corporations special legal rights to seek monetary damages in response to regulatory efforts. Court battles are also pending in El Salvador.

Organizations from throughout Central America recently met in Costa Rica for the Sixth Mesoamerican Forum where they pledged to continue fighting CAFTA by monitoring its negative effects in the region and by mobilizing in the streets. In the US, the Stop CAFTA Coalition organized coordinated, local anti-CAFTA actions in January to denounce the likely effects of the agreement in Central America and to hold accountable representatives and senators who voted in favor of CAFTA last July. The actions also celebrated the continued resistance in Central America to “free” trade, privatization, and US economic domination.

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Tom Ricker is co-director of the Quixote Center‘s Quest for Peace Program. Burke Stansbury is Executive Director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Both organizations are founding members of the Stop CAFTA Coalition.

This story originally appeared in Upside Down World, Jan. 31 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/179/1/

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

Continue ReadingCAFTA’S ASSUALT ON DEMOCRACY 

COLOMBIA: MILITARY TERROR IN CAUCA, ARAUCA, LA GUAJIRA

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

CAUCA: ARMY KILLS CIVILIANS

On Jan. 8, Colombian army troops from the No. 26 Cacique Piguanza Infantry Battalion, headed by Lt. Hoyos, shot to death 17-year-old Hortensia Neyid Tunja Cuchumbe and Manuel Antonio Tao Pillimue and wounded William Jose Cunacue Medina in Inza municipality, in the southern department of Cauca. On the night of Jan. 7 Tunja left her home in the community of San Antonio, accompanied by Cunacue, to attend a party in the nearby community of Belen. At 4 AM Tunja’s mother was informed by neighbors that her daughter was wounded on the road about 100 meters from Belen. When the mother arrived, she found her daughter dead, lying face down on the side of the road with bullet holes in her body. Uniformed and hooded soldiers threatened Tunja’s mother and told her that her daughter was a leftist rebel who had been killed along with a rebel “commander.” The soldiers then forced the mother to leave her daughter’s body at the site and go to Belen; they claimed they were waiting for officials from the attorney general’s office to come to the site to officially record the deaths.

The soldiers then blocked anyone from leaving Belen and attacked and beat a number of people at the party there; several people were injured, including one who was hit in the head with a rifle butt. When family members of Tunja and Tao tried to return to the site where their bodies lay, the soldiers fired their rifles in the air to force them to retreat. Around 6 AM, Tunja’s mother managed to return to the site and found the soldiers still there but her daughter’s body gone. She was told that the corpses had been taken to the town of La Plata in Huila department, where the attorney general’s office would file the report on them. Under Colombian law, only the attorney general’s office is allowed to move cadavers from the location where they are found; the army’s removal of the bodies from the site was in blatant violation of the law.

As Tunja’s mother and other family members headed toward La Plata, they found Tunja’s and Tao’s bodies covered up and dumped on the side of the highway about 30 minutes from Belen in the village of Puerto Valencia. Army troops at the site forced the family members to leave the area after telling them that the bodies would be left there for the attorney general’s office to deal with. The army then took the bodies to the military base in La Plata, where they were handed over to the families around 4 PM on Jan. 8. The family members took the bodies to the local hospital. There soldiers again intimidated the family members.

Tunja was a domestic worker who had been employed in Bogota since April 2005; she had been on vacation visiting her family in San Antonio since Dec. 27. Tao Pillimue was a young campesino who lived in the community of San Isidro in Inza municipality; he had left his home on Jan. 7 to go to the party in Belen. Tunja and Tao were members of the Campesino Association of Inza -Tierradentro (ACIT). William Jose Cunacue Medina suffered several bullet wounds and was taken to the hospital in La Plata, where army troops detained him and accused him of “rebellion.” Community members insist that none of the three youths were members of any armed organization; they say the army falsified evidence, planting weapons on the corpses and claiming the victims were guerrillas. (ACIT Communique, Jan. 11)

LA GUAJIRA: WIWA INDIGENOUS LEADERS MURDERED

On Jan. 3, Colombian army troops from the Rondon de Buenavista Group came to the indigenous Wiwa community of Seminke, in the area of San Juan del Cesar and Riohacha municipalities in the northeastern department of La Guajira. They took away community members Celso Carrillo Perea and Ricardo Arias Solis; the next day shots and explosions were heard at a distance from where the two were seized. The decomposed bodies of the two men were found in Riohacha on Jan. 5. In a joint communique, the Yugumaiun Bunkuanarrua Tayrona Wiwa Organization (OWYBT) of San Juan del Cesar, the Kogui-Malayo-Arhuaco Reserve in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Prensa Indigena correspondent Guillermo Riguera indicated that Carrillo and Arias had no links to armed groups and were just campesinos engaged in agriculture to support their families. Their families were linked to an International Red Cross project in the community.

Last Dec. 9, troops from the Rondon de Buenavista Group arrived in the Wiwa community of Ulago and took resident Laudelino Mejia Montano from his home; the next day shots, explosions and a helicopter were heard nearby, and Mejia was subsequently found murdered.

The Wiwa communities are concerned because a number of residents and community leaders have been accused of being rebels or rebel sympathizers; those who are detained often turn up dead, presented as rebels killed in combat.

On Jan. 9 two individuals on a motorcycle assassinated Fernando Montano Armenta, a resident of the Wiwa indigenous community of La Pena de los Indios. He was murdered in San Juan del Cesar municipality. The community does not know which armed group is responsible for his murder. (Prensa Indigena, Jan. 3; Adital, Feb. 3)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 5

ARAUCA: COMMUNITY LEADER MURDERED

On Feb. 4, community leader Alirio Sepulveda Jaimes was shot to death in Saravena municipality in the eastern Colombian department of Arauca, just a block and a half from an outpost of the National Police. The Departmental Association of Campesinos (ADUC) reports that Sepulveda was murdered by hired killer Edgar Guiza Gamboa, who permanently accompanies the National Army’s “Gabriel Reveis Pizarro de Saravena” Mechanized Cavalry Group No. 18, commanded by Lt. Col. Carlos Vicente Prada Garces. (ADUC, Feb. 10 via Colombia Indymedia) Prada Garces, whose first name was given in some sources as Jose Vicente, is likely the same person listed in the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) graduate list as Carlos Vicente Prado Garces; as a cadet he took SOA’s C-3 Arms Orientation Course for Cadets in January 1984, when the school was still in Panama. (SOA Graduates List)

Sepulveda’s body was picked up by several individuals on motorcycles whom witnesses recognized as members of the National Army’s S2 military intelligence unit, dressed in civilian clothing. After the killing, witnesses say Guiza went to a local shopping center where he drank alcoholic beverages and threatened passersby with the same gun he had used to shoot Sepulveda. According to ADUC, Guiza claims to be the commander of the Saravena paramilitaries.

Sepulveda was detained on Nov. 12, 2002 with 42 other Arauca community leaders, based on allegations by former rebels who were allowed to demobilize if they accused others. Sepulveda was freed for lack of evidence, but he continued to suffer constant threats and harassment; the army claimed he was a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN). (ADUC, Feb. 2 via Colombia Indymedia)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 20

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

See also WW4 REPORT #118
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1536

“Colombia’s army chief sacked in brutal hazing ritual” WW4 REPORT, Feb. 27
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: MILITARY TERROR IN CAUCA, ARAUCA, LA GUAJIRA