From Reuters, Dec. 8: Gunmen killed two security officers when they opened fire on a guard post outside a prison in Jidda, the Interior Ministry said. Residents said terror suspects were believed to be held at the prison. Al Arabiya… Read moreJihadis attack Saudi cops in Jidda
One question that needs to be asked, is how much of the Iraqi bloodbath is due to the “Salvador option” strategem that Newsweek claimed Negroponte wanted to employ to quell the Sunni insurgency, using Shia militias. From AP, Dec. 1:… Read moreIntel supremo: Iraq worse than Nam
Dear WW4 REPORT Readers:
This marks the end of a fifth year of bringing you cutting-edge reports from the global fronts in the War on Terrorism, as well as reviews, digests and analysis—providing news and perspectives available nowhere else.
If you believe in the old adage that “newspapers (or webzines) should have no friends,” we appear to be doing a great job. When our contributor Ned Goldstein wrote “Save Darfur: Zionist Conspiracy?“, on propaganda exploitation of the Sudan genocide by Israel and US imperialism, we were vilified as “ultra-left,” “conspiracy theorists” and anti-Semitic. When our blog called out left-wing anti-Semitism (being, for instance, among the first to expose the fraudulent gushing interview with Hezbollah’s Sheikh Nasrallah that was widely-circulated in the left wing of the blogosphere), we were trashed as part of the “pro-Zionist media.” When we ran my skeptical look at the morbid 9-11 conspiracy industry, we were accused of being “leftist gatekeepers.”
We wear this opprobrium as a badge of pride. There is no vindication like getting it from both sides, no surer sign that we are doing our job. As more and more left journalism descends into sanctimonious groupthink, our job is to challenge assumptions, to encourage thought by raising questions rather than to propound dogmas. Our job is also to go beyond the issues in the media spotlight, and to probe the unexamined contexts and implications behind the headlines and sound-bites. Among the stories you’ve received from us this year are:
* Mark Sanborne’s still-in-progress multi-part “Bionoia” series, an in-depth exploration of the Cold War superpower biological warfare programs, and their grim legacy in the age of global terrorism.
* Frank Morales on the Bush administration’s frightening moves towards martial law, hidden in the small print of the 2007 Pentagon appropriations act.
* David Bloom’s exacting dissection of how Israel’s “realignment” on the West Bank masks a grab for fertile land and water resources.
* Yeidy Rosa’s first-hand account from Bogota on the meeting of South America’s conscientious objector movement.
* Peter Gorman and Paul Wolf on Washington’s escalating war and controversial legal strategies against the FARC guerillas in Colombia.
* Dan La Botz on Mexico’s electoral debacle.
* Khaleb Khazari-El on the forgotten legacy of militant sufism.
* William X’s anti-imperialist deconstruction of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis.
* My own interviews with the leaders of the Iraq Freedom Congress and regular updates on indigenous and campesino struggles in Mexico and the Andes, as well reports on domestic energy issues like the Queens blackout and how they fit into the global struggle for oil.
* Reprints of cutting-edge international journalism from our sibling publications Upside Down World, Toward Freedom and Weekly News Update on the Americas.
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WORLD WAR 4 REPORT
Dec. 1, 2006
World War 4 Report
Deconstructing the War on Terrorism
Rafael Correa and the Popular Movements
by Yeidy Rosa, WW4 REPORT
When Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man, won enough votes during the October 15 first round of the presidential election to advance into the final runoff on November 26, rural and urban social movements throughout the Andean nation mobilized in a campaign against him. The prospect of the presidency falling into the hands of the Bonita banana magnate, notorious for the violent repression of workers’ attempts to unionize and even for the use of child labor on his plantations, sparked a nationwide mobilization by indigenous, environmental, youth, anti-militarist, and other social justice groups—not necessarily out of a belief in electoral politics, but in repudiation of Noboa’s neoliberal platform plans to establish free trade agreements with the United States.
There was no doubt relief when Rafael Correa, labeled by the (US) media as a “radical leftist economist” and “friend of Hugo Chavez,” gained the greatest number of votes November 26. Correa’s campaign promised to dissolve congress, rewrite the constitution, permanently halt free trade agreement talks with Washington and shut down the US military base in Ecuador’s western city of Manta. His victory is now being disputed by Noboa, who is demanding a recount.
But these same social movements, following Ecuador’s most ideologically polarized presidential election in recent history, have a new task at hand: holding Rafael Correa true to his commitments.
It was arguably the grassroots campaign that made the difference in the November 26 runoff. Alvaro Noboa, who ran under PRIAN (Partido Renovador Institucional de Acción Nacional), a party he created in order to postulate himself, won 27% of the first round votes, compared to Rafael Correa’s 23%. Critics charge he bought votes by giving away computers, wheelchairs, bags of rice, medicine and cash along his $2.3 million campaign trail, and spent more than twice the legal limit for campaign spending. Also contributing to his initial victory was the thought that Noboa’s wealth—with over 110 businesses, reportedly worth $1.2 billion—would preclude corruption within his administration. Yet—as information disseminated by the various movement activists documented—Noboa’s wealth has not stopped him from evading over $50 million in taxes and creating over 200 shell businesses for such purposes. Activists also distributed a video of the 2002 Los Alamos banana worker strike, where, on May 16, some 1,000 striking workers seeking to unionize were violently attacked by over 400 armed individuals, admittedly hired by Noboa. Dozens of workers were wounded in the attack, and one lost a leg. Workers at Los Alamos are paid $25 for 84-hour work weeks. Two Human Rights Watch reports found 40 children between the ages of eight and 13 working on just one of the Noboa plantations. The reports found child laborers were being sprayed by aerial fumigations as they worked tying insecticide-laced strings to banana plants for 12 hours a day. Yet, during this, his third consecutive failed presidential campaign, Noboa called himself “a man of the people.”
Organizations such as the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Radio La Luna, Cordinadora Campesina, Fundacion Pueblo Indio, Pukayana, Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), Asociacion de Jovenes Cristianos, and others rapidly mobilized after the October 15 election, convening meetings in Quito in order to establish the strategy to be used in the campaign against Noboa. People and resources were then brought together within the local communities each organization had established ties to. In localities throughout the country, announcements were made on loudspeakers that meetings would take place in public squares, community spaces, and on the streets. At the meetings, videos were shown, flyers and informative materials were distributed, and workshops held in order to expose Noboa as an impresario that exploits his employees, monopolizes the flour industry in Ecuador, dodges taxes, and uses violence against workers. The campaign especially focused on rural campesino areas where Noboa had a particular stronghold. Areas on the coast, such as the provinces of Manabí and Guayas, some of the poorest in Ecuador, had been especially strong Noboa supporters, as he reportedly exchanged a pound of rice per promise of a vote. Xavier Leon, a Quito-based activist that worked on the campaign, stated, “The people’s reaction was one of astonishment because they didn’t know the entire Noboa story. Folks wanted to know more about his barbarities.”
This popular organizing paid off. For the third consecutive time, Noboa lost Ecuador’s second round presidential elections—contrary to what polls had projected up to mid-November. Rafael Correa won the election with 58% of the vote. Social movements now say their task is to make sure Correa remembers who put him in power.
Correa, 42, holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and served as economy minister under current president Alfredo Palacio—resigning after five months under pressure from those opposing his efforts to strengthen economic ties with Venezuela. Though he had been projected as the frontrunner going into the October 15 election, it was reported that his comments regarding his friendship with Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chavez scared away voters. Some questioned this analysis, considering the popularity Chavez enjoys in Ecuador. Running for the political party PAIS (Patria Altiva I Soberana, or Proud and Sovereign Fatherland), Correa’s campaign proposed calling a constituent assembly and rewriting Ecuador’s constitution—a clear echo of the experience of both Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. International criticisms of his platform centered on his proposal to restructure foreign debt in order to allocate more under social spending, his stance against a pending 2009 renewal of US military use of the Manta base, and his call for permanently halting already stalled free trade agreement talks with the US. The threat to default on foreign loan payments was reported to have upset financial markets, but, as Ecuador is effectively excluded from international credit markets as it is, this seems to not have been as big a factor among voters. Venezuela’s offer of a $300 million loan from Venezuela also allayed these fears.
Recent history has shown that when there is popular discontent in Ecuador, it is not a matter of waiting four years until the next elections. In the last 10 years, Ecuador has had nine presidents, as popular unrest removed Abdala Bucaram in 1996, Jamil Mahuad in 2000 and Lucio Gutierrez in 2005. This crisis in the legitimacy of the political system is no surprise in a country where the average person is worse off than they were 25 years ago, where social spending has been cut in half since 1993, and where 45% of the population lives below the poverty level, with an average per capita income of $5,392. Rampant corruption has resulted in an utterly discredited political institution.
Some recent presidents, especially Lucio Gutierrez, talked a populist line to get elected—then changed colors once in office. It remains to be seen if Rafael Correa will join them in their ignominious fate, or remain true to the base that won him the day.
———
RESOURCES:
“Ecuadorian Banana Workers Violently Attacked:
International Campaign Targets Bonita Bananas”
U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP) Newsletter, August 2002
http://www.usleap.org/Banana/Noboa/AttackNL802.html
“Ecuador: Widespread Labor Abuse on Banana Plantations;
Harmful Child Labor, Anti-Union Bias Plague Industry”
Human Rights Watch, April 25, 2002
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/ecuador0425.htm
“Profile: Ecuador’s Rafael Correa,” BBC News, Nov. 27, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/6187364.stm
See also:
“For the ‘Total Transformation’ Of Ecuador:
An Interview with Pachakutik Presidential Candidate Luis Maca”
by Rune Geertsen, Upside Down World
WW4 REPORT #126, October 2006
/node/2574
From our weblog:
“Ecuador: leftist trails as election goes to second round”
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 19, 2006
/node/2651
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006 Reprinting permissible with attribution
Continue ReadingECUADOR’S CHAVEZ?A Model for the Korean Peninsula?
by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom
With a political sky darkened by the nuclear weapon test of North Korea and the growing tensions over the nuclear program of Iran, a ray of sunlight comes from Central Asia. On September 8, 2006, the five states of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan—signed the treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon free zone which can serve as a model for a nuclear-weapon free Korean Peninsula. The treaty aims at reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorism. The treaty bans the production, acquisition, deployment of nuclear weapons and their components as well as nuclear explosives. Importantly, the treaty bans the hosting or transport of nuclear weapons as both Russia and the USA have established military airbases in Central Asia where nuclear weapons could have been placed in times of crisis in Asia.
The treaty was signed at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, which was the main testing site for Soviet nuclear tests. Between 1949 and 1989, some 500 nuclear tests took place at Semipalatinsk leaving a heritage of radioactivity and health problems. A non-governmental organization called Nevada-Semipalatinsk was formed in the 1980s—made up of persons in the US and the USSR who had lived in the nuclear-weapon test areas—both to work to abolish nuclear weapons and to take responsibility for the medical consequences of the tests. Thus Rusten Tursunbaev, vice president of Nevada-Semipalatinsk, could say, “The signing of the agreement on a nuclear-weapon free zone in Central Asia is a remarkable, unbelievable moment and event—not just for Central Asia, but for the whole world.”
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov, the two Central Asian states to have peaceful nuclear-power programs, have been advocating for such a nuclear-weapon free zone for a number of years, especially during meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which celebrated its 10th anniversary in July 2006. However, Turkmenistan, with a largely isolationist foreign policy, is not a member of the SCO and needed to be brought into the nuclear weapons treaty for it to be meaningful. The representatives of the Mongolian government have welcomed the nuclear-weapon free zone as an important confidence-building measure and may join the zone at a later date.
The concept of nuclear-free zones has been an important one in disarmament and regional conflict reduction efforts. A nuclear-weapon free zone was first suggested by the Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki at the United Nations General Assembly in October 1957—just a year after the crushing of the uprising in Hungary. The crushing of the Hungarian revolt by Soviet troops and the unrest among Polish workers that broke out at the same time showed that the East-West equilibrium in Central Europe was unstable—with both the Soviet Union and the USA in possession of nuclear weapons, and perhaps a willingness to use them if the political situation got out of control. The Rapacki Plan, as it became known, called for the de-nuclearization of East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The Plan went through several variants, including its extension to cover the reduction of armed forces and armaments, and as a preliminary step, a freeze of nuclear weapons in the area. The Rapacki Plan was opposed by the NATO powers, in part because it recognized the legitimacy of the East German state. It was not until 1970 and the start of the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that serious negotiations on troop levels and weapons in Europe began. While the Rapacki Plan never led to negotiations on nuclear policies in Europe, it had the merit of re-starting East-West discussions which were then at a low point.
The first nuclear-weapon free zone to be negotiated—the Treaty of Tlatelolco—was a direct aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. It is hard to know how close to a nuclear exchange the US and the USSR came in the Cuban crisis. It was close enough so that Latin American leaders were moved to action. While Latin America was not an area in which the potential for military confrontation was as stark as in Europe, the Cuban missile crisis was a warning that you did not need to have standing armies facing each other for there to be danger.
Mexico under the leadership of Ambassador Alfonso Garcia-Robles at the UN began immediately to call for a denuclearization of Latin America. There were a series of conferences held, and in February 1967 the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America was signed at Tlatelolco, Mexico. For a major arms control treaty, Tlateloco was negotiated in a short time, due to the fear inspired by the Cuban missile crisis but also to the energy and persistence of Garcia-Robles and the expert advice of William Epstein, then the UN’s director of disarmament affairs. The Treaty established a permanent and effective system of control which contains a number of novel and pioneering elements as well as a body to supervise implementation.
It is an unfortunate aspect of world politics that constructive, institution-building action is usually undertaken only because of a crisis. Although a Central Asian nuclear-weapon free zone was discussed at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the agreement of Kazakhstan to yield the 1,400 nuclear warheads that had been stationed on its territory by the Soviet military, it is only as the North Korean nuclear-weapon program became a serious factor of Asian politics that the Central Asian nuclear-free zone was finalized.
Since the North Korean nuclear test has become a concern of the whole world community, we must look to Central Asian leadership to show the way in developing structures for a nuclear-weapon free Korean Peninsula.
———
Rene Wadlow is the editor of the online journal of world politics Transnational Perspectives and the representative to the United Nations of the Association of World Citizens.
This story originally appeared Oct. 31 in Toward Freedom
http://towardfreedom.com/home/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/limit,12/l imitstart,12/
From our weblog:
“Method to North Korea’s nuclear madness?”
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 18, 2006
/node/2647
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
Dissected Nations Oppose Wall and Militarization
by Brenda Norrell, IRC Americas Program
Indigenous peoples at the Border Summit of the Americas on Tohono O’odham tribal land opposed the construction of a border wall, which will dissect indigenous communities on ancestral lands split by the U.S.-Mexico border. They also issued a strong statement against the ongoing militarization of their homelands.
During the Border Summit, held Sept. 29-Oct. 1, organized by Tohono O’odham Mike Flores and facilitated by the International Indian Treaty Council and the American Indian Movement, indigenous peoples unanimously opposed the Secure Fence Act, passed by the Senate. The wall will divide the ancestral lands of many Indian nations, including the Kumeyaay in California, Cocopah and Tohono O’odham in Arizona, and the Kickapoo in Texas. The wall is expected to be completed by May 2008.
Describing it as “psychological oppression and terrorism,” the participants representing many tribes from the United States and Mexico also called for a halt to the militarization of their ancestral homelands and sacred places along the border.
Key Challenges
The border wall divides ancestral lands, separates indigenous people from sacred places, and denies them the right to pass freely within their traditional lands. Heavy militarization of the border has led to desecration of the lands, harassment of indigenous members, and even death.
In violation of international treaties, indigenous nations were not consulted prior to the application of anti-immigrant measures on their land such as Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper.
The Tohono O’odham tribal government has supported the U.S. government in denying immigrant rights and the rights of tribal members to aid immigrants. Tohono O’odham offered testimony on how their human rights are violated by the Border Patrol, immigration agents, and more recently the National Guard. The Tohono O’odham’s tribal land of 2.8 million acres is located on the Arizona border and traditional lands span the border into the northern Mexico state of Sonora.
Members of the Tohono O’odham Nation said the proposed border wall would be a barrier to traditional routes of passage for ceremonies and traditional practices. The wall would interfere with traditional ways for O’odham members living on both sides of the border who cross routinely for ceremonial, cultural, family, and health reasons. One Tohono O’odham father said increased border security has already made it impossible for his children to ride the bus to school because of harassment by border agents.
Bill Means of the International Indian Treaty Council noted that the U.S. government plans to build the southern border wall in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, environmental laws, and other federal laws.
“This is a violation of indigenous peoples’ human rights and a violation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples now being considered by the United Nations General Assembly,” Means asserted, noting that in 2005, Homeland Security waived all federal laws, including environmental laws, to complete the border fence in Southern California.
During the testimony, several indigenous representatives said the militarization and occupation of indigenous lands are in direct violation of indigenous peoples’ rights to economic, political, social, and cultural control of their lands.
One participant, Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson, also stated that his Nation has had no say in the state and federal programs implemented on its lands. He said he asked former Tohono O’odham Chairman Edward Manuel whether the Tohono O’Odham Legislative Council was consulted before the United States’ Operation Gatekeeper or Operation Hold the Line were launched. Those two operations forced migrants onto tribal land, where they often died in the desert.
According to Wilson, Chairman Manuel confirmed that the Tohono O’odham were never consulted.
Cross-border Indigenous Activism
Indian nations are now uniting to take action in defense of ancestral lands, burial sites, and the environment. Earlier, the Kumeyaay opposed the first phase of the border wall and said its construction would allow the U.S. government to “plow through” the burial places of their ancestors in Southern California. Members of the Kumeyaay Nation supported the Tohono O’odham in resisting the latest phase of wall-building.
Among those attending with a new vision of indigenous border solidarity was Mark Maracle, Mohawk, representing the Women Title Holders. Maracle presented Flores with two flags of solidarity and spoke of the need for unified action at the northern and southern borders.
He presented a statement of the Women Title Holders that said that native people can freely exercise their right to free transit at the northern border as established under the 1794 Jay Treaty. The statement read that under the treaty, as well as the colonial-era Two Row Wampum Agreement, members of the Haudenosaunee/Six Nations Iroquois people “at all times we are free to pass and repass by land or inland navigation [or by air] onto our territories, that we are free to carry on trade and commerce with each other, that we shall not pay any duty or import whatever, that we are free to hunt and fish anywhere on our vast territory, and that we shall have free passage over all toll roads and bridges.”
Native Nations Against the Wall
During the summit, Tohono O’odham described how Border Patrol intrude into the homes of elderly O’odham without permission, hold people at gunpoint and ask for papers, and throw garbage in sacred sites on their patrols. Tohono O’odham described harassment by Border Patrol, including being tailgated in the vehicles, spotlighted in their homes, and held at gunpoint while being asked for papers on tribal land.
“As far as I am concerned the United States Border Patrol is an occupying army. If we were truly a sovereign nation, we would not have an occupying army on sovereign land,” Wilson stated. He pointed out that the Border Patrol’s “occupying army” has a military camp two miles north of the international border on Tohono O’odham tribal land in Arizona.
Wilson said O’odham, too, are migrants and most have moved about looking for work during their lives. Many of those dying in the desert are indigenous peoples, from Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries in Central and South America. “Where is our moral outrage?” Wilson asked the gathering. “We collectively in the social justice community turn away and let our brothers and sisters die.”
Summit participants pointed out that the Tohono O’odham Nation law criminalizes transporting migrants, including a fine for the first offense and jail time for second offense. Means pointed out that in the event that a migrant was dying in the desert, an O’odham on tribal land would be charged with a crime for transporting the migrant to a hospital.
Angelita Ramon, Tohono O’odham, described how her son, 18-year-old Bennett Patricio, Jr., was run over and killed by the Border Patrol on April 9, 2001 in a deserted area of tribal land. Ramon, and Patricio’s stepfather Irvin Ramon, said they believe Patricio witnessed a possibly illicit transfer of items by Border Patrol agents and was intentionally run over. The family’s case against the Border Patrol is proceeding on federal appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
“I’m here to let everyone know about the Border Patrol and how they killed my son,” Angelita told the summit. She said the truth of what happened that night has still not been revealed.
Jimbo Simmons, member of the International Indian Treaty Council, said, “The Border Patrol is a death squad. They are operating like they do in Central and South America, because no one can hold them accountable.”
Manny Pino of Acoma Pueblo said indigenous people all along the border are affected by the militarization. “As indigenous people, we didn’t draw lines on the land,” Pino told the summit. “It was all our Earth Mother.”
Pino said the militarization of the border and the manipulation of truth follows in the pattern of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which established systems of government that were “shoved down the throats” of Indian people.
Now, Pino said, the U.S. government is telling the Tohono O’odham Nation that if the tribe does not allow the military on their lands, their federal funding will be cut off.
Pino added that nationwide, some American Indian people are being caught up in racist attitudes toward migrants. This reflects a tactic that the U.S. government has long used to divide the people, he noted, citing the example of the so-called Navajo and Hopi land dispute.
He said that it is important for Indian people to recognize the real enemy. “It is George Bush, Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the people who want to tap our phone lines,” Pino concluded.
Reflecting the comments of many in the border area, Pino said a border wall would not stop the people from coming across. “The ‘Tortilla Curtain’ will be torn. The real challenge for indigenous peoples is to ‘decolonize’ the mind.”
One Man Makes a Difference
The Baboquivari District on Tohono O’odham lands has one of the highest rates of migrant deaths on the border. Mike Wilson, Tohono O’odham, has challenged the Tohono O’odham Nation to become “morally responsible,’ and take actions to prevent deaths on tribal lands.
Wilson began to put out water for migrants when they started to die in terrifying numbers in 2001. Since then, between 240 and 250 migrants have lost their lives each year in the Sonoran Desert. Of those, 70 to 90 have died on O’Odham lands. “Let me be very, very clear, in what I’m trying to do,” he said. “No one deserves to die in the Sonora Desert for want of a cup of water.”
Wilson does volunteer work with Humane Borders away from tribal land, but his actions on tribal land are as an individual. The Tohono O’odham tribal government has halted humanitarian groups from coming onto tribal land to render aid, he said. He urged that the tribal government be held accountable for its callous inaction. “We who were once oppressed, are ever increasingly becoming the oppressor.”
The Tohono O’odham tribal Attorney General’s Office and Superintendent of Public Safety earlier told Wilson to stop maintaining the water stations for migrants. Both offices threatened him with banishment as a tribal member. However, when asked about the banishment, Chairman Manuel responded, “You are O’odham, no one can banish you.”
Wilson appears in the film, Crossing Arizona, shown at the Border Summit, which includes his work of putting out water in gallon jugs and barrels on a weekly basis at stations in the desert. Wilson said he told one man in the desert that if he continued north, he would likely be dead within a few hours. The man said he would rather die in the desert than return to Mexico and watch his wife, who needs surgery, and his children, starve to death.
The reasons for Wilson’s actions go beyond altruism and touch on his fundamental beliefs and the experiences that led him to his activism. Over the past five years, he has witnessed migrants dying of thirst on tribal land, including a seven-year-old girl with blood in her urine who barely survived.
“All human life is sacred. When it comes to people dying in the desert, we are all equal.” When one undercover detective asked him whose authority he was acting in his efforts to save migrants’ lives, Wilson replied, “The man upstairs.”
Threats to a Traditional Way of Life
The impact of the border wall and militarization on indigenous communities were not the only threats that were denounced at the Summit. Pointing out that the fragile desert ecosystem and all of its creatures will be affected, Maracle said, “The environmentalists should be up in arms.”
Representatives of the Tarahumara people of northern Mexico also spoke out against the devastating effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Urging a halt to trade policies that are leading to unemployment throughout the Americas, the summit called for nullification of NAFTA.
The Border Summit also opposed propositions then pending in Arizona, including Prop 103 (English-only), Prop. 200 (voter identification), and Prop 300 (proof of citizenship for services).
The Border Summit called for removal of the existing Border Patrol detention center for migrants on Tohono O’odham tribal land near San Miguel, AZ. Tohono O’odham described how Border Patrol agents occupied sacred sites, including Baboquivari Peaks, the origin place of the Creator I’itoi.
Michelle Cook, Navajo law student, noted that the protection of burial places is vital. “If there are ancestral remains, they have to stop development. They have to repatriate those remains. However, it is the native peoples’ responsibility to make them accountable. We have to go out there and watch them to make the accountable.”
At the conclusion of the Border Summit, Jose Garcia, lieutenant governor of the O’odham in Mexico, said the most important aspect of the gathering was bringing O’odham people together with other indigenous peoples from both sides of the border to work to resolve issues. “It brought us together in unity.”
The testimony was aired live on radio in the Tucson area and on the Internet, with listeners responding around the world—including e-mails of appreciation from listeners in Alaska, the Dominican Republic, and Europe. The audio file archives will be available online at Earth Cycles.
———
Brenda Norrell has been a news reporter in Indian country for 23 years, working as a staff reporter for Navajo Times and Indian Country Today and as an AP correspondent during the 18 years she lived on the Navajo Nation. She is currently a freelance writer based in Tucson and a contributor to the IRC Americas Program.
This story first appeared Oct. 31 on the International Relations Center Americas Program website
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3648
RESOURCES:
Earthcycles (audio link)
http://www.earthcycles.net
Humane Borders
Mike Wilson
740 E. Speedway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85719
(520) 628-7753
http://www.humaneborders.org
International Indian Treaty Council
Tony Gonzales or Jimbo Simmons
2390 Mission St # 301
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 641-4482
http://www.treatycouncil.org
Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com
From our weblog:
“Subcommander Marcos crosses into USA!”
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 24, 2006
/node/2671
“Bush signs border fence bill”
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 27, 2006
/node/2691
“Voters (mostly) reject anti-immigration campaigns”
WW4 REPORT, Nov. 10, 2006
/node/2762
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
The Bolivian government of President Evo Morales Ayma met on Nov. 25 with right-wing opposition forces to try to resolve a political crisis that came to a head when the rightwing Democratic and Social Power (Podemos) party withdrew its 13 members from the 27-seat Senate on Nov. 22, leaving the body without a quorum to act. The lone senator from the right-wing National Unity party also withdrew. Podemos also pulled its members out of the Chamber of Deputies, but the party’s representation there was too small to affect the quorum.
The opposition is upset over three main issues: the voting rules of the Constituent Assembly, which is writing a new constitution for Bolivia; changes to the agrarian law that will allow the redistribution of idle farmland to landless campesinos; and the Morales administration’s efforts to exert control over departmental government finances and to retain the power to remove governors who are deemed incompetent or corrupt. The ruling Movement to Socialism (MAS), which has a simple majority in the Constituent Assembly, voted on Nov. 17 to allow approval of new constitutional clauses with a simple majority, instead of a two-thirds vote.
The governors of six of Bolivia’s nine departments—Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and La Paz—broke off relations with the Morales administration on Nov. 18 over the Constituent Assembly voting rules and the departmental control issue. The departmental governors were elected by popular vote for the first time last December; in the past they were appointed by the president.
Morales, before setting off on a working trip to the Netherlands, urged the right-wing sectors to dialogue “without conditions and impositions.” “We are from a culture of dialogue, and we’ll always be open to it, but there can’t be dialogue to constitutionalize the country’s latifundio,” said Morales, referring to wealthy people who own large tracts of land.
Some 100 members of National Unity, the party headed by cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, have been holding hunger strike pickets against the government since Nov. 16. The pickets began in Sucre, where the Constituent Assembly is meeting, and spread to La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Potosi. They were joined on Nov. 24 by 15 women from the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and 30 members of the Departmental Workers Central labor federation. On Nov. 24, students in Santa Cruz threw rocks at Morales’ vehicle. (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26; Adital, Nov. 23; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Nov. 20, 21, 22 from AP, Nov. 25 from EFE)
The Agricultural Chamber of the East (CAO), which represents powerful farmers in Santa Cruz, mobilized its forces in a 28-kilometer march from Warnes to the city of Santa Cruz on Nov. 21 to oppose the Morales government’s land reform. La Jornada reported that about 5,000 people marched. According to AP, private television networks covering the march from helicopters calculated the turnout at 15,000, while the CAO estimated it was 100,000. (LJ, Nov. 22; ENH, Nov. 22 from AP)
Meanwhile, thousands of indigenous, campesino and settler groups are marching to La Paz in defense of the government’s agrarian reform plan. Some 1,500 people started the march in Santa Cruz on Oct. 31; by Nov. 17 there were three columns of marchers from around the country, including campesinos from the north of La Paz department and indigenous people from Chuquisaca and Potosi. A fourth column joined the march on Nov. 21; the marchers now number some 3,000, according to La Jornada. The marchers are demanding that the Senate approve the new agrarian law, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 15 and is now pending in the Senate. (La Epoca, Bolivia, Nov. 17; LJ, Nov. 17, 22; Adital, Nov. 23)
The first three columns of the march, due to reach the capital on Nov. 27, plan to push the issue there despite the Senate blockade: “If the senators don’t want to work, we’re going to demand their immediate resignation,” they insist. (LJ, Nov. 26) “We have no choice; we’re going to shut the Parliament,” warned Anselmo Martinez, who is leading one of the columns of indigenous marchers from the Andean region. (ENH, Nov. 23 from AP) On Nov. 21, the Six Federations of the Chapare, a union alliance representing campesino growers in Cochabamba department, met with Morales and declared a “state of emergency” in their sector to defend his agrarian reform program against the opposition. (LJ, Nov. 22)
Senator Walter Guiteras of the Podemos party said negotiations with Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera over the agrarian reform law can only work if the issue is resolved quickly. Once the marchers reach La Paz, “the decisions will no longer be in the hands of the representatives of the political parties or in the groups that are marching, but rather in the regions, in the civic committees and the departments,” Guiteras warned. (LJ, Nov. 26) Morales blasted opposition politicians for defending their own large landholdings, pointing out that Guiteras’ family owns 49,051 hectares of land in Beni department, of which 2,911 hectares belong to Guiteras personally. (LJ, Nov. 24)
Oil contracts renegotiated
On Nov. 23, the Chamber of Deputies approved 44 contracts which the government signed last October with 10 transnational oil companies. The contracts were renegotiated following the May 1 nationalization of Bolivia’s oil resources. The Chamber of Deputies sent the contracts to the Senate, where their review is now being held up by the Podemos boycott. (ENH, Nov. 23 from AP; LJ, Nov. 23, 24)
One of the 44 renegotiated contracts is with the Spanish-Argentine oil company YPF, which has finally settled a dispute with the Guarani indigenous tribe in Tarija department. In an agreement due to be signed on Dec. 12, the company pledged $13.5 million over the next 20 years for public works favoring the 4,000 Guarani people on whose land the company has been exploiting major gas reserves. The company will fund agricultural and livestock projects designed and implemented by the indigenous people, as well as programs to combat high dropout rates among indigenous students.
Guarani council member Teofilo Murillo told AP that the $13.5 million “doesn’t compensate for the enormous damage to the environment” in the region surrounding the Margarita gasfield. “We were never consulted,” said Murillo. “The company snuck in quietly, carried out the work and left enormous environmental and social damages.” The Guarani people say the region’s water sources have been polluted; they were seeking $25 million in compensation. The company claims that in the 10 years it has been operating in Tarija’s Itika Guasu region, it has carried out a number of public works—but it declined to give specifics.
On Nov. 11, nearly a thousand Guarani people camped out in protest at the edge of the Margarita gasfield, and threatened to seize the company’s facilities if Repsol didn’t meet their demands. (ENH, Nov. 23 from AP)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 26
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
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“Bolivia: Whither Nationalization?”
by Gretchen Gordon, Upside Down World
WW4 RPEORT #127, November 2006
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WW4 REPORT #125, September 2006
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
On Oct. 23, after a weekend of intense negotiations, the Achuar indigenous nation reached an agreement with the Peruvian government and the Argentine oil company Pluspetrol, bringing an end to a nearly two-week blockade of oil facilities in the Peruvian Amazon. More than 800 Achuar elders, women and children took part in the blockade, shutting down power to most of the area’s oil facilities and blocking access to the region by road, river and air. The Achuar took the radical actions to protest the devastating impact of oil contamination in their territory after two years of failed talks with Peruvian government officials. They ended their blockade and returned to their homes on Oct. 24.
“We have achieved 98% of our demands, and won recognition of our rights,” said Andres Sandi, President of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River (FECONACO). “This victory is the result of the strength of our people, who came together and pressured hard and would not abandon our demands.”
The agreement signed Oct. 23 requires the company to speed up the safe processing of waste waters; build a new hospital and fund healthcare services for the Achuar; and provide a year of emergency food supplies to affected communities. The pact also mandates that 5% of the oil royalties currently granted to Loreto region must go for Achuar community development. In addition, the agreement formally acknowledges the Achuar’s declaration that they oppose new oil concessions in their territories and request cancellation of contracts for blocks 104 and 106.
For 30 years, the oil company has been discharging more than one million barrels a day of untreated toxic waste directly into the rainforest. As a result the Achuar have unsafe levels of a range of toxins, including lead and cadmium, in their bodies. The toxic dumping has also poisoned the fish and game in the area which the Achuar traditionally eat to survive. (Amazon Watch, Oct. 24)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Oct. 29
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WW4 REPORT #126, October 2006
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
On Nov. 3, environmentalists in the cities of Gualeguaychu and Colon in the eastern Argentine province of Entre Rios blocked the border bridges leading to Uruguay to protest continuing efforts to build a paper pulp mill in Fray Bentos, on the Uruguayan shore of the river that divides the two countries. The protesters in Gualeguaychu built a wall of brick and cement on national highway 136, 15 kilometers from the border bridge, to symbolize the hard position taken by the Finnish company Botnia and by the governments and international institutions in refusing to halt construction of the pulp mill. Environmentalists say the project will contaminate the river and the surrounding ecosystem and destroy the livelihoods of local residents. (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 4, 5; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Nov. 4 from AP) The Spanish company Ence has already backtracked in its plans to build a similar pulp mill along the river.
The action was timed to coincide with the Nov. 3 inauguration of the 16th Iberoamerican Summit in Montevideo, where the Spanish government tried to initiate a dialogue between Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez and Argentine president Nestor Kirchner; the two leaders’ relations have been significantly chilled by the paper mill conflict. In Gualeguaychu, two protesters dressed up as Vazquez and Kirchner cut the tape to inaugurate the symbolic wall. Later in the evening, several assembly members from Gualeguaychu spoke on the radio, inviting the heads of state from the summit to attend “a meeting that’s more fun, and with faces that are less sad, on the banks of the Uruguay river, where there are still birds and life.”
Hundreds of local residents came on Nov. 4 to see the symbolic wall and support the anti-pulp mill protests. The protesters expected to end their blockade and take down the wall after the summit ended on Nov. 4, but they said they would keep carrying out actions until they get results. (LJ, Nov. 4, 5)
In Montevideo, some 400 activists from leftist and grassroots groups took part in a Nov. 3 mobilization against the summit. They marched to the “security zone” and faced off against a heavy contingent of riot police. There were only a few minor incidents. (Uruguay Indymedia, Nov. 4; LJ, Nov. 4)
The 22 participating countries closed the Iberoamerican Summit on Nov. 4 with the approval of a 45-point consensus statement protesting both the US embargo against Cuba and a new US law—signed by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26—which authorizes construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. “We consider the building of walls to be a practice incompatible with relations of friendship and cooperation among states,” read the statement. “We believe that the construction of walls doesn’t stop undocumented migration, the flow of migrants or the trafficking of people; it incites discrimination and xenophobia and favors the emergence of groups of traffickers who put people in greater danger.” (LJ, Nov. 5)
Argentine foreign minister Jorge Taiana spoke at the summit about his country’s “Great Homeland” program, which allows any citizens of the expanded Mercosur trade area to regularize their immigration status in Argentina simply by showing proof of their nationality. They are then eligible for the same benefits and rights as Argentines. The expanded Mercosur area includes Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. (LJ, Nov. 4)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 5
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WW4 REPORT #126, October 2006
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More Uruguay protests:
WW4 REPORT #119, March 2006
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
Interventionist Legacy Behind Zulia Separatist Movement
by Nikolas Kozloff, WW4 REPORT
With the Venezuelan presidential election fast approaching on December 3, political tensions have reached a new high. Recently, the Venezuelan Attorney General initiated an investigation to determine whether a right-wing organization called Rumbo Propio (“Our Own Path”), which has placed banners in Zulia state advocating for regional separatism, is guilty of treason. Zulia, located in the westernmost area of the country, is home to much of the country’s oil industry. Maracaibo, the Zulia state capital, is the second largest city in Venezuela.
President Hugo Chavez has accused his opponent in the presidential election, Manuel Rosales, the Zulia governor, of fostering a separatist movement, “together with Mr. Danger”—a reference to US President George W. Bush. Ever since Chavez returned to power after a brief coup in 2002, the United States has channeled millions of dollars to Venezuelan organizations, many of which are highly critical of the regime.
The United States, according to Chavez, is encouraging such unrest so as to benefit from the state’s significant oil resources; Rosales denies the allegations. The Attorney General has stated that he has no evidence linking the US to a secessionist plot. However, he claims that the US Ambassador, William Brownfield, had a close relationship to Rosales and has frequently traveled to Zulia.
In light of the fiery accusations, it is instructive to revisit some of the murky history of US involvement in the region—and the long legacy of shadowy machinations by US oil companies in Zulia.
The United States and Zulia Secessionism in World War I
In 1908, the US helped to support a military coup d’etat in Venezuela launched by Juan Vicente Gomez. Gomez’s primary goal was to establish a strong, centralized state. To achieve this, he would have to head off secessionist sentiment in Zulia. Shortly after Gomez’s seizure of power, in fact, a former senator and diplomat from Zulia declared that his native state should have the right to select its own people for state government.
Initially, Gomez was cautious, preferring to appoint “sons of the soil” to Zulia’s government. Gomez could ill afford political problems in the west. Measuring 63,100 square kilometers, with 178,388 inhabitants in 1908, Zulia was not only large in terms of sheer land mass, but also economically important. When Gomez took power, Zulia had the most substantial budget of any Venezuelan state. The largest city, Maracaibo, had a population of about 39,000 at the turn of the century.
During the First World War, the petroleum industry was just getting underway in Lake Maracaibo. Zulianos, who had long clamored for greater autonomy, now used Gomez’s sympathy for Germany in World War I to justify greater independence from state control. The regime acted promptly to repress prominent citizens in Maracaibo who sought to rid themselves of military rule.
As the war in Europe degenerated into endless stalemate on the western front, Gomez chose to sympathize with Germany. “As a military man,” writes Stephen Rabe in The Road To OPEC, United States Relations With Venezuela, 1919-1976, “Gomez respected Germany’s military efficiency and prowess and approved of the position that its army achieved in German political life.” Gomez openly displayed his allegiance by wearing a Prussian-style uniform, suppressing pro-Allied newspapers, and incarcerating journalists who were sympathetic to the allied cause. In a slap in the face to the US, Gomez kept Venezuela neutral in the war even after the US entered the conflict in 1917 on the side of the Allies and German defeat looked more likely.
Gomez’s position incensed the Woodrow Wilson administration, which reminded the Venezuelan leader of his manipulation of the constitution, and even went so far as to claim that Gomez ruled through “a policy of terrorism.” In late 1917, the State Department considered its options regarding the Gomez problem. Quietly, US diplomats consulted with Venezuelan exiles, who recommended covertly arming anti-Gomez exiles. Apparently, like his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson favored intervention in Venezuela. In early 1918, he queried his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, whether “this scoundrel” could be overthrown without upsetting peace in Latin America.
Unfortunately for Gomez, the deterioration in US-Venezuelan relations threatened to destabilize the political situation in Zulia. Though Gomez’s sympathetic position towards Germany was likely to please the powerful German commercial colony in Maracaibo, the restive city population would shortly appeal to Wilson for help in breaking free from Gomez’s control. In normal times, Gomez could ill afford to allow secessionist movements to flourish, but now with the oil companies in Zulia and revenue increasing from the industry the notion became unthinkable. In 1920 Venezuela settled the last of its external debts, and Gomez could not jeopardize a fall off in further income.
Dr. Pedro Rojas: A Dangerous Enemy
Santos Matute Gomez, the Zulia state governor, prohibited a pro-Allies demonstration in Maracaibo in late 1917. Santos Gomez has been variously described as Gomez’s half-brother or the bastard son of Juan Vicente Gomez’ uncle. The danger for Gomez and his associates was that pro-ally sentiment in the city might lead to U.S. intervention in Zulia. In order to head off further unrest, Gomez and his men would have to keep a watchful eye on prominent dissident voices. Of particular concern to the regime was one Dr. Pedro Rojas.
According to the US consul Emil Sauer, Rojas “is a man of thirty-five, of pure white race, of distinguished parentage, and is highly respected here.” A prominent architect and manufacturer and contractor, Rojas was said to be “very popular among the residents of the city.” Furthermore, Rojas was one of the few Venezuelans in Maracaibo who spoke English well. A potentially dangerous force to be reckoned with, he wrote an article for Panorama, a Maracaibo newspaper, praising the free institutions of the United States and the liberal policies of the US president. Fearing reprisals from the Zulia state secretary, Landaeta Llovera, who had warned the paper to avoid any praise for the US or President Wilson, the editor refused to publish the article. Undeterred, Rojas paid a visit to the US consul in early 1918 and proposed that the US offer nothing less than support for revolution in Maracaibo.
On behalf of the “Pro Patria Bolivare Society,” Rojas wrote in a letter to the consul (in impeccable English) that the Maracaibo revolutionaries sought “to put, in the place of our present system of government which is unconstitutional and rests on military dictatorship, a wholly civilian organization headed by honorable, civilized and unmilitary men. With respect to our foreign policy, we want consistently to abide by the democratic inclinations of our national spirit, which unreservedly brings us to the side of the Allied cause. We are led to them not only by our political and social principles, but also by our economic interests and our commercial ties with the allied nations of Europe, and especially at this time and from now on in an ever higher degree, with the North American nation.”
Rojas went on to complain about Juan Vicente Gomez’s “apparent neutrality which hides a connivance with Germany.” Rojas also complained that the government provided special protection of German interests in Venezuela. In any case, Rojas argued, the Zulia state government had been imposed on the people, and had to be overthrown through a coup d’etat. Once the state authorities were out of the picture, Zulia would rejoin other states which in turn would free themselves of tyranny, and relations with Germany would be broken.
Rojas requested airplanes, ammunition, guns and steamers. Rojas stated: “The national force of militia and police in these parts is so small that it does not reach 200, an in addition the men are suffering vexations and ill-treatment in the barracks and jail, which keeps them in a state of humiliation and disaffection.” The Maracaibo businessman concluded: “P.S. In trusting you with my name, I stake my life, so this confidential statement is for you and your Government under the reservation of honor.”
Rojas Appeals for US Intervention
What is striking is that not only did Rojas run the risk of contacting the US authorities, but also appeared to enjoy significant support. According to the US consul, the “revolutionaries here include a considerable number of the best people of Maracaibo, including over one-half of the State Legislature members, and people of means, some of whom are intimate friends of mine. They claim that over-whelming majority of the best people here sympathize with the revolution, though uninformed of any organized plan.”
These influential citizens of Maracaibo not only supported the overthrow of Gomez, but there appeared to be little stomach in the city for ongoing caudillo rule. For prominent members of the city, revolution was bound to lead to yet more repressive rule, “unless the United States would establish a sort of protectorate, as in Cuba, to keep representative government on its feet.” Faced with the specter of revolt, the US consul noted, “It appears quite certain that the local government here is looking for trouble and is nervous.” The authorities, continued the consul, increased security for Santos Gomez, who was heavily guarded particularly at night.
The US consul himself was surprised by the “extraordinary secrecy” of the conspiracy. “I knew there was a good deal of opposition here to the Government,” he remarked, “but this is the first intimation I have received that a definite plan of revolution was being worked out.” Leaders of the proposed revolution attempted to convince the consul that their efforts would meet with success.
In the first phase of the revolt, the state legislature would denounce the election of Santos M. Gomez as having been made under pressure from the central government “and as therefore void.” Later, the legislature would elect another Zulia state president and organize a government independent of the Gomez regime. “They,” remarked the consul, “say that the capture of Maracaibo, perhaps without bloodshed, is practically assured, the army being almost entirely on the side of the revolutionists.” However, the revolutionaries requested that the United States should prevent Venezuelan Federal warships from entering Lake Maracaibo.
The revolutionaries planned to enlist two thousand men from Maracaibo and five hundred from Coro. Despite this groundswell of support, the US consul was decidedly non-committal in his dealings with the rebels: “I could not see how the United States government could make any promises in advance, because that would be encouraging revolution.” The consul refused to attend a meeting of the revolutionaries. However, he agreed to refer the matter to the State Department.
How might one explain this lack of commitment on the US side? Wilson, after launching the US into the war to supposedly make the world “safe for democracy” now failed to support political forces that wanted to rid Venezuela of dictatorship. Significantly, the State Department’s Division of Latin American Affairs even covered up news of Gomez’s crimes so that Americans would not call for his removal.
In seeking to explain the US response, one scholar, Judith Ewell in her book Venezuela and The United States, takes a cynical view of US foreign policymakers: “Gomez…benefited from Washington’s judgment that the effort to remove him and keep peace over an outraged population would require too great a diversion of military resources.” What is more, in the event that Gomez vanished from the scene, the US would have to contend with a new and unpredictable political milieu dominated by Gomez’s capricious political opponents.
Without any tangible US support, massive anti-Gomez demonstrations in Caracas failed to materialize. “The influenza epidemic,” writes Ewell, “Gomez’s ruthless use of force, the lack of a coherent organized opposition, and the quiescence of the United States allowed Gomez to survive.” In Zulia, the revolutionaries decided to postpone the revolt indefinitely when U.S. assistance was not forthcoming. In Maracaibo, Rojas was arrested and charged with plotting against the government. He was incarcerated in the military prison of San Carlos for six years.
Nevertheless, further unrest suggested that Gomez was not yet out of the woods. In early 1919, Cesar Leon, a retired merchant and writer in Maracaibo, wrote a personal appeal to President Wilson condemning the lack of democratic freedoms in Venezuela.
Oil and the “Filibustering” Conspiracy
In a rejection of Wilsonian internationalism, US voters elected Warren Harding in 1920. On the surface, a less interventionist foreign policy stood to relieve pressure on the Gomez administration. However, Harding attached singular importance to promoting the expansion of US oil interests abroad, and the State Department was riddled with officials compromised by conflicts of interest. For example, William TS Doyle, the resident manager of Shell Oil in 1919-1920, was a former head of the State Department’s Division of Latin American Affairs. Jordan Stabler, another State Department official, went on to work for Gulf Oil. Francis Loomis, a powerful State Department official, later worked for Standard Oil.
In December 1921, Gomez received a shock when he was apprised of a plot for a military invasion of Venezuela. The plan was foiled when the Dutch authorities stopped a ship setting forth from Holland. The ship had been chartered to travel to Venezuela, apparently to engage in a “filibustering expedition.” Another ship was prevented from setting sail from England. Both ships, the British Public Records Office stated, had been funded to the tune of $400,000 by “oil interests of the United States,” which “had been pulling every possible string in order to block the development of the British Concessions which they ultimately hoped to get hold of.” It’s unclear whether the U.S. government had any knowledge of the plot. British reports, based on information supplied by Gomez authorities, stated that “a person named Bollorpholl of New York representing himself to be connected with State Department has handled the money.” Diplomats hinted that Standard Oil, which had been disappointed with legal decisions which favored British companies, “would like to see Gomez’s downfall and may have contributed to this expedition.”
Apparently, oil interests had been conspiring with Venezuelan military officers, such as Gen. Carabana and Gen. Alcantara. (British officials were most likely referring to Francisco Linares Alcantara, son of the Venezuelan president of the same name, who ruled the country in 1877-78.) What is more, the Venezuelan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Esteban Gil Borges, had been “practically in the pockets” of American oil companies. “So far as I understand,” remarked a British diplomat, “the filibustering expedition was arranged by the American Oil Interests with the express object of removing President Gomez and bringing Senor Esteban Gil Borges back into power.” When Gomez was informed of the plot, Borges was removed from his post.
Though the plot hatched by “American oil interests” never came to fruition, the growing oil presence was a concern for Santos Gomez, the Zulia state governor. In 1923, he personally wrote Gomez, warning his chief that oil workers could be subverted by enemies of the regime. Of particular concern to Santos Gomez was the isolated oil field of Mene de Buchivacoa, located across the Zulia border in the state of Falcon. Santos Gomez worried that the area could be an easy target for enemies to the regime, who could land forces there and garner the support of oil workers before the government could respond. “Santos Matute Gomez,” writes historian Sandra Flores, “deplored the absence of authority in an area of such importance and recommended the dispatch of a corps of police.”
Gomez Buys Off Pedro Rojas
Having weathered many secessionist plots, the Venezuelan authorities sought to head off Zulia secession by monitoring the opposition. The new Zulia state governor, Febres Cordero, remarked to Gomez that he had received reports that the popular Pedro Rojas, now free from his jail cell at San Carlos, was using his position as president of a local athletic center for political ends. Febres Cordero stated that it was possible Rojas was trying to found an association of workers. While the governor personally doubted the veracity of the reports, he paid 1,200 bolivares to help the center acquire a new boxing ring, “with the idea”, he wrote, “of putting myself in communication with the members of the club and observe them more closely.”
In a long 1926 telegram, the dictator wrote Febres Cordero “to watch Dr Rojas carefully and to investigate rumors that he was actively engaged in preparing a nucleus of young men and laborers who might be used in the formation of a body of troops in the event civil trouble occurred.” In a more forceful approach, Febres Cordero summoned Rojas personally, so as to speak candidly. Febres Cordero told Rojas point-blank that Gomez had received an anonymous letter, suggesting that Rojas had been instrumental in helping to form an athletic center for young men. Rojas, according to the anonymous letter, sought to become president of the organization in order to train members for military purposes.
Furthermore, Rojas was accused of having trained men employed in his factories, and “was trying by every means to increase his popularity among the Venezuelans and so far succeeded as to be elected the president of the strongest club in Maracaibo (El Club del Comercio) against most active foreign opposition.” Seeking to maintain a public facade of neutrality, Febres Cordero told Rojas bluntly that he had not investigated the charges. While he personally doubted the veracity of the claims, Febres Cordero advised Rojas to meet with Gomez personally.
Rojas, no doubt concerned for his personal security, accepted Febres Cordero’s advice. Traveling to the Venezuelan city of Maracay, he was granted an immediate interview with Gomez himself. One can easily imagine Rojas’ growing discomfort as the dictator personally outlined the charges in more detail. Far from his native Maracaibo and now on Gomez’ home ground, Rojas realized that he would have to soothe Gomez’s suspicions. He reminded Gomez that he had completed a six-year jail sentence at San Carlos. He added that “he had received his lesson?he had not and did not intend to mingle in politics but wanted peace.”
At this point, Gomez slyly answered that he had never believed the charges. However, in an offer of good faith, Gomez offered to award Rojas an engineering position in charge of improving the Maracaibo dock and aqueduct. No doubt feeling relieved, Rojas immediately accepted the position and returned to Maracaibo. Later, the Maracaibo native son was careful to stay in touch with Gomez, writing the dictator in April 1926 concerning preliminary work on the aqueduct. Having Rojas work personally on the project made political sense. In this way, the authorities could keep a careful watch on the respected one-time revolutionary.
Oil, Cocaine and the Lindblad Conspiracy
On the other hand Washington did not seem to pose much of a threat to the regime. The Republican administration of Calvin Coolidge officially espoused a policy of non-intervention in Latin American affairs. In late 1926, Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg personally wrote American oil companies in Venezuela, lobbying managers to restrain abuses of the native workforce.
Nevertheless, Gomez would shortly receive worrying reports suggesting that the US Navy was spying in Zulia. While it’s unclear whether the US military sought to intrigue against state authorities on behalf of the oil companies, Gomez already had sufficient cause for concern. Though the dictator enjoyed a burgeoning alliance with the companies, and the spreading of prosperity from the industry allowed him to secure his position in power, Gomez had strong indications that US companies were plotting against him.
In the summer of 1926, British authorities made reference to a peculiar plot. “Information,” remarked one diplomat, “has been received from a very reliable source, and should therefore be treated with the greatest secrecy, that steps are being taken to foment a revolution in Venezuela during the course of the next few months. It is stated that the funds for a revolution are being supplied by American oil companies with a view to obtaining further concessions and their agent on this side to be Captain Herold LINDBLAD of 20 Craven Hill Gardens, Lancaster Gate.”
The plot, documented in cloak-and-dagger fashion by British authorities, involved a bizarre assortment of shady characters. Central to the effort was David Herold Lindblad, a former commander of the Swedish Navy and acting Norwegian Consul in Trinidad. Lindblad sought to recruit support for the conspiracy in England and Germany. The British authorities noted that Lindblad was married to an English lady in Trinidad, whose mother was related to Gen. Alcantara, of whom Lindblad himself was a close associate. Alcantara, who was resident in Trinidad, had received indications of growing dissension in the Gomez armed forces and hoped to militarily intervene in Venezuela with the idea of becoming president himself.
British authorities noted that Alcantara was born into a prominent Venezuelan family and his father was president of Venezuela. Reportedly, he had support not only in Ciudad Bolivar but also in the Orinoco districts, Margarita Island and western Venezuela “where he is in command.” Alcantara was in turn linked to other sources, such as a certain individual described in cryptic manner as “D.” This individual had traveled from New York to the Caribbean and was in communication with Lindblad. Apparently, “D” met with a certain “L” in New Orleans, who had agreed to supply six thousand pounds for purchasing equipment. The 6,000 pounds, noted British authorities, “was to be placed at the disposal of Lindblad for the purchase of a trawler and arms.” Meanwhile, “D would seem to be an intermediary between General Alcantara and certain parties in New York (?Standard Oil?) [sic], who might be interested in financing the plot.”
According to British authorities, there were indications that the plotters had approached Standard Oil, Shell, British Controlled Oilfields, “and some group in Germany,” with the idea of raising financial support for Gen. Alcantara. Of these the only party which agreed to negotiate was Standard Oil, which “did not wish to appear openly in the transaction but agreed to act through an intermediary.” In conversations with British Controlled Oilfields, Lindblad suggested that the company advance 10,000 pounds to charter a ship and purchase arms at Hamburg. If Gen. Alcantara came into power, British Controlled Oilfields would receive a “quid pro quo” in the form of oil concessions.
Alcantara required money to buy one thousand rifles, 30 machine guns and other arms and equipment, and to hire a 200-ton trawler in Germany to transport the weapons to Venezuela. The port of embarkation was Hamburg. According to British intelligence Lindblad was associated with a businessman in the German port city, who had a flourishing trade with South and Central America and who had smuggled cocaine and morphine. Little to his knowledge perhaps, British authorities sent an agent from Scotland Yard to be present at Lindblad’s interview with British Controlled Oilfields in London. The authorities, who remarked that Venezuela had enjoyed stable government under Gomez and that British interests were well treated in the country, promptly passed word of the plot to Gomez directly through British diplomats in Caracas.
Apparently, the plotters grew concerned when it looked like British interests might work against their plans, and Lindblad’s wife warned him: “Be very careful about choosing the crew. Shell might succeed in getting traitors on board by means of much bribery.” When Gomez found out about the plot, Standard Oil grew alarmed and withdrew its support; the conspiracy promptly fell apart when the necessary funds did not materialize. For his part, Lindblad notified his conspirators that he would shortly return to Trinidad from Hamburg. However, word of the conspiracy alerted the authorities to the possibility that disgruntled caudillos could unite with the oil companies to create unrest. According to British authorities, “hopes are?still entertained that when matters have quietened down and President Gomez’s suspicions have been allayed, through the intermediary of ‘L’ the Americans may again be induced to co-operate.”
Gomez Consolidates Power
In the midst of this political intrigue, Gomez acted decisively to appoint a stronger and more competent state governor in Zulia, Vincencio Perez Soto. According to Gomez biographer Brian McBeth, rumors of oil companies sponsoring Zulia secession concerned Gomez and convinced the dictator of the need to appoint a stronger man as state president. What is more, as British authorities put it, “the peace enjoyed for so long by this country has been one imposed by General Gomez, now getting on in years and in uncertain health, and it is doubtful whether it will long survive him.”
Additionally, if Gomez died, then “candidates to the succession will not be wanting,” a British diplomat found. Most worrisome of all, “the prizes of government have increased tenfold in the last few years. The most obvious first step to successful revolution would be to gain control of the oil region with a view to extracting financial support from the oil companies.” Clearly, the oil-rich Zulia region was increasingly critical. By 1928, in fact, Venezuela would become the leading world oil exporter.
In the 1920s, US economic interests in Zulia grew, with American oil companies such as Standard Oil and Gulf joining their British counterparts in the Lake Maracaibo area. Though US diplomats reported that authorities in Caracas were not overly concerned about rumors that Maracaibo would break free of central control, the US consul in Maracaibo, Alexander Sloan, alerted his superiors to widespread disaffection in the city.
Sloan said that Zulia natives as well as Maracaibo residents “do not now and have not for years felt any great affection for the central government.” However, he added that Zulianos believed the economic and natural boundaries of the Maracaibo Lake united the area with the Cucuta district in Colombia and not with Caracas. Likewise, local residents argued that Cucuta was united to Maracaibo by much closer economic bonds than to other districts within Colombia.
Furthermore, reported Sloan, Maracaibo natives suspected that the central government purposefully isolated their city from the rest of the country and from the outside world for fear that an independence movement might arise there. Local residents were also incensed “that although there are many quite capable Maracaiberos [Maracaibo residents], not one has ever been placed in a position of power in the state of Zulia.”
Upon assuming office, Perez Soto set about meeting with oil company officials, including Roy Merritt, a manager at Caribbean Oil Company. Writing later to Gomez, Perez Soto commented that Merritt “had opened up to me too much, showing me that he was alarmed at what he called claims and inconveniences which had been presented against his company, and saying that he sees that these matters could be leading to the same path as the Mexicans in 1911. And these?phrases leave a lot to think about.”
The Mysterious Mission of the USS Niagara
Meanwhile, Perez Soto was confronted with unsettling news. On July 2, 1926 the USS Niagara arrived off the coast of Zulia. The US consul requested that the sailors be allowed to celebrate the 4th of July in Venezuela. When an air officer attached to the Niagara requested permission to fly over Maracaibo in honor of the July 4th, Perez Soto grew suspicious. Reports reached the governor that the real reason for the over flight was to take aerial photographs of the region. Perez Soto barred the disembarking of the Niagara crew and refused to authorize the over-flight.
Kellogg and the State Department’s policy of non-intervention notwithstanding, Perez Soto was concerned. Writing Gomez, the governor related that the US sought to station the Niagara in Venezuelan waters “as a kind of sentinel of North American interests in Venezuela.” Perez Soto was concerned that the Niagara might be a bad omen of things to come, and remarked that “in this same manner the Americans placed battleships in Magdalena Bay in Baja California in 1914.”
Perez Soto then employed his intelligence to obtain detailed reports concerning the activities of US marines from the Niagara on Zapara island, located in the mouth of the Maracaibo Bar. Perez Soto uncovered that the Niagara crew had mounted a wireless radio with a reach of 2,000 miles. Perez Soto was particularly concerned that powerful sectors of Maracaibo society might conspire with the United States to further Zulia secession with the aim of separating the state from the rest of Venezuela.
In an effort to lessen tensions with foreign interests, Pérez Soto assured oil company managers that he was “anxious to discuss their problems with them and to lend them any aid in his power.” Perez Soto sought to assert his authority over the oil companies through diplomatic and legal means. As the US consul put it, Perez Soto and local officials were determined “that conditions such as existed in Tampico [Mexico] are not to be tolerated here, and [they] have become much stricter in enforcing discipline and obedience to the laws.” In a note to Gomez, Perez Soto mused that perhaps the oil companies would put up with legality and honesty—”or maybe not, and they will try to undermine me,” through their representatives in Caracas.
Redrawing the Region’s Borders
Clearly, in many ways Perez Soto had been more a more forceful governor than his predecessors. For Gomez, however, the risk was that the more powerful Perez Soto became, the greater the possibility that the charismatic politician would become a rival in his own right. As Gomez consolidated power, he faced yet further military unrest, and there were ample opportunities for Perez Soto to create intrigue.
As Gomez approached old age, Perez Soto might have wondered about his own future and felt a certain degree of concern. In the first years of Perez Soto’s term in office, the political situation in Venezuela looked increasingly murky, with Gomez’s presidential tenure set to expire in 1929. (Under the Venezuelan constitution, Gomez was allowed to run for another seven year presidential term in 1929. But, in light of student unrest in 1928, he proclaimed he would not run as a candidate. In 1929, the constitution was revised and the position of “Commander in Chief” and President were separated. Congress elected Doctor Juan Baptista Perez as president, who had little influence. Gomez became commander in chief and continued to control real power behind the scenes.)
In July 1928 Col. Jose Maria Fossi, a trusted Gomez subordinate, turned against the dictator, taking the city of La Vela de Coro for a few hours. The military uprising, which called for revolutionaries to be reinforced by 300 Venezuelan and 90 Dominican rebels working in Curacao, was crushed by Gomez’s troops.
McBeth has written that following the assault Perez Soto reorganized his small armory in order to prepare for future attack. However, Fossi later remarked that Perez Soto had approached him and offered him money in exchange for his support in fomenting a separatist movement. The ultimate aim was to form a new republic comprising the Venezuelan states of Zulia, Falcon, and the Catatumbo region of Colombia. The venture, added Fossi, would have the support of the oil companies in Lake Maracaibo.
While such reports must be treated cautiously, Colombian authorities were apparently concerned about a plot and Bogota’s House of Deputies met in secret session to discuss “moves of Yankee agents in the Departments of Santander and Goagira which sought to provoke a separatist movement which, united to Zulia, would form the Republic of Zulia.”
Perez Soto dismissed rumors of his involvement in Zulia secession as “treason against the Fatherland, and an immense dishonor.” However, Perez Soto’s credibility was further damaged when correspondence reached Gomez himself hinting at efforts to involve Perez Soto in Zulia secessionist plots. McBeth writes that “important oilmen with close connections with the State Department had enquired about the suitability of Perez Soto as President of Zulia.”
What might have motivated Perez Soto to become involved? One possibility is that he was worried about the future political climate. In the event that Gomez were to fall or die in office, Perez Soto could face political vendettas or worse. Perhaps Perez Soto, having conducted successful negotiations with the oil companies in 1926, now hoped to cash in on his political capital.
The History in Light of the Current Controversy
At this point it’s unclear how similar Rumbo Propio might be to earlier conspiracies. The evidence is suggestive that in the past prominent political figures allied to the oil companies and the United States sought to foment unrest in Zulia. Today, Chavez hasn’t demonstrated any proof that Rumbo Propio is affiliated with Rosales or the United States.
On the other hand, the group shares Rosales’ and the United States’ contempt for Chavez. Rumbo Propio, led by an economist named Nestor Suarez, is an avowedly right-wing organization opposed to the government’s economic policies. The group seeks to encourage “liberal capitalism” in Zulia.
The question, however, is whether Rumbo Propio is destined to become another historical footnote or to make real political problems for Chavez. When I recently traveled to Maracaibo, I put this question to Umberto Silvio Beltran, Zulia regional coordinator of the Bolivarian Circles, pro-Chavez grassroots groups organized locally throughout the country.
Beltran didn’t deny the existence of real regionalist sentiment in Zulia, but downplayed the notion that the area would break away from Venezuela. “People here consider themselves Venezuelan,” he said.
Nevertheless, with tensions rising in the run-up to the election, one cannot discard the possibility that the United States, or local separatists, might take advantage of the political climate to create unrest. If Chavez is right and the Bush administration is encouraging secession, this cynical American strategy will most likely anger Chavez’s hardened followers in Zulia.
The president’s support in Zulia state is not insignificant, and any U.S. meddling could ratchet up political conflict. According to Beltran, there are approximately 180,000 people involved in the Bolivarian Circles in Zulia. Hopefully, Zulia will not become a political battleground on Election Day and cooler heads will prevail.
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Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (St. Martin’s Press, 2006)
RESOURCES:
Rumbo Propio
http://www.rumbopropio.org.ve
See also:
“Colombia v. Venezuela: Big Oil’s Secret War?”
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT #108, April 2005
/colombiavenezuelabigoil
From our weblog:
“Venezuela: US Naval maneuvers encourage Zulia separatists?”
WW4 REPORT, April 9, 2006
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
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from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
On Nov. 3, environmentalists in the cities of Gualeguaychu and Colon in the eastern Argentine province of Entre Rios blocked the border bridges leading to Uruguay to protest continuing efforts to build a paper pulp mill in Fray Bentos, on the Uruguayan shore of the river that divides the two countries. The protesters in Gualeguaychu built a wall of brick and cement on national highway 136, 15 kilometers from the border bridge, to symbolize the hard position taken by the Finnish company Botnia and by the governments and international institutions in refusing to halt construction of the pulp mill. Environmentalists say the project will contaminate the river and the surrounding ecosystem and destroy the livelihoods of local residents. (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 4, 5; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Nov. 4 from AP) The Spanish company Ence has already backtracked in its plans to build a similar pulp mill along the river.
The action was timed to coincide with the Nov. 3 inauguration of the 16th Iberoamerican Summit in Montevideo, where the Spanish government tried to initiate a dialogue between Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez and Argentine president Nestor Kirchner; the two leaders’ relations have been significantly chilled by the paper mill conflict. In Gualeguaychu, two protesters dressed up as Vazquez and Kirchner cut the tape to inaugurate the symbolic wall. Later in the evening, several assembly members from Gualeguaychu spoke on the radio, inviting the heads of state from the summit to attend “a meeting that’s more fun, and with faces that are less sad, on the banks of the Uruguay river, where there are still birds and life.”
Hundreds of local residents came on Nov. 4 to see the symbolic wall and support the anti-pulp mill protests. The protesters expected to end their blockade and take down the wall after the summit ended on Nov. 4, but they said they would keep carrying out actions until they get results. (LJ, Nov. 4, 5)
In Montevideo, some 400 activists from leftist and grassroots groups took part in a Nov. 3 mobilization against the summit. They marched to the “security zone” and faced off against a heavy contingent of riot police. There were only a few minor incidents. (Uruguay Indymedia, Nov. 4; LJ, Nov. 4)
The 22 participating countries closed the Iberoamerican Summit on Nov. 4 with the approval of a 45-point consensus statement protesting both the US embargo against Cuba and a new US law—signed by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26—which authorizes construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. “We consider the building of walls to be a practice incompatible with relations of friendship and cooperation among states,” read the statement. “We believe that the construction of walls doesn’t stop undocumented migration, the flow of migrants or the trafficking of people; it incites discrimination and xenophobia and favors the emergence of groups of traffickers who put people in greater danger.” (LJ, Nov. 5)
Argentine foreign minister Jorge Taiana spoke at the summit about his country’s “Great Homeland” program, which allows any citizens of the expanded Mercosur trade area to regularize their immigration status in Argentina simply by showing proof of their nationality. They are then eligible for the same benefits and rights as Argentines. The expanded Mercosur area includes Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. (LJ, Nov. 4)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 5
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WW4 REPORT #126, October 2006
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
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from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
Nicaragua: Ortega wins
WIth 91.6% of the ballots counted from Nicaragua’s Nov. 5 elections, former president Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) won the presidency with 38.07%, compared to 29% for Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN). Having won over 35% of the vote and with a more than five point lead over his closest rival, Ortega was able to avoid a second round. Jose Rizo of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) was in third place with 26.21%; Edmundo Jarquin of the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS) got 6.44%; and Eden Pastora of Alternative for Change (AC) had 0.27%. The voting broke down to roughly the same percentages in the balloting for National Assembly deputies and representatives to the regional Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).
In the presidential race, the FSLN won in the northern departments of Nueva Segovia, Madriz, Esteli and Matagalpa; in the western departments of Chinandega, Leon, Managua and Carazo; and in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). The ALN won in the southwestern departments of Masaya, Granada and Rivas; and in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). The PLC dominated in the central cattle-ranching departments of Chontales and Boaco; the north central department of Jinotega; and the south central department of Rio San Juan. (Resultados Electorales, Nov. 7)
According to the Nicaragua Network in Washington, it is likely that the FSLN will have 37 seats in the National Assembly, one less than it has now; the ALN will have 26, the PLC will have 22 and the MRS will have six. It is not clear whether defeated candidates Montealegre, Rizo, and Jarquin are automatically granted seats in the Assembly or whether only Montealegre gets that privilege. Either way, the Network observes, “it is clear that the FSLN, or even the FSLN in coalition with the MRS, does not have the majority necessary to pass legislation. This means that there will be a strong incentive for the new government to continue the so-called pact with the PLC and its disgraced leader, former president Arnoldo Aleman.”
Ortega is to take office on Jan. 10, 2007, along with his vice president, Jaime Morales Carazo, a former leader of the US-backed right-wing contra movement in the 1980s. (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 8 from AFP, DPA) In his speeches since the elections, Ortega has insisted that he plans no radical changes and will continue to promote the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), foreign investment and close US ties. (AP, Nov. 10, 12)
On Nov. 11, Ortega said his cabinet ministers will be named by the people; he has asked local representatives to suggest candidates. He vowed that half his top officials would be women, and that he would include people who didn’t vote for him. (AP, Nov. 12)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 12
Nicaragua: abortion law passes
On Oct. 26, Nicaragua’s 93-member National Assembly voted 52-0 in favor of a law criminalizing abortion in all cases. The new law overturns article 165 of the country’s penal code, which for more than a century has allowed abortions up to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest, or where they are necessary to preserve the pregnant woman’s life or health—as long as three doctors verify the medical need and the spouse or a close relative gives legal consent. (Abortions for any other reason have long been punishable with prison sentences of up to six years.) (Adital, Oct. 31; Nicaragua Network Hotline, Nov. 1; Nicaragua News Service, Oct. 24-Nov. 1 from La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario, Radio La Primerisima, TV Channel 8; Reuters, Oct. 27)
The FSLN joined the ruling Liberal Party in approving the bill. Of the FSLN’s 38 deputies, 25 voted for the bill, although some sent their aides to cast the vote rather than do it themselves. The other 13 FSLN deputies stayed away from the session. The FSLN’s support of the bill was seen as an attempt to cater to the Catholic church to win support for FSLN candidate and ex-president Daniel Ortega in the Oct. 5 presidential elections. (Reuters, Oct. 27)
Hundreds of women were vigiling outside as the Assembly debated the measure; as news of the vote broke, the protesters began to chant, “Women killers! Women killers!” Women’s organizations began setting up picket lines at the campaign headquarters of the four parties that approved the measure. The women’s groups also said they would challenge the new law in court.
Health minister Margarita Gurdian complained that the legislators had failed to consult doctors for a medical opinion before changing the law. Some 20 national doctors’ associations joined representatives of the Pan-American Health Organization and the World Health Organization in urging the Assembly to promptly review its decision. The groups predict that the repeal of article 165 will bring a 60% increase in the country’s maternal mortality rate, currently at 83.4 per 100,000 live births.
In the days leading up the vote, a wide range of national and international organizations had spoken out against the repeal of article 165. The organization Save the Children had issued a press release pointing out that Nicaragua has one of the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy in Latin America, and that most pregnant girls have been raped. The Nicaraguan Coordinating Council of Non-governmental Organizations working with Children and Adolescents (Codeni) and the Special Ombudsperson for Children had urged that debate over the measure be postponed until after the Nov. 5 elections. Codeni estimates that 30% of the female victims of sexual violence are children and adolescents, many of whom become pregnant.
“This Assembly has sent women to the guillotine,” said Matilde Jiron, a doctor specializing in reproductive health. Jiron said each year the Health ministry records about 1,000 cases of ectopic or molar pregnancies, in both of which “therapeutic abortion is absolutely necessary to save the mother’s life.” (Adital, Oct. 31; Nicanet Hotline, Nov. 1; NNS, Oct. 24-Nov. 1) The Autonomous Women’s Movement calculates that between 2004 and 2006, some 4,000 women underwent therapeutic abortions in Nicaragua. (La Jornada, Nov. 3)
An article in the Los Angeles Times reported that only 24 legally authorized abortions have been performed in Nicaragua in the last three years. Ipas, a US-based reproductive rights group, estimates that 32,000 illegal abortions are performed in Nicaragua each year, many under unsafe conditions. (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 26) The new law puts Nicaragua alongside nations like Chile and El Salvador in imposing a blanket ban on abortion. (Reuters, Oct. 27)
Three of the four leading presidential candidates supported the new anti-abortion law; only Edmundo Jarquin of the Sandinista Renewal Movement opposed it. (NNS, Oct. 24-Nov. 1)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 5
Guatemala: ex-leaders ordered arrested
On Nov. 6, Guatemala’s Fifth Criminal Sentence Court issued arrest warrants for six former military leaders in response to extradition requests from the National Court of Spain. The Spanish court has charged the six men with genocide, terrorism, torture, murder and illegal detentions during the 1980s, and specifically the burning of the Spanish embassy on Jan. 31, 1980. A group of indigenous activists had occupied the embassy to demand respect for human rights; 39 people died in the blaze.
Those ordered arrested are ex-dictator Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores (1983-1986); retired generals Manuel Benedicto Lucas Garcia (army chief of staff from August 1981 to March 1982) and Angel Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, a former defense minister; former police director Col. German Chupina; and two civilians, former governance minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and former chief of the Police Sixth Command, Pedro Garcia Arredondo. (Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, Nov. 9; Guatemala Hoy, Nov. 7; La Jornada, Nov. 7, 8, both from AFP)
Guevara Rodriguez turned himself in on Nov. 7; security forces arrested Chupina the same day. (LJ, Nov. 8 from AFP) Mejia Victores had not been found as of Nov. 8 and some speculate that he is in the US. (GHRC/USA, Nov. 9)
The Spanish court also sought the extradition of former dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala from late March of 1982 to early August of 1983. But the Guatemalan court declinedto issue an arrest order for Rios Montt, apparently because there was insufficient proof of his responsibility for the embassy deaths. Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz had charged Rios Montt with genocide, noting that the Commission of Historical Clarification had found, in its report on the violence over the 36-year armed conflict, that 69% of all the executions, 41% of the rapes and 45% of the torture incidents took place during Rios Montt’s rule. (GHRC/USA, Nov. 9; GH, Nov. 7; LJ, Nov. 8 from AFP)
When it issued the warrants last July 7, the Spanish court had also sought the arrest of Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, who died last May in Venezuela. (See WW4 REPORT, May 30, 2006)
Many had hoped that Romeo Lucas Garcia, president of Guatemala from July 1978 to March 1982, would be “symbolically” brought to justice for the massacres that were committed under his rule. (GHRC/USA, Nov. 9)
Benedicto Lucas Garcia, who has been ordered arrested, was chief of staff during the final period of his brother’s rule, and was considered to be one of the key architects of the massacres.
The Mutual Support Group (GAM) reported in a 2000 study, “Massacres in Guatemala, the Screams of an Entire People,” that 1,112 massacres were carried out during the 36-year armed conflict, 1,046 of them (more than 94%) by government forces, including army, police, the paramilitary Civilian Self-Defense Patrols (PACs) and other security forces. The largest number—507 massacres, 49% of the total—took place under the Romeo Lucas Garcia regime. Another 413 of them—40%—were under Rios Montt’s 16-month rule. (GAM statement, Nov. 9 via Adital)
The court’s Nov. 6 decision came after the European Parliament passed a resolution on Oct. 26, backing the Spanish arrest warrants and urging the Guatemalan government to cooperate with the investigations. President Oscar Berger must sign the final extradition order. Rios Montt’s party, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), wields considerable power in Guatemala and is expected to try to halt the extraditions. (GHRC/USA, Nov. 9)
A group of victims’ families had held a demonstration on Nov. 3 outside the Supreme Court of Justice, asking it to immediately order the arrests of Rios Montt and the others. Members of the Coordinating Committee of Genocide Never Again hung banners bearing photographs of their disappeared loved ones. (La Semana en Guatemala, Oct. 30-Nov. 5)
On Nov. 8, some 100 families and members of the Genocide Never Again group again gathered outside the Supreme Court, saluting the arrest orders but demanding that Rios Montt be arrested too. “Now we have a small opening to send these men, who massacred and disappeared our people, to where they belong,” said Aura Elena Farfan, leader of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA). Farfan’s brother, Ruben Amilcar, was abducted and disappeared in March 1984 during the military regime headed by Mejia Victores (1982-85). “No injustice lasts 100 years, and no people will endure it,” said Farfan. “Hopefully what is happening today in Guatemala will be an example for the whole world, and all those who commit genocide will be jailed.” (GH, Nov. 9)
On Nov. 10, more than 1,000 people from around the country gathered again under the umbrella of Genocide Never Again to march from Morazan park to the Supreme Court, demanding justice. Eduardo de Leon, director of the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation, said the Public Ministry had been negligent in allowing Mejia Victores to escape. De Leon said the foundation has already formally asked the Spanish court to reissue the arrest order against Rios Montt. (GH, Nov. 11) Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan indigenous leader and 1992 Nobel Peace laureate, originally filed the charges against the ex-officials in the Spanish court in December 1999; her father was among those killed in the Spanish embassy fire in 1980. (LJ, Nov. 7 from AFP)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 12
Guatemala: cops harass student protesters
A group of about 40 Guatemalan students attempted to protest neoliberal economic policies and the privatization of education during the traditional parade in Guatemala City marking Central American Independence Day, Sept. 15. According to Calixto Morales, a member of the National Students Organization of Guatemala (ONEG), when the protesters held up their signs near the reviewing stand, where President Oscar Berger and other officials were located, members of the Education Ministry (MINEDUC) pushed them away. When the students continued to demonstrate in front of the National Palace, police agents followed them, and the number of agents increased once they were away from the parade.
In Isabel La Catolica Park, 15 or more agents surrounded the students and pointed loaded guns at them. Agents hit one student and destroyed his photographic equipment. When a student leader said she would file a complaint, the agents threatened to arrest them for “rebellion.” The students were finally allowed to leave, without their signs, in pairs. (Guatemala Hoy, Sept. 18; ONEG communique on Chiapas Indymedia, Sept. 18)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Sept. 24
El Salvador: religious leaders killed
On Nov. 4, Francisco Carrillo and his wife, Jesus Calzada de Carrillo, both Lutheran pastors, human rights advocates, and activists in a local community volunteer rescue program, were shot and killed outside their church in the Salvadoran town of Jayaque, La Libertad. Francisco was locking up after the Friday service when assailants approached on bicycles and shot him, then shot his wife, who was waiting in a nearby car. The Carrillos were known for being vocal community activists and had recently received death threats for their work. The assailants rode away without covering their faces; some witnesses say they were local gang members. There is no known motive for the murder and there was no attempted robbery. The killing of the couple follows a number of similar recent incidents: the killing last July of the elderly parents of FMLN activist Mariposa Manzanares; the murder in August of leftist activist couple Alex Flores Montoya and Mercedes Penate de Flores; and the September murder of progressive Catholic priest Antonio Romero.
The Lutheran church and other members of the Jayaque community are calling for the National Civilian Police (PNC) and the attorney general’s office to investigate the Carrillos’ killings immediately. Given the PNC’s failure to make progress in investigating the other murders, religious and grassroots groups are pushing for results from the police investigation within two weeks. (CISPES El Salvador Update, Nov. 8; Diario Co Latino, El Salvador, Nov. 7)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 12
Honduras: indigenous brothers freed
On Aug. 15, a court in the Honduran city of Santa Rosa de Copan commuted the sentence of Leonardo Miranda, a Lenca indigenous activist from the community of Montana Verde. Miranda was freed from the prison in Gracias three hours later. His brother Marcelino Miranda Espinoza was freed from the same prison in Gracias on July 12 after a court secretary processed his release order. (Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras-COPINH communiques, July 12, Aug. 16, both via Rights Action) The Miranda brothers had been acquitted of murder charges on June 23 by the Supreme Court of Justice. They had been jailed since January 2003. In January 2006, Amnesty International joined an international campaign to win their release.
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Sept. 3
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WW4 REPORT #127, November 2006
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2006
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