MIXING OCCUPATION AND OIL IN WESTERN SAHARA

by Jacob Mundy

“We preferred that occupation,” Salim says, pointing to the Spanish news channel on his television, “to this one,” he says gesturing toward Moroccan settlers walking past his West Saharan shop window.

Western Sahara is a disputed territory sandwiched between Mauritania and Morocco, on the north African coast of the Atlantic ocean. The current struggle for control began in 1975 when Spain ended its colonial occupation and rule of Western Sahara and hastily handed over administration of its former colony to Morocco. Refugees fleeing their homes in Western Sahara, joined the nascent independence movement named Polisario, and declared the region a sovereign republic, setting off a guerrilla war.

Today, if the Oklahoma City-based Kerr-McGee Corporation gets its way and begins extracting oil and gas in contested Western Sahara, another volatile element will be added to the region’s long-standing dispute.

On the dusty streets of the sleepy Western Saharan capital, Al-‘Ayun, where I met Salim, and around the world, Morocco finds little open support for its continued occupation. Not one country or international organization recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. The United Nations defines the largely uninhabited Colorado-sized area as Africa’s last remaining colony.

But Morocco has found allies in its claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara in the corporate world. One of its more recent friends is Kerr-McGee. In 2001, the company signed a hydrocarbon “reconnaissance permit” with the Moroccan government to explore areas off the coast of the Western Sahara. Since inking the deal, Kerr-McGee has been assessing the results of a “large 2D seismic grid” of the region and a 2004 “drop core survey.” Kerr-McGee has renewed its contract several times, with the current agreement set to expire this October.

A Fortune 500 company founded in 1929, with more than $5 billion in revenue in 2004 and over $14 billion in global assets, Kerr-McGee “is one of the largest U.S.-based independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies, with proved reserves of more than 1.2 billion barrels of oil,” according to its website.

The area of Kerr-McGee’s interest, the Boujdour Block, is a 27 million-acre expanse claimed by Western Sahara. The Block stretches from the Sahara’s cliff-lined shores to depths of more than 10,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean.

Are there significant quantities of oil and gas off the shore of the Western Sahara? No one knows for sure. In neighboring Mauritania, Woodside Petroleum, Australia’s second-biggest oil and gas company, is expected to start pumping in 2006. The Chinese government is also heavily involved in offshore Mauritanian petroleum prospects. From the middle of the Sahara to all along the coast, West Africa is fast becoming an importance source of oil and gas for the United States.

But in Western Sahara, with uncertainty about ownership adding to the risk, oil companies are reluctant to commit resources. French oil “super-major” Total, which also contracted with the Moroccan government in 2001 to explore off the Saharan shores, withdrew in 2004 for “business” reasons.

The Norwegian geological survey firm TGS-Nopec has also abandoned its interests in the area. Contracted to carry out the research for Total and Kerr-McGee, and with 85% of its survey completed, TGS bowed to intense grassroots pressure in 2003. After dozens of shareholders divested, TGS issued a public statement announcing that it “has decided not to undertake any new projects in Western Sahara without a change in political developments.” The subsequent withdrawal of two minor companies for similar reasons left Kerr-McGee as the only foreign company working with Moroccan oil interests in the area.

For now, Kerr-McGee is holding firm and keeping quiet about its Saharan prospects. “[U]ntil we have completed the analysis and evaluation we cannot speculate on future activities,” external communications specialist John Christiansen told this reporter.

Kerr-McGee’s stockholders may also be less than fully informed about the risks of investing in a contested territory. In its 2004 report and a letter to shareholders, Morocco-but not Western Sahara–appears under a map titled “Targeting World Class Prospects.” And although the words “Western Sahara” appeared in Kerr-McGee’s 2003 report, the reference was omitted in the 2004 version.

Western Sahara is far more visible at the United Nations, where its fate is under the management of the Security Council. That body is torn between Morocco’s close relations with several permanent members, especially France and the United States, and the Western Saharns’ right of self-determination under customary international law.

The right goes back to 1974, when Spain promised the Western Saharans a chance to hold a popular referendum on whether they wanted to join with Morocco or become independent. Before the vote could be held, Morocco invaded, claiming the Western Sahara as a historical part of Morocco. Since 1991 the United Nations has been promising the Western Saharans another chance to vote, but fearing it might lead to independence, Morocco has rejected any proposal that challenges its “territorial integrity.”

“This issue is really not unlike the Arab-Israeli dispute: two different peoples claiming the same land,” said James Baker, former US secretary of state and key UN mediator in the dispute between 1997 and 2004 . “One is very strong, one has won the war, one is in occupation and the other is very weak,” he told Wide Angle, a New York television show produced for the national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS.)

With the discovery of significant hydrocarbon deposits in the Western Sahara, the power equation has grown more complex. The potential wealth provides the Moroccan government with strong motivation to hold onto the contested territory and to shun the peace process.

“Morocco is seeking to impose a fait accompli,” says Kamel Fadel, a representative with the Western Sahara government in exile, “as well as implicate foreign companies and interests in its illegal occupation of our country.”

Kerr-McGee contends that its interests are not biasing the peace process. “Kerr-McGee, by its Reconnaissance Permit, has not prejudged or prejudiced such efforts, and we hope to make a contribution to the development of this area and its people,” Christiansen says.

The Norwegian government, for one, believes that Kerr-McGee’s actions are indeed prejudicial. Citing its own ethical guidelines, the Finance Ministry’s advisory council called on the national retirement fund to divest its $52 million in Kerr-McGee stock: “The Council regarded [the exploration] as ‘a particularly serious violation of fundamental ethical norms’ e.g. because it may strengthen Morocco’s sovereignty claims and thus contribute to undermining the UN peace process.”

“It actually says in the Petroleum Fund’s ethical guidelines that it is highly problematic to invest in occupied and Non-Self Governing Territories,” says Ronny Hansen, spokesperson for the Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara, which helped bring the situation to his government’s attention. “The guidelines also make specific reference to Western Sahara. So when we called for disinvestment, the fund had an easy decision to make.”

Hansen hopes that a mix of public exposure and financial divestment will drive Kerr-McGee out of the Western Sahara. Responding to Kerr-McGee’s claim that its contract with Morocco, in its present form, is perfectly legal, Hansen argues, “Kerr-McGee offers political legitimization to the Moroccan occupation and contributes in escalating the conflict. This is crystal clear.”

Kerr-McGee spokesperson Christiansen counters: “Again, we support the ongoing efforts of the United Nations to find a permanent and amicable solution to the Western Sahara issue. Kerr-McGee, by its Reconnaissance Permit, has not prejudged or prejudiced such efforts.”

Not only are there serious questions as to whether Kerr-McGee is helping Rabat (the Moroccan capital) strengthen its hold on the Western Sahara, and thereby undermining the peace process, but Morocco may not have a legal right to offer oil and gas exploration contracts in the contested territory.

Given the Western Sahara’s international status as a colony (i.e., a Non-Self-Governing Territory), the United Nations called for an official legal opinion in 2001, shortly after Morocco offered the Western Saharan concessions to Kerr-McGee and Total.

The following February, UN Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs, Hans Corell, offered an opinion that gave ammunition to both sides.

“The UN under-secretary for legal affairs has confirmed that we acted lawfully in contracting with Morocco,” Christiansen says. “Neither the United States nor the United Nations recognizes any other administrative authority or government in that territory.”

In Kerr-McGee’s favor, Corell’s opinion said, “The specific contracts are not in themselves illegal.”

But Fadel, representing the government in exile, counters that by undermining the legitimacy of Morocco’s occupation, the opinion actually confirms the illegality of Kerr-McGee’s contracts.

Another passage in Corell’s opinion seems to support Fadel: “[I]f further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara,” the UN official wrote, “they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.”

In its most simple form, the issue may boil down to the common sense proposition that only the side with legal sovereignty can legally grant exploration and extraction rights.

According to Corell, the 1975 Madrid Agreement “did not transfer sovereignty over the Territory, nor did it confer upon any of the signatories the status of an administering Power, a status which Spain alone could not have unilaterally transferred.”

“[A]s far as International Law is concerned,” Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos recently told the Spanish parliament, “Spain remains the administering power” of the Western Sahara, and its hand-off to Morocco was never legal.

Even Morocco’s allies have had to clarify their position on the status of the Western Sahara. On the conclusion of a bilateral free trade deal with Morocco in July 2004, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said: “The United States and many other countries do not recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and have consistently urged the parties to work with the United Nations to resolve the conflict by peaceful means. The Free Trade Agreement will not include Western Sahara.”

Despite Rabat’s intransigence and Kerr-McGee’s legal parsing, the exiled Saharan government has remained optimistic. It has even offered its own licenses to competing oil companies for the same areas off the Western Saharan coast, although these deals will only come to fruition if their nation achieves independence.

Fadel is certain that this will happen soon enough. “Most colonial powers cling to power until the last minute and Morocco is not an exception,” he said. “The [Moroccan] regime knows deep inside that they have failed to win the heart and minds of the Saharan people despite 30 years of occupation and that they have to leave sooner or later. Our hope rests on our faith in the determination and will of our people and the justice of our cause.”

——

Jacob Mundy served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco (1999-2001) and is a member of Western Sahara Resource Watch. He is the co-author of a forthcoming book on the conflict with Stephen Zunes.

This story originally appeared July 21 in CorpWatch.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12506

RESOURCES:

History of Western Sahara
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Friends of the Western Sahara
http://www.friendsofthewesternsahara.org

See also our last news update on Western Sahara
/node/1009

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2005

Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingMIXING OCCUPATION AND OIL IN WESTERN SAHARA 

DARFUR: THE OVERKILL

The Janjaweed Spin Out of Control

by Rene Wadlow

The on-going conflicts in the provinces of Darfur in western Sudan are a textbook example of how programmed escalation of violence can go out of control. It is increasingly difficult for both the insurgency and the government-backed forces to de-escalate the conflict which has been called with reason “genocide.” It will be even more difficult after the war to get the pastoralists and the settled agriculturalists to live together again in a relatively cooperative way.

Darfur (the home of the Fur) was always marginal to the politics of modern Sudan and to the two phases of the North-South civil war, which took place from 1954-1972 and 1982-2005. In the 19th century, Darfur, about the size of France, was an independent Sultanate loosely bound to the Ottoman Empire. It was on a major trade route from West Africa to Egypt, so populations from what is now northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Chad joined the older ethnic groups of the area, the Fur, the Masalit, the Zaghawa and the Birgit. Nomads from Libya also moved south into Darfur. As the population density was low, a style of life with mutual interaction between pastoral herdsmen and settled agriculturalists with some livestock developed. Increasingly, however, there was ever-greater competition for water and forage made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert.

France and England left Darfur as a buffer zone between the French colonial holdings –what is now Chad–and the Anglo-Egyptian-controlled Sudan. French-English rivalry in West Africa had nearly led earlier to a war, and a desert buffer was of more use than its low agricultural and livestock production would provide to either European colonial power. It was only in 1916 during the First World War when French-English colonial rivalry in Africa wilted before the common German enemy that the English annexed Darfur to the Sudan without asking anyone in either Darfur or the Sudan if such a “marriage” was desirable.

Darfur continued its existence as a peripheral and environmentally fragile area of Sudan. It was marginal in economics but largely self-sufficient. Once Sudan won its independence in 1956, Darfur was deemed politically as well as economically marginal. Darfur’s people have received less education, less healthcare, less development assistance, and fewer government posts than any other region. Southerners were given governmental and administrative posts in the hope of diminishing the violent North-South divide. There was no such incentive to “share the wealth” with Darfur. Its political weight was lessened still further in a 1995 “administrative reform,” when Darfur was divided into three provinces: Northern Darfur, Western Darfur, and Southern Darfur. Some areas that were historically Darfur were added to Northern and Western Bahr El-Ghazal. The division of Darfur did not lead to better local government, nor to additional services from the central government. It must be added that Darfur’s local political leadership showed a special skill in supporting national political leaders just as they were about to lose power–first Al Sadig Al Mahdi (1989) and then Hassan al-Turabi (2001).

During the North-South civil war, Darfur, as a largely Muslim area, supported the North, and some militias from Darfur formed raiding parties to attack villages in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. However, Darfur’s leaders counted for little in the long North-South negotiations which finally led to a power-sharing accord in January 2005. Wealth from the oil fields, largely situated on the edge of the North-South dividing line, had been a prime issue in both the war and peace negotiations. Under the accord, oil wealth is to fund development programs for the South, while preserving a unified Sudanese state.

Ironically, it was the North-South peace negotiations which set the stage for the Darfur revolt. In 2000, Darfur’s political leadership met to draw up a “Black Book” which detailed the region’s systematic under-representation in national government since independence. The “Black Book” marked the start of a rapprochement between the Islamists and the secular radicals of Darfur who both wanted a better deal for the region. Three years later, these two tendencies took up arms as loosely allied guerilla groups, the more secularist Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Islamist-leaning Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

However, at the level of the central government, the “Black Book” led to no steps to address the political and economic position of Darfur. This lack of reaction convinced some in Darfur that only armed action would bring recognition and compromise, as the war in the South had done.

In July 2002, the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed a framework protocol for peace in Machakos, Kenya. It seemed that peace was at hand. Therefore, if Darfur was to share in the potential new prosperity, armed violence to gain attention for the cause had to be undertaken soon. The two Darfur groups, SLA and JEM, started to structure themselves, gather weapons and men. The idea was to strike in a spectacular way that would lead the government to take notice and to start wealth-sharing negotiations. They did not envisage a long drawn out conflict of the countryside against the towns of Darfur.

By February 2003, the two groups were prepared to act, and in one night attacked and destroyed many of Sudan’s military planes based at El Fasher. The Sudan military lost in one night more planes than it had in 20 years of war against the South.

However, the central government’s “security elite”–battle hardened from its fight against the South but knowing that the regular army was over-extended and tired of fighting–decided to use against Darfur techniques that it had used with some success against the South: arming, and giving free reign to militias and other irregular forces.

Thus the government armed and directed existing popular defense forces and tribal militias in Darfur. The government also started pulling together a fluid and shadowy group, now called the Janjaweed (“the evildoers on horseback”). To the extent that the make-up of the Janjaweed is known, it seems to be a collection of bandits, of Chadians who had used Darfur as a safe haven for the long-lasting insurgencies in Chad, remains of Libya’s Islamic Forces which had once been under the control of the Libyan government but left wandering when Libyan policy changed, probably some daytime police and military (the Janjaweed acting nearly always at night), and some traditional nomad leaders from Darfur.

The central government gave these groups guns, uniforms, equipment, and indications where to attack by first bombing villages. But they gave no regular pay. Thus the militias had to pay themselves by looting homes, crops and livestock, by taking slaves and raping women and girls. Village after village was destroyed on the pretext that some residents supported the SLA or the JEM; crops were burned; water wells filled with sand. As many people as possible fled to Chad or to areas thought safer in Darfur. The campaign has now lasted over a year and a half. As the acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr Bertrand Ramcharan, stressed: “First, there is a reign of terror in this area; second, there is a scorched-earth policy; third, there is repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity; and fourth, this is taking place before our very eyes.”

The United Nations set up an International Commission of Inquiry which confirmed the worst fears of the deliberately destructive nature of the conflict, the intended consequences of which are to destroy a way of life. The Commission of Inquiry as well as the UN Commission on Human Rights has recommended that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity be tried by the International Criminal Court. This will be the first major test of the new court, and thus will be important to watch and analyze.

It is not clear to what extent the central government can now control–or disarm, as the UN has requested–the Janjaweed even if they wanted to. Darfur now represents a classic case of how violence spins out of control and goes beyond the aims for which it was first used by the powerful. For the moment, it is hard to see how the violence can be reduced. The African Union has sent in military observers to oversee a non-functioning ceasefire. Talks between the government of Sudan and the JEM and SLA leadership in the Nigerian capital Abuja have broken down. The Sudanese government has honed its survival instincts for a long time, ably playing its “Arab” character for support within the Arab League and its “African” role within the African Union. There is little external support for the JEM and SLA. However, they have been able to get arms on the international “gray market.”

The situation in Sudan will be discussed by the UN General Assembly in New York just after a September summit devoted to reform of the UN–in part to cope better with intra-state conflicts such as that of Sudan. The UN and especially its Commission on Human Rights has played an increasingly active role. The Commission’s 2005 resolution on Sudan stressed three path-making elements which merit wide attention:

a) the key role that is to be played by the International Criminal Court in the Hague; b) the increased cooperation and mutual support between the UN system and the African Union; c) the emphasis on preparing now for post-conflict reconstruction and ecologically-sound development based on “promoting the peaceful social coexistence between different tribes in Darfur.”

As with all UN resolutions, much will depend on the follow-up which will be taken by governments and non-governmental organizations. We can all help build awareness of the innovative thinking expressed in the Sudan resolution and the need for concerted action.

——

Rene Wadlow is editor of the online journal of world politics Transnational Perspectives and an NGO representative to the UN at Geneva. Formerly, he was professor and director of research of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva.

This story originally appeared in the Aug. 24 edition of Toward Freedom.
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/557/1/

RESOURCES:

“Sudan: The Shadow of a Death” by Rene Wadlow, on the death of Sudanese leader John Garang http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/537/1/

“Dying in Darfur” by Samantha Power, including interview with Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal,
The New Yorker, Aug. 30, 2004
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040830fa_fact1

“Sudan Research, Analysis and Advocacy” by Smith College professor Eric Reeves
http://www.sudanreeves.org/

See also:

“Darfur: NATO Prepares Intervention” by Wynde Priddy, WW4 REPORT #109
/node/459

WW4 REPORT’s last news update on Sudan
/node/873

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingDARFUR: THE OVERKILL 

Leopold Kohr Revisited

REVISTED:

 

THE BREAKDOWN OF NATIONS
by Leopold Kohr
Routledge, 1986 (first published in 1957)

by Bill Weinberg

In the renewed Cold War of the 1980s, many leftists and peace activists in Europe and America were so caught up in the polarization that they failed to recognize the horrific realities of the Soviet superpower. In response, some alienated progressives called for a “third camp” opposed to all centralized power and identifying scale as the fundamental question. The authors of this movement’s manifestos, such as EF Schumacher (Small is Beautiful, 1973) and Kirkpatrick Sale (Human Scale, 1980), all find their mentor in Leopold Kohr, an Austria-born rogue academic who began his crusade with a 1941 article in The Commonweal, “Disunion Now!”, a lonely dissent against moves towards a post-war United Nations. This was later expanded into the founding decentralist manifesto The Breakdown of Nations, which warned against the Utopianism of “ending war,” and called for a Europe (and a world) of small states, with the power to wage only small wars.

Ironically, the revised European map that Kohr envisioned has now partially been realized—but through a resurgence of ethnic nationalism and intolerance, and, in the cases of Yugoslavia and the Caucasus, explosions of hatred and violence which have shocked the world. It was after the end of the Cold War that the contradictions of the radical decentralists became evident.

When Schumacher’s UK-based journal Resurgence started moving towards the mainstream after his death, another Kohr protege, John Papworth, split to form his own small Fourth World Review—with a motto of “For Small Nations, Small Communities & The Human Spirit”—which Kohr continued to contribute to until his own death in 1994. Papworth and his followers bitterly protested the UK’s entrance into the European Union. But their rhetoric invoked the sovereignty of the English crown, and even nostalgia for Maggie Thatcher—as if Britain were not holding Ulster, Scotland and Wales captive, and as if Thatcher’s beloved NATO was not as much an exponent of the “Cult of Giganticism” as the EU.

One Fourth World Review editorial warned that rather than unifying, Europe should “take exactly the opposite road; towards a deliberate fragmentation of the larger nation states, such as is now in progress in the former USSR, in Yugoslavia and in Czechoslovakia”—seemingly blind to the human disaster in the post-Communist world. Admittedly, in 1992, when the editorial ran, the worst was yet to come—but Croatia had been in flames for a year, and the Bosnian bloodbath had already begun. Fourth World Review became more marginal as the breakdown of nations actually commenced.

These contradictions are evident in The Breakdown of Nations—which invokes the tenacious ethnic nationalism of “Macedonians, Sicilians, Basques, Catalans, Scots, Bavarians, Welsh, Slovaks or Normans” on page 57, while applauding Switzerland for not dividing cantons along ethnic lines on page 173. Kohr hailed both little Switzerland and, ironically, the giant USA as “successful federal states.” He offered no acknowledgement of the captive nations within the US—such as the Mohawk, Lakota and Navajo.

The book’s fatal flaw is that it presents its “size theory of social misery” not as a useful and vital insight, but as the single, hegemonic explanation for poverty and oppression. Kohr hailed his “law of diminishing sensitivity” (by which the scale of atrocities reduces the perpetrator’s sense of guilt), as the “cause of war.” Therefore, he committed the exact same error as the orthodox Marxists, with their economistic prescriptions, when he wrote that “everything works on the small scale, capitalism as well as socialism.”

Kohr, writing in the era of the New Deal and anti-trust, could not have anticipated how the multinational corporation, with its global bodies such as GATT and the WTO, would supercede the nation-state as the real arbiter of power. The contraction of state power we now witness (“free trade” in the West; breakdown in the East) actually facilitates an even greater centralization of planetary power in the hands of private-sector bosses with no accountability to the public. Meanwhile, entities such as Radovan Karadzic’s brutal Serb Republic have made a mockery of Kohr’s contention that “the small state is by nature internally democratic.”

As a partisan of Kohr in the 1980s, I was warned by one friend that the corporations could become “the zookeepers of a re-tribalized planet.” When I echoed Kohr’s call for breaking up the imperialist powers in the conclusion of my 1991 book War on the Land: Ecology & Politics in Central America, one reviewer (Jim Glassman in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism) protested that “sovereignty struggles need to be combined with…a commitment to socialism (or some other non-capitalist social order) before they can pose alternatives to the reigning world system.” Ten years later, I have to conclude that he was correct. A new model for radical localist movements is southern Mexico’s Zapatistas, who resist local wealth inequities while disavowing “separatism” in favor of “pluri-ethnic autonomy.”

Chapter 11 of Kohr’s book is entitled “But Will It Be Done?”, and the entire text famously consists of a single word: “No!”

Instead, it is being done—and in precisely the ways Kohr outlined in his conclusion. He posited that either a European Union would erode the old nationalisms of (for instance) Britain and Spain, allowing greater autonomy for Scotland and Catalonia—or that after a new World War, the victorious superpower would divide the great nations of Europe as Napoleon and Hitler had. We see something like this as well, in the re-balkanization of the Balkans into ever-smaller fragments under the auspices of NATO occupation. But Kohr’s very successors resist Euro-unification as the emergence of a new imperialist bloc, and the new Balkan mini-states substitute ethnic extremism for any real control over local resources.

If orthodox leftists need to grapple with issues of scale, so do the decentralists need to grapple with issues of class and capital. If the nightmare of the actually-existing “breakdown of nations” can spark this kind of reckoning in both camps, the opportunities represented by the end of the Cold War may not be lost after all.

This review originally appeared, in slightly different form, in the Fall 2000 issue of The Non-Violent Activist, the magazine of the War Resisters League. See also the letters page exchange it sparked with John Papworth.

Continue ReadingLeopold Kohr Revisited 

AFTER THE LIVE 8 HOOPLA: A CALL FOR REFLECTION

How Bob Geldof De-Contextualizes African Hunger

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

Amidst all the hype and hoopla generated by the Live 8 concert last month, it is necessary to raise some critical questions and propose some criticisms. The organizer of the event, Irish rock star Bob Geldof, has received more attention from the media than all other individuals and institutions dedicated to combating hunger in Africa and the rest of the world. Anyone would think that Mr. Geldof is lthe only person in the world who has made a real effort to combat hunger in Africa. It may be necessary for the organizations of civil society that have attended to the problem of hunger –AND ITS CAUSES–especially in Africa, to draw up an open letter to Mr. Geldof raising a few points.

A little background is in order: In 1984, Geldof took the initiative to do something about the tragedy of Africa, and brought together several of pop music’s most renowned personalities to form an ad hoc group called Band Aid, with the purpose of raising funds. It is to the credit of the Irish musician that he aspires to advance a just cause, although he is not the first rock’n’roller to follow his ideals. In the past decades, there have been many interpreters of popular music who have assumed much more controversial and less popular postures, and received in turn fewer elegies than Geldof, and much repudiation and abuse from reactionary sectors. Victor Jara comes to mind, but there are many others.

Fame breeds imitation, and Band Aid was not an exception. It was followed by initiatives in the same style, like USA for Africa, Comic Relief, Farm Aid and the Live Aid concert in 1985, organized by Geldof himself. But the point of view of this enterprise was totally ignorant. There was never an effort to uncover the causes of hunger. Viewing the propaganda of these efforts, one could imagine that people die of hunger in Africa for no particular reason.

On occasion, the tragedy is attributed to drought or other natural disasters–a convenient and apolitical pseudo-explanation which leaves us asking why natural disasters are really worse in Africa than other parts of the world.

Twenty years later, Geldof is a much more worldly man. The Live 8 concert included an effort to identify the causes of hunger and an unequivocal demand to the leaders of the G8 to do something in that respect. Among the demands was cancellation Africa’s foreign debt, and for a fair trade policy.

DEBT CANCELLATION. It is simply immoral to discuss how to pull Africa out of poverty without demanding the cancellation of the oppressive foreign debt. Geldof did support cancellation of the debt–but under the deal worked out at the G8 summit in Edinburgh, in exchange for this the African nations must accept the economic recipes of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF): neoliberal measures and open markets. That is to say, changing one form of slavery for another. Does Geldof justify this? He needs to clarify his position.

How can the organizers of Live 8 advocate the cancellation of the debt if they don’t name names? The principal institutions responsible for the strangling and unpayable debt have names and addresses: the World Bank and the IMF, the so-called Bretton Woods institutions. A decade ago, activists across the world united to form the 50 Years in Enough coalition to take advantage of the festivities marking the fiftieth anniversary of these two institutions, to tell the world that their policies and bad loans have been a total disaster for the countries of the South, and especially for the poor. Did Geldof support this coalition? Has he ever issued a declaration critical of the Bretton Woods institutions? Has he ever assisted in any of the numerous and multitudinous protests against the World Bank and IMF in the past 15 years?

FAIR TRADE. Geldof and company also called for fair trade for Africa. But they should make clear exactly what they mean by this. It is certain that agricultural protectionism and export subsidies (dumping) by the rich countries has been a mortal blow to the economy and food security of Africa and all the South. The further opening of the markets of the North to products from the South will not change North-South relations in any essential way. Wore still, it could only reinforce the role of the South as provider of cheap raw materials.

And the dumping of the vast agricultural surpluses of the European Union and the United States has been a virtual massacre for agriculture in the South, especially the small producers which are the vertebrate column of rural communities and the most promising sector for ecological production and food sovereignty. Geldof and his cohorts should make clear their position on this macabre trade practice. And spare us the argument that you favor the end of agricultural subsidies in the North and South equally. Because it is truly barbaric to equate the two, and it is a simplistic Manicheanism to allege that all agricultural subsidies are evil.

And on the subject of food exports, one wonders if Geldof has ever said anything about how food aid has been and is being used as a weapon of coercion against the poor countries, how this has often pulverized local productions, and how the United States is using to find captive markets of last resort for genetically engineered (GE) grain that nobody wants.

And what does Geldof think about GE grain? Certainly someone such as himself, who has been so long occupied with the problem of hunger, has to have heard the siren songs of companies like Monsanto and Syngenta. How is it possible that he has never expressed himself on an issue that has sparked such heated controversy? Had he ever sought the expertise of Tewolde Egziabher, Ethiopia’s official spokesman in matters of biodiversity and biosafety, or some of the other African farmers and organizations that unequivocally oppose GE crops?

It is not possible to speak of GE crops and world hunger without taking on the agroindustrial model of the Green Revolution. In all the grassroots forums which have addressed the problem of hunger from a political and ecological perspective, there has been an energetic condemnation of this model as inherently anti-ecological and socially retrograde. What does Geldof think of the Green Revolution?

Nor can we speak of the hazards of GE crops and industrial agriculture without speaking of intellectual property rights. If Geldof is as worldly as he appears, he must be aware that in Africa millions of people are suffering unnecessarily from the dire consequences of the HIV virus because they don’t have access to medicines that could save their lives. He should know that when the South African government proposed to make generic versions of these medicines, the pharmaceutical transnationals protested, claiming this would be piracy, unauthorized reproduction of patented products. The pharmaceutical companies, that own the patents to these medicines, insist that the famished of African must pay market price, even if they die. If he is so moved by the agony of Africans, has he ever said anything about these medical patents?

And what of patents on seeds, an issue with very obvious and serious implications for world food security?

And turning to positive proposals, did Live 8 say anything about the concept of food sovereignty? What about agrarian reform?

Well, better to leave it here. What irritates is that initiatives like Live 8 ignore the efforts–many far more serious and substantive–of numerous individuals and organizations that also fight the hunger, but do not fear to call the things by their name, that do not aspire to be become figures of show business, and that do not hesitate to tackle controversial and unpleasant matters. In the course of one week, Geldof and Live 8 have received more fame and publicity than a lot more deserving agencies as Via Campesina and the World Social Forum. For this reason, it may be opportune for these groups to release an open letter while the hoopla occasioned by Live 8 persists.

I will close with the wise words of the Argentine agronomist Jorge E. Rulli of Grupo de ReflexiĂłn Rural:

“No queremos que nos ayuden. Con que nos saquen las manos de encima es suficiente.”

We do not want their help. It is sufficient that they take their hands off us.

—————

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero is director of the Proyecto de Bioseguridad Puerto Rico, a research associate at the Institute for Social Ecology and a senior fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program. His blog is online at: http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com

RESOURCES:

50 Years is Enough
http://www.50years.org/

World Social Forum
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org/br

Via Campesina
http://www.viacampesina.org

Grupo de ReflexiĂłn Rural
http://www32.brinkster.com/grrlaplata/GRR.html

“Food Security: Not Biotech,” by Tewolde Egziabjer, International Forum on Globalization http://www.ifg.org/news/sac/sacbtew.htm

See also WW4 REPORT’s coverage of Live 8 and the G8 summit:
/node/741

Also by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero:

“US Attacks Iraqi Agriculture,” WW4 REPORT #105
/105/iraq/agriculture
————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com






Continue ReadingAFTER THE LIVE 8 HOOPLA: A CALL FOR REFLECTION 

#. 112. August 2005

OPERATION IRON FIST
UN Troops Chase Down Child Soldiers in Congo’s Forgotten War;
Hutu Militias as Pawn in Great Game for Central Africa’s Mineral Wealth
by keith harmon snow

TRUTH, DEATH AND MEDIA IN IRAQ
Part Two in an Unfortunately Continuing Series
by Michael I. Niman

WHY DOES Z MAGAZINE SUPPORT GENOCIDE?
Against “Leftist” Revisionism on the Srebrenica Massacre
by Bill Weinberg

AFTER THE LIVE 8 HOOPLA: A CALL FOR REFLECTION
How Bob Geldof De-Contextualizes African Hunger
by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

From Weekly News Update on the Americas:

PERU: TRADE TREATY PROTESTS; INDIGENOUS BLOCK OIL OPERATIONS
BOLIVIA: ELECTORAL ACCORD REACHED; VIOLENCE CONTINUES
ECUADOR: COLOMBIA BORDER VIOLATIONS; INTERNAL REPRESSION
COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARIES KILL CAMPESINOS, UNIONISTS
VENEZUELA: U.S. PLANS PROPAGANDA WAR, CAMPESINOS MARCH
CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA PASSES, STATE TERROR RESURGENT

Book Review:
AND THE GIANT SUV THAT IS AMERICA GOES OFF THE CLIFF…
Peak Oil and the Coming Apocalypse
by Tim Corrigan

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Continue Reading#. 112. August 2005 

AND THE GIANT SUV THAT IS AMERICA GOES OFF THE CLIFF…


THE LONG EMERGENCY
Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Disasters of the Twenty-First Century
by James Kunstler
Grove/Atlantic, 2005

by Tim Corrigan

Hate Walmart and Hummers? Good news! The end of them is nigh–but you’ll have little time to enjoy their demise as you huddle in the cold and dark ten years from now and scramble for food to avoid your own end… James Kunstler’s The Long Emergency is about the approach of the peak of global oil production and its aftermath, and he argues that the foreseen disasters will happen much sooner than we expect and without much warning. He also argues that our blinders on this issue and lack of preparation will make the ensuing disaster even worse than it might otherwise be.

Peak oil is the idea first described by M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil, who created a mathematical relationship to describe the time between the peak of exploration and the peak of production, and how production will decline over time. In other words, some time after you realize you are finding less new oil fields, you can use this curve to figure out approximately when you will start producing less oil, and from that you can roughly determine when your lights will go out.

The peak of global oil discoveries was in 1964, and the peak of global production may have already occurred. At current rates of consumption, that would give an absolute maximum of about 37 years between the peak and the definitive end of the oil-based economy–and, as he emphasizes, the first half was the oil that was easy to find and extract. Additionally, global consumption is growing as China and India ramp up their consumer economies.

Due to what he calls “the rear view mirror” effect, we’ll only wake up to the decline after we’re already in it. Some disruptive global event similar to the 1973 OPEC embargo will occur, and prices will find a new level far higher than now. The high oil-consuming nations realize that we have entered the era of permanent scarcity.

Kunstler’s argument is that we have already reached the point he calls “overshoot,” where no matter how well-intentioned and hard-working we are in addressing the issue (assuming, for a second, our country had any serious intention of working hard on this issue) we are in for a hard landing that may disrupt civilization for an indefinite amount of time. We’re using what he calls a one-time endowment of millions of years of accumulated solar energy in the form of oil to subsidize American civilization’s greatest “achievement”–sprawl. We can’t get that energy back, and he argues that no other form of fuel will allow that level of energy concentration needed to make car culture possible. And the very size of our investment in the suburbs and our sense of entitlement as Americans will, he argues, prevent us from taking any steps to start dealing with our energy issues seriously. For suburbanites, it is literally unthinkable that we would have to give up our cars.

When you wish upon a star…

Kunstler attacks what he sees as the American tendency to think that because we have solved many technical problems in the past, we will auto-magically come up with something that will fix our lack of oil, just in time. He calls this the “Jiminy Cricket effect,” where we seem to believe that just wishing will make it so. In one chapter he quickly runs through half a dozen alternative energy technologies, and dispatches almost all of them in a few pages. To one extent or another, he describes them as being either simply infeasible or indirectly dependent on oil to create. For example, the production of solar panels is dependent on oil energy. Panels are made out of plastic and silicon – the manufacturing process requires oil, and some of the actual material comes from oil products. And panels are useless without batteries created from petroleum byproducts. Hydrogen is simply a storage medium for energy, but is not energy itself. He sees nuclear as one option that would produce more juice than it loses, but argues that at this point America will not be able to build enough of a nuclear infrastructure to keep the lights on–partly because people aren’t scared enough yet to overcome NIMBY attitudes.

Kunstler dismisses a huge number of new technologies, many of which have already reached feasibility on a limited scale. It’s true that renewables are a tiny fraction of a percent of our energy use now, but the technologies are still maturing, and people have not had a reason yet to use them on a large scale because oil was at $10 a barrel only three years ago. To use an analogy from digital technology: we had digital cameras for consumers for almost a decade before they became popular, and then they went from no penetration to virtually supplanting film cameras in less than a decade. Solar cells have roughly tripled in efficiency in the last 15 years, become common in certain applications, and are spreading to new ones every day. Wind power has reache economic viability in many places without subsidies.

To say that all of these technologies are impossible to build without oil is ludicrous–many forms of metal production actually use electricity as their main form of power. Wind is not as convenient or high-grade a power source as oil (you can’t plug your car into a windmill; some storage mechanism is required), but we have a lot of plains and coastlines where it could be easily exploited.

Wind power also requires aluminum and steel, and Kunstler says that we will not be able to extract the raw materials for this renewable energy push when we need them. On the other hand, if we are moving beyond SUV’s and Walmarts, obviously a lot of recyclable raw materials–metals and plastics in particular–will already be close at hand in the vast lots of suddenly immobilized Hummers and Excursions.

To be fair, his argument is that these technologies might be possible for a large portion of the power we will need, but they will not allow suburbia to continue as it has. He may be right about this, or maybe not. The needs of most commuters could be served fairly well by a number of technologies that exist, or are close to economic viability–for example, a car in Italy was developed to use compressed air as its power source. It might look more like a scooter with a roof than a Hummer, but if that was the car that your typical American could afford they’d no doubt take it over a bicycle or trains. The suburbs may become smaller and more dense, but there is no reason we could not rebuild streetcar lines where we currently have major highways.

However, Kunstler may still be correct in his overall scenario, since even if the renewable energy technologies end up being feasible, we may not choose to deploy enough renewable energy soon enough to prevent the disasters predicted in The Long Emergency.

Kunstler seems driven to quickly get these alternative energy sources out of the way so he can get on to his main topic–the collapse of suburbia and the drive-thru lifestyle. He has written several other books about suburbia and its impact on American life–most notably 1993’s The Geography of Nowhere–and he sets up a scenario where our sprawl will simply disintegrate as people are unable to get the energy they need to commute. All of us who don’t like the Walmartization of American culture will have some reason to cheer–as the oil that makes the products cheaply and transports them 12,000 miles runs out, we will find the big box stores drying up and blowing away. The very scale that they operate at will make them unable to continue, as consumers can no longer drive 80 miles round trip to buy tchotchkes from China. The problem is, however, that we will be looking to replace everything we currently import with things produced locally–which we don’t have the expertise or supply chain to do any more–just around the time that we’re running out of energy and dealing with the impact of global warming.

The stuff we buy used to be made in the town where we lived–there were local clothing mills, shoe makers, metal smiths, not to mention farmers nearby. First with the railroad, and then with trucks and planes, we’ve stretched this to the point where if we aren’t bringing containers in from China, we will have no clothes. Our produce is increasingly from Mexico. Car parts are also from China and Mexico. Electronics are almost entirely produced overseas. In other words, we can’t maintain our current way of doing things if international trade shuts down for any length of time. Worse yet, the chain of human skills necessary to get the factories going again is gone.

In fact, the way he sees things, the big, looming, obvious disaster is likely to distract us from seeing the equally huge but less obvious disasters to follow. Networks that we have built around plentiful energy will suddenly stop working, with additional disastrous, unforeseen side effects. One example is the natural gas network–right now this is the cooking and heating fuel for millions of urban consumers; however, the natural gas supply depends on a minimum level of pressure in the lines. Below that, air gets into the lines, and the utility companies are forced to shut off the supply temporarily to rebuild the pressure. Some of the pilot lights in hot water heaters around the country might not go back on by themselves, causing gas explosions. If all of this happened during winter, skyscrapers could face a situation where their heat is off and forty stories of plumbing freezes and explodes–a scenario he claims almost happened in the winter of 2003. (A similar unexpected follow-on happened during the blackout of summer 2003, where people found that after the electricity went out they also couldn’t get gas because the pumps were all electric.)

The end result of these disasters, Kunstler believes, is that it will be impossible to organize a rational response to the problem as many different systems crucial to our society break down simultaneously. For instance, Kunstler predicts disruption of our food supply. Hydrocarbons are the feedstock of our “green revolution.” Beyond the fact that the fixings for the average Caesar salad travel 2,000 miles before they reach your plate, hydrocarbons are the base for the fertilizers and pesticides that we liberally spray on our fields and crops to increase yields to unnatural levels. He argues that really without hydrocarbons the “green revolution” does not exist, and we are in a situation where we will have billions of people more than we can support.


“One might take the view that World War Three has already started and we are well into it.”

While Kunstler argues for the end of big box stores and for a return to a more sustainable, local life, he is more a follower of realpolitick than a liberal. He was for the war in Iraq–because it was for oil.

“Of course [the war] was about oil… But members of the anti-war lobby were just as likely to be car-dependent suburbanites as Bush supporters were. At least that was my observation among my fellow middle aged yuppies in upstate New York. One family in my neighborhood had a sign in their yard that said ‘War is Not the Answer’–and had two SUV’s parked in the driveway.”

He argues that the war was the only rational response that a society as oil-dependent as ours could have had, as our supply was put in great danger by the erratic Baghdad regime. He thinks we should have eliminated Hussein and left. It seems Kunstler believes we should have gotten our society to a sustainable point long ago so all of this wouldn’t be necessary–but since we haven’t, we will have less and less latitude to act rationally as the crisis comes on us. Once we’re cold and hungry, we’ll support anyone who can keep the lights on, including, as he puts it “corn pone Nazis.”

At that point, we’ll still be in the Middle East, but current fig leaves of pretending to care about democracy there (or here) will vanish, as we are “forced” to occupy all of the Persian Gulf states to secure our fix of oil. Once we’ve alienated the Muslim world, they will destroy enough of the oil infrastructure to force us to withdraw (or make it pointless to stay), and China will be there to pick up the pieces–assuming there are pieces left to pick up. The global disaster could happen in a way that we don’t initially realize is connected to the struggle for oil–in much the same way that World War I was (to appearances) ignited by an assassination of one man.

Kunstler also predicts the crisis will bring world regionalization. Once the cheap transportation fuel is gone, globalization will be over–so over, in fact, that all regions of the world, and even constituent parts of large countries, will be left to muddle through as best they can on their own. Europe is very well prepared for this future already, since the cities there have little suburban sprawl, and distances are small. Local agriculture using sustainable methods has continued uninterrupted, and many of the European countries are well along in preparing for the end of oil–for example Denmark gets 15% of its power from wind already, and France gets 70% of its power from nuclear. Europe’s main problem is that a little ice age may occur as global warming shuts down the Gulf Stream conveyor of warm water that keeps the continent from freezing over.

In the United States, in contrast, the size of our country and the scale of the disaster will leave our regions to very different fates. Residents of the Southwest will wake up to the fact that they are in the desert, and 30 million or more people will need to move somewhere else–but not before a small war is fought with local Chicano insurgents seeking to establish the region as the Mexican-American homeland “Aztlan,” or re-unite it with Mexico.

The Great Plains will be marginally better off, and will largely de-populate as the current method of farming with fossil water becomes impossible with depletion of the aquifers. The Southeast will return to its agricultural, feudal roots. The Northeast and the Northwest will fare the better than the rest of the country due to climate, water supplies and culture, but the Northwest may be beset by Asian pirates.

This is one of the strangest predictions of The Long Emergency. For some reason, although he predicts the Gulf Stream conveyor will shut down and Europe will suddenly be in a little ice age, and “everything will become more local,” Asian pirates will ravage our West Coast after sailing 7,000 miles across the Pacific. It’s hard to understand why Europeans plunged into a new Dark Age will not also be a problem on our East Coast. I guess he never heard of the Vikings. Meanwhile, Mexicans will overthrow El Norte to reclaim an uninhabitable desert. Much of this seems to be a little bit of sensationalism to make the book more exciting. As I read these perhaps slightly racist sections, I found myself thinking that if Kunstler’s nightmare scenario ever does happen, we’re going to need every campesino we can find to teach us how to survive again as subsistence farmers.

Kunstler’s sheer catalog of catastrophes leaves a reader overwhelmed – global warming, but also a potential new ice age, the end of fossil water in the Great Plains, new diseases, natural gas shortages, economic collapse, wars for oil, wars for water, famine, piracy, rioting, and the list goes on. The Long Emergency ends up being like a Khmer Rouge fantasy of all of humanity forced to move back to the land in one huge Peak Oil Year Zero. If you follow this vision of the future–if you don’t just give up immediately–your next move should be to quickly acquire a skill like candle-making or shoeing horses and move out of the city. He offers some consolations in this nightmare future, as local communities rebuild–but to get there we end up abandoning many of our larger cities, and incidentally millions of people starve to death, kill each other or die in disease waves.

Kunstler is at his most effective where he is talking about our social and political obstacles to change. Our investment in the suburbs is such at this point that any talk of change would mean destroying virtually our entire economy as it now exists. In fact, he argues that except for the illusory industry of building the suburbs, we haven’t really had any economic growth of any kind in the last forty years–and that seems about right. He assails the assumption that we could have an entire economy based on cutting each other’s hair as being a fantasy. The parts of the book that critique suburban culture are good. The main problem with The Long Emergency is its use of questionable science to close off entire parts of the debate. It still provides a sobering look at a near worst-case scenario of where our culture’s momentum might take us if we fail to change our direction.

RESOURCES:

The Long Emergency excerpt, Rolling Stone, March 2005, online at TruthOut: http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/38/9893

See also WW4 REPORT’s ongoing coverage of the global oil crisis
/node/729

———-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com






Continue ReadingAND THE GIANT SUV THAT IS AMERICA GOES OFF THE CLIFF… 

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA PASSES, STATE TERROR RESURGENT

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Congress has now passed the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), with proponents claiming it will lead the isthmus to secure democracy, prosperity and modernity. But even as revelations continue to emerge about the state terror that claimed thousands of lives in the 1980s, the death squads show signs of resurgence—this time targeting opponents of the trade treaty, as well as criminal gangs. Meanwhile in Nicaragua, the left-opposition Sandinista Front which held power in the ’80s is divided over ex-president Daniel Ortega’s unlikely alliance with his former foes—potentially weakening the anti-CAFTA forces in that country, one of the last two in Central America where the treaty’s ratification is still pending.—WW4 REPORT

U.S. APPROVES DR-CAFTA

The US House of Representatives voted 217-215 in the early morning of July 28 to approve the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). The US Senate approved the measure on June 30; President George W. Bush, a strong supporter, is expected to sign it quickly. The trade pact requires ratification by the legislatures of all the participating countries. In addition to the US Congress, the legislatures of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have ratified; the measure is still awaiting a vote in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

Facing opposition from unions and even some business groups, DR-CAFTA supporters pulled out all the stops to achieve their narrow victory. President Bush visited the Capitol on July 27 in an unusual personal lobbying effort for the measure; Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and several other cabinet members were also there lobbying. The House’s Republican leaders began the voting shortly after 11 PM on July 27, but when it became clear that they didn’t have the votes to pass the measure in the normal 15-minute limit, they extended the time to nearly an hour. With all but 15 Democrats in opposition, the leadership put heavy pressure on Republican holdouts. According Lori Wallach, director of the DC-based Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (GTW), Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) talked about breaking arms “into 1,000 pieces.” There were even suggestions of vote tampering. Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) insisted he voted no but was counted as not voting due to a malfunction in the electronic voting system. (CNN, Miami Herald, GTW statement, July; NYT, July 29)

US Trade Representative Bob Portman called DR-CAFTA a “gateway” deal to more ambitious trade pacts, like the Andean trade pact with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which negotiators hope to complete in spring 2006, and the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The House vote sent “a powerful signal” that the US would “continue to lead in opening markets and leveling the playing field,” according to Portman.

But to Eric Farnsworth of the Council of the Americas, a New York-based pro-“free trade” group, “[t]hat it was so close, instead of an overwhelming victory, and so clearly split on partisan lines even in states such as Florida that depend on trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, indicates that the pro-trade consensus that used to prevail in Congress is on life support.” According to GTW’s Wallach, the close vote on “a trade deal of small economic significance” like DR-CAFTA “shows that any economically significant” measures like FTAA “would be dead on arrival.” (MH, July 28; GTW , Financial Times, July 28)

DR-CAFTA still faces hurdles in the three countries that haven’t voted. Costa Rican president Abel Pacheco has yet to send the measure to the legislature, which he wants to pass a fiscal reform bill first. Costa Rican unionists, environmentalists, students and farmers, especially rice growers, oppose the pact. The National Civic Movement has threatened social rebellion and national civil disobedience if the government proceeds with it.

Some 160 Dominican organizations have asked Parliament not to approve DR-CAFTA, and some legislators are insisting that the government include measures to compensate agricultural producers.

In Nicaragua a coalition of center-right legislators, including some members of the majority Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), claim to have the 47 votes needed to get DR-CAFTA through the National Assembly. But the current National Assembly president, Rene Nunez of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), hasn’t put the measure on the agenda. The FSLN, which lacks the votes to block the measure, may be planning to compromise. FSLN deputy Alba Palacios is calling for Nicaragua and Costa Rica to negotiate a five-year grace period before they join the pact, while FSLN deputy Edwin Castro wants DR-CAFTA to include “financing for infrastructure and other measures that will promote development and compensate the sectors that will be affected.” A study indicates that the trade pact will hurt 700,000 families and 200,000 agricultural producers in Nicaragua, which has a population of 5.4 million. (Servicio Informativo “Alai-amlatina,” MH, July 29)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31


GUATEMALA: RIGHTS DEFENDER KILLED

Heavily armed men shot and killed Guatemalan human rights activist Alvaro (“Alvarito”) Juarez the night of July 8 while he was in his home in San Benito in the northern department of Peten. Juarez was a leader in the Alliance for Life and Peace and a member of the Association of the Displaced of the Peten. He reportedly informed the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office in Guatemala City about threats he had received several days before his murder.

In a July 13 statement the Alliance for Life and Peace of the Peten said that Juarez’s death “occurred in the context of the struggles the Guatemalan people are carrying out against the Free Trade Agreement with the US [DR-CAFTA], the struggle against the dams on the Rio Usumacinta, the privatization of the Yaxha National Park, the struggle against mining in our lands….” Guatemalan human rights analysts note that two other human rights defenders have received written death threats. Like Juarez, they are leaders who have been important in the movement and active in the struggle against DR-CAFTA but have not been public.

The Association of the Displaced of the Peten has decided not to seek publicity in the media at this time, but activists are urged to appeal to President Oscar Berger Perdomo (fax +502 251 2218, email presidente@scspr.gob.gt) and Attorney General Juan Luis Florido (+502 251 2218) for a thorough investigation of the case and protection of Juarez’s family members and other human rights defenders. (Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA Urgent Action, July 12; Alianza por la Vida y la Paz de Peten statement, July 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17


GUATEMALA: APOLOGY FOR MASSACRE

In an official ceremony on July 18, the Guatemalan government recognized the state’s responsibility in the 1982 massacre of 268 people in the village of Plan de Sanchez, Rabinal municipality, in Baja Verapaz department. The formal ceremony at the site of the massacre, in which Vice President Eduardo Stein apologized directly to survivors and relatives of the victims, was mandated in a Nov. 24, 2004 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. Stein also visited the chapel where the victims were buried, and said that the $8 million in compensation ordered by the Inter-American Court will be put into a special fund.

“It’s not enough to ask forgiveness for the damages,” said Rosalina Tuyuc, president of the National Compensation Commission (CNR). “Now the most important thing is that the Public Ministry facilitate the investigations and sentence those with material and intellectual responsibility for the massacre.”

On July 18, 1982, a commando of some 60 army soldiers, military commissioners, court officials and civilian paramilitary patrollers dressed in military uniforms and armed with assault rifles entered Plan de Sanchez. The commando members first raped the women and girls of the village and killed them, then took the men, older women and children to a nearby site and murdered them. The next day military commissioners ordered the survivors to quickly bury the bodies at the site of the massacre. (Guatemala Hoy, July 19 from Agencia Cerigua, El Periodico, Prensa Libre, Diario de Centro America)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24


EL SALVADOR: VIOLENCE AT FARE PROTESTS

Starting at 6 am on July 4, residents of La Campanera and El Limon neighborhoods in the Salvadoran municipality of Soyapango blocked the main access road to protest a July 1 increase in bus fares from $0.20 to $0.25. The protesters said they would block the road until the old fare was restored. There were reports that the transport companies had agreed in the afternoon to reduce the fare; the protesters opened the road but said they would resume the blockade if the companies failed to honor the agreement. Soyapango is one of several large municipalities surrounding San Salvador. (Diario Colatino, El Salvador, July 14)

At 7 AM on July 6 some 50 to 200 students from the University of El Salvador (UES), in the northern part of San Salvador, protested the fare hike by blocking streets in front of the campus with burning tires. There was some tension with doctors and employees from the nearby Social Security clinic for the Atlacatl neighborhood. One patient arriving for an appointment told the students that in the 1970s they all would have been killed; but others supported the students. In mid-morning some 100 police agents from the Order Maintenance Unit (UMO) arrived and attacked the students, who threw rocks and withdrew into the campus. The police followed them to the edge of the university grounds and began firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the campus. Three police agents and at least six protesters were injured during the fighting, as were six journalists, who said masked youths threw rocks at them, calling them “manipulators.”

After an intervention by UES rector Isabel Rodriguez and Human Rights Ombudsperson Beatrice Alamanni de Carrillo, the police began a staged withdrawal. At around this time, a group of masked people thought to be students took over a bus near the campus and set it on fire. Children from a nearby school had to be evacuated because of fears that the burning bus might explode.

Legislators from the right-wing ruling Republican National Alliance (ARENA) party charged that the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) is promoting the conflicts in order to destabilize the country and prevent the US Congress from approving the Free Trade Agreement. (DC, July 6; Diario El Mundo, El Salvador, July 6; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 7)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10

EL SALVADOR: DEATH SQUADS REAPPEAR?

The bodies of three unidentified youths were found in the beginning of July on the highway from San Salvador to Santa Ana. Their hands were tied, and they had been shot in the head. Human rights groups said they feared this might indicate a return to the sort of summary executions that right-wing death squads carried out in the 1980s. “These murders, whose motive could be social cleansing for the extermination of gang members, show that the structures of the death squads are still present,” said Maria Julia Hernandez of the San Salvador Catholic archdiocese’s legal office. (ENH, July 5)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24


NICARAGUA: RIGHT-LEFT PACT PROTESTED

On July 17, thousands of people marched in the Nicaraguan city of Granada to protest an agreement between ex-president Daniel Ortega Saavedra (1984-1990) of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and ex-president Arnoldo Aleman (1997-2002) of the rightwing Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC). (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 18) The two parties joined forces last November to approve a packet of constitutional reforms which weaken the role of the presidency and strengthen the power of the National Assembly. President Enrique Bolanos has refused to accept the reforms, citing a March 29 ruling by the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ) which deemed them “legally inapplicable.” (El Mostrador, Chile, July 19)

Participants in the march decried the “pact” and demanded changes to Nicaragua’s electoral laws to make the presidential elections of 2006 “more democratic.” Activists said they gathered 1,500 signatures at the march on a petition supporting changes to mandate primary elections for party presidential candidates.

Former Managua mayor Herty Lewites and former vice president Sergio Ramirez spoke at the rally. (Nicaragua News Service, July 12-18; ENH, July 18) Lewites was expelled from the FSLN by unanimous vote of the Sandinista Assembly on Feb. 26 of this year because he sought to compete with Ortega for the party’s presidential candidacy for the 2006 elections. His campaign manager, Victor Hugo Tinoco, was also expelled. (Nicaragua News Service, Feb. 22-28) The FSLN then named Ortega as its presidential candidate at an assembly on March 5. (ENH, March13)

Lewites still plans to run for president in 2006, and on July 14 he announced that in September he would launch a “great coalition” to challenge the “strongmen that control almost all the institutions and branches of government.” Lewites was accompanied by Tinoco and ex-FSLN leaders Luis Carrion and Victor Tirado. (NNS, July 12-18)

The July 17 march was organized by the “Network for Nicaragua,” an alliance of civic and political groups which came together in June to challenge the PLC-FSLN pact and ensure that other parties are not excluded from the elections. Participants included members of leftist groups like Lewites’ “Rescue Sandinismo” movement as well as rightwing dissidents from the PLC and members of the Conservative Party and Bolanos’ Alliance for the Republic Party (APRE). (ENH, July 18 from AFP)

On July 19, Ortega headed an event marking the 26th anniversary of the day in 1979 when the FSLN overthrew the brutal US-backed right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The celebration took place near the Managua waterfront at the Plaza de la Fe Juan Pablo II, named for Pope John Paul II, who spoke there in February 1996. Independent pro-Sandinista newspaper El Nuevo Diario said the FSLN event filled the plaza to overflowing, but gave no crowd estimates; the anti-Sandinista La Prensa and the Spanish news service EFE both said only that “thousands” attended, while a pro-Ortega article by Francisco Chavarria in the European leftist internet publication Rebelion said the turnout of “more than 500,000” showed that “those who want to divide the party have suffered a resounding failure.”

Ortega told the crowd that the people will give him a new opportunity to be president of Nicaragua in next year’s elections. He blasted those who march against the FSLN-PLC pact, accusing them of polarizing the country and promoting confrontations. Ortega also criticized PLC leader Aleman, calling him a thief, according to El Nuevo Diario.

The theme of the event was reconciliation and peace, and its special guests included several former opponents of the FSLN, including right-wing politicians Jaime Morales Carazo and Azucena Ferrey; Atlantic coast leaders Steadman Fagoth and Brooklyn Rivera, who led armed “contra” forces against the FSLN government in the 1980s; and auxiliary bishop of Managua Msgr. Eddy Montenegro. (Rebelion, July 22 via Resumen Latinoamericano; END, July 20; LP, July 20; El Mostrador, July 19) A day earlier, July 18, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo–a prominent anti-Sandinista figure–headed up a “mass for reconciliation” attended by top FSLN leaders, including Ortega, who was photographed by the press accepting communion from his former opponent. (EM, July 19; El Diario-La Prensa, NY, July 20)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Our last blog post on Nicaragua’s political crisis
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RESOURCES:

Global Trade Watch
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Continue ReadingCENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA PASSES, STATE TERROR RESURGENT 

VENEZUELA: U.S. PLANS PROPAGANDA WAR, CAMPESINOS MARCH

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Two stories from Venezuela this month exemplify the pressures faced by President Hugo Chavez: on one hand, an increased push from Washington and the bourgeois opposition to capitulate in his populist programs or face destabilization; on the other, a powerful campesino movement demanding an extension and faster pace of populist reforms, especially land redistribution. Reports of local military commanders taking a hard line with campesino protesters point to continuing divisions within Venezuela’s armed forces.—WW4 REPORT


U.S. TO LAUNCH PROPAGANDA BLITZ?

On July 20 the US House of Representatives approved appropriations of $9 million in 2006 and $9 million in 2007 for groups opposing the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, according to information minister Andres Izarra, who complained that the beneficiaries of the aid are promoting abstention in the country’s Aug. 7 municipal council elections and encouraging civil disobedience. The same day, the House passed an amendment authorizing the broadcasting of radio and television signals into Venezuela to provide “precise, objective and complete” information to Venezuelans and counter “the anti-Americanism” of a new regional television network, Televisora del Sur (Telesur). “Chavez is an enemy of freedom and of those who support it and promote it,” said Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), who introduced the amendment.

Chavez responded on July 21 by warning that his government will block any US attempts to interfere with the Telesur broadcasts, which were set to begin on July 24. Chavez noted that if the Cuban government had been able to successfully neutralize the signal of the rightwing Radio Marti broadcasts since the 1980s, “here too we will neutralize any signal.” Chavez warned that the US government “will regret [this] because the response would be more powerful than the action, and will generate more conscience in Latin America.”

The Venezuelan embassy in Washington also issued a communique rejecting Mack’s amendment. The communique notes that Venezuela has private and public television stations, and suggested that it would be cheaper for US taxpayers if Mack were to try to convince private Venezuelan media to carry the US government’s Voice of America broadcasts, since none currently do.

Telesur is controlled 51% by the Venezuelan government, 20% by Argentina, 19% by Cuba and 10% by Uruguay. The station is set to broadcast four hours a day during a two-month trial period, with plans to expand in September. Headquartered in Caracas and with offices in Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Montevideo, La Paz, Bogota, Havana, Mexico City and Washington, Telesur hopes to offer an alternative to CNN and European networks. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 21, 22)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24


CAMPESINOS TAKE CARACAS

On July 11, as many as 5,000 Venezuelan campesinos (2,000 according to Agence France Presse) marched in Caracas to protest the violent deaths of some 130 campesinos around the country and to demand that the government take steps to halt the killings and abuses against campesinos and to speed up the process of agrarian reform. The protest, dubbed “Zamora Takes Caracas,” was organized by the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ) and backed by the Ezequiel Zamora National Agrarian Coordinating Committee (CANEZ), numerous agricultural cooperatives and the Jirahara and Prudencio Vasquez movements, among others. (Ezequiel Zamora was a populist military leader who led battles for campesino rights in Venezuela in the mid-1800s.)

The campesinos marched from the capital’s Fort Tiuna to the Attorney General’s Office, where they handed in a document detailing their demands, then to the National Assembly, where they submitted a proposal for an “agrarian constituent assembly” to strengthen the rights of the campesino movement and step up the process of agrarian reform. An estimated 75% of Venezuela’s land is in the hands of 5% of the population and remains mostly unused, while the country imports 70% to 80% of its food.

Agriculture and Lands Minister Antonio Albarran, who also serves as acting president of the National Land Institute (INTI), announced that a high-level commission will be set up to study the demands of the campesino movements and address specific complaints on a case-by-case basis. FNCEZ leader Braulio Alvarez, a deputy of the legislative council of Yaracuy state and member of the INTI board, said the new commission would work to get the courts to begin legal proceedings against 30 people believed to have ordered the murders of campesinos. Alvarez himself survived an attack on his life on June 23. (Radio Nacional de Venezuela, July 12; Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales, July 13; Centro Nacional de Tecnologias de la Informacion (CNTI), July 11; Resumen Latinoamericano, July 12; Report by Adriana Rivas posted July 14 on Colombia Indymedia)

On May 14, nearly 4,000 campesinos organized by the FNCEZ marched through the streets of Guasdualito, Apure state, in western Venezuela near the Colombian border. They were protesting, among other issues, the abuses committed by Gen. Oswaldo Bracho, commander of the Theater of Operations #1, which covers the states of Barinas, Tachira and Apure. The FNCEZ says campesinos in the zone have suffered an increase in human rights accuses since Bracho took over the command last November. In one incident, Bracho led 40 soldiers in a raid on the community of Canadon-Bella Vista, in the south of Barinas state, and seized five members of a campesino cooperative whom he accuses of providing shelter to leftist rebels. The five campesinos remain jailed in Santa Ana, Tachira state, even though there is no proof to back up the accusations against them, and local leaders point out that campesinos often have no choice but to provide shelter to armed groups. The FNCEZ said Bracho also tried to block campesinos from reaching the May 14 demonstration, holding them up on the highways for as long as five hours. (Endavant, July 13) In the July 11 mobilization in Caracas, the campesinos informed Congress about Bracho’s abuses. (RNV, July 12)

The US media seemed to ignore the July 11-13 mobilization by thousands of Venezuelan campesinos, but did cover a July 15 anti-government march in Caracas by fewer than 400 doctors and nurses who work in public hospitals. The health care workers were demanding wage increases and protesting the presence of some 14,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela. The Cubans provide health care to the country’s most underserved neighborhoods and rural areas under a special program sponsored by the government of left-populist president Hugo Chavez Frias. (AP, July 15)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17

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

NOTE: The leftist rebels active in western Venezuela are the Bolivarian Forces of Liberation (FBL). They took up arms shortly before Chavez came to power in 1998. According to the report on Colombia’s Agencia Prensa Rural: “Their objective is in no case to attack the actual government, but to guarantee that the Bolivarian revolution will continue advancing towards the consolidation of popular power, and to contribute to defending the process in case of external aggression. In spite of being an armed group, they have initiated very few actions.”—WW4R

Agencia Prensa Rural, July 13
http://www.prensarural.org/venezuela20050713.htm

See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Continue ReadingVENEZUELA: U.S. PLANS PROPAGANDA WAR, CAMPESINOS MARCH 

COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARIES KILL CAMPESINOS, UNIONISTS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

In spite of the “Justice and Peace” law passed in June, which provides an amnesty for Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary networks in exchange for “demobilization,” the networks appear to be as active as ever. Peasant and unionist leaders throughout the country continue to be targeted, even as the government of President Alvaro Uribe touts the “demobilization” program as evidence of progress towards peace to keep the US aid flowing in. Killings are reported this month from Dabeiba and Ciudad Bolivar, both in the Cordillera Occidental in Antioquia department, and El Castillo, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Meta department.—WW4 REPORT


DABEIBA: PARAMILITARIES KILL CAMPESINO

On July 3, at a checkpoint on the road leaving the town of Dabeiba in the Colombian department of Antioquia, rightwing paramilitaries took campesino Albeiro Higuita Agudelo off a local bus heading for Camparrusia. Later that afternoon, Higuita’s body, showing visible signs of torture, was found in Boton, 10 minutes from Dabeiba on the road to Medellin. Higuita was a member of the Campesino Association of Dabeiba; he lived in Balsillas, a rural community two and half hours from the town of Dabeiba.

The paramilitaries operate a permanent checkpoint at the exit point from Dabeiba, where they stop campesinos and control the amount of goods they can carry. Campesinos are not allowed to take tools, horseshoes or more than 30,000 pesos (less than $13) worth of food out of Dabeiba. Police and army forces are well-informed of the existence of the paramilitary checkpoint but leave it alone, since they are operating in coordination with the paramilitary groups, according to the Campesino Association of Dabeiba. Often the paramilitaries tell the campesinos that the confiscated goods can be reclaimed at the police station, and “in fact we do find them there,” the Association reports.

The Association is asking national and international solidarity organizations to demand that the government put a stop to the paramilitary checkpoint and the collaboration between public security forces and the paramilitaries. (Comunidad Campesina de Dabeiba, July 9 via Agencia Prensa Rural)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17

META: ANOTHER CAMPESINO KILLED

On the morning of July 10, armed paramilitaries abducted campesino Edgar Palacios in the urban center of El Castillo municipality, in the southern Colombian department of Meta, and took him to a house in the town of Medellin del Ariari, also in Meta. Later that evening the paramilitaries took Palacios in a vehicle to the bridge over the Cumaral river, five minutes from the town center of Medellin del Ariari. His body was found the next day, in the garden of a home next to the bridge. Colombian soldiers and police agents from a counter-guerrilla force had an active presence in the town and surrounding area from July 10 to 17–including carrying out a house-by-house census and setting up strict checkpoints on access roads–yet they failed to take any action against the paramilitaries. On July 11, after Palacios’ body was found, police agents called together town residents and urged them to expose the paramilitaries present in the area. Yet on July 13, several known paramilitaries were seen playing soccer with the police agents stationed in Medellin del Ariari. Later the same day, the body of a man dressed in camouflage who was unfamiliar to local residents was found 15 minutes outside the urban center of the town. (Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, July 20)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31


CIUDAD BOLIVAR: UNIONIST ASSASSINATED

On July 28, hired killers shot to death union leader Gilberto Chinome Barrera in La Estrella neighborhood of Ciudad Bolivar. Chinome was a former president of the refinery section of the United Union of Workers (USO), which represents workers at the state-run oil company Ecopetrol. In recent years he had focused on writing, including articles exposing administrative corruption at Ecopetrol. He had also sued Ecopetrol and the Colombian state. (USO Communique, July 29, via Colombia Indymedia)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31


COLOMBIAN AMBASSADOR GETS IADB POST

On July 27 Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia’s ambassador to the US, was elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), replacing Enrique Iglesias of Uruguay, who retired in May after 17 years in the position. Moreno won 60% of the votes of the bank’s shareholders and 20 votes from the 28 member nations. Brazilian candidate Jose Sayad, currently an IADB vice president, came in second with seven country votes. Moreno’s election was seen as a victory for the US, which failed to get its candidate elected president of the Organization of American States (OAS) in April. IADB disburses over $5 billion in loans every year. Moreno starts his five-year term on Oct. 1. (Financial Times, UK, July 27)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31

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

See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: PARAMILITARIES KILL CAMPESINOS, UNIONISTS 

ECUADOR: COLOMBIA BORDER VIOLATIONS; INTERNAL REPRESSION

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

BORDER ZONE: COLOMBIA ACTIONS PROTESTED

According to a report issued July 20 by the Emerging Inter-Institutional Mission, a collaboration of 11 human rights organizations and local governments in northern Ecuador, the Colombian Armed Forces violated Ecuadoran air space and territory in Sucumbios province on June 24 and 25. The incidents took place as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) attacked an army post in Teteye, in the southern Colombian department of Putumayo, killing 22 soldiers. According to Alexis Ponce, president of the Latin American Human Rights Association (ALDHU), a member of the military revealed that nearly 20 Colombian soldiers in civilian clothes entered Ecuador “with weapons to see what the situation was like.”

The report from the Inter-Institutional Mission includes seven recommendations, including the declaration of the border zone as a “territory of peace, sovereignty and solidarity” and the participation of a civil society delegation in a meeting planned for July 25 between the foreign ministers of Colombia and Ecuador. Defender of the People Claudio Mueckay said the Inter-Institutional Mission wants Ecuadoran president Alfredo Palacio to demand that the Colombian government suspend its spraying of the toxic herbicide glyphosate in the border area and to seek compensation for Ecuadoran families affected by the US-backed Plan Colombia.

Also on July 20, 14 residents of the Ecuadoran Amazon together with several human rights activists staged a street theater action in front of the Colombian embassy in Quito to demand an end to the spraying. The group set up a “Plan Colombia” restaurant, dishing out a “fumigated lunch” of “glyphosate soup” and “rice with poisoned chicken,” with “Dyncorp ice cream” for dessert. (Dyncorp is the company which contracts with the US State Department to carry out the spraying of glyphosate in Colombia.) The spraying is supposed to target drug crops, but residents of the affected areas complain that the chemical also kills food crops and livestock, and causes serious health problems. (Mision Interinstitucional Emergente, July 20 via Resumen Latinoamericano; El Diario-La Prensa, July 24 from EFE)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24

ANTI-DAM ACTIVIST MURDERED

On June 20, the body of Ecuadoran community leader Andres Arroyo Segura was found in the Baba river near the community of Seiba, in Los Rios province. An autopsy showed signs that he had suffered a physical assault. Arroyo’s body was found at the site of a planned hydroelectric dam on the Baba River; he had recently received death threats for his efforts to halt the dam. Arroyo headed a local committee of campesino organizations which is fighting the dam because it will cause environmental destruction and negatively impact local indigenous and campesino communities. The dam would divert two rivers to serve as irrigation for agribusiness interests. Before being ousted from power on April 20, President Lucio Gutierrez had declared the dam a “national priority.” Arroyo was also a member of the National Network in Defense of Nature, Life and Dignity (REDIVINA). He was apparently attacked as he headed from his home to the town of Patricia Pilar, on his way to the city of Guayaquil, where he was to meet with a lawyer, Felix Rodriguez. (Green Left Weekly, July 6; Bolpress, July 27)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10

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

See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Continue ReadingECUADOR: COLOMBIA BORDER VIOLATIONS; INTERNAL REPRESSION 

BOLIVIA: ELECTORAL ACCORD REACHED; VIOLENCE CONTINUES

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Bolivia’s interim president Eduardo Rodriguez, installed in power June 9 by a vote of Congress as La Paz was again paralyzed by protests, faces a harsh challenge—to hold the country together as social forces pull in opposite directions. The indigenous movement in the Altiplano is demanding greater public control over the oil and gas industry—if not outright nationalization. Meanwhile, business elites in the resource-rich Amazon department of Santa Cruz are demanding greater local autonomy—and have threatened outright secession if the hydrocarbons are nationalized. Now a constituent assembly has been called to write a new Bolivian constitution. It remains to be seen if it will appease either side—or if Rodriguez will avoid the fate of his two predecessors, who were both ousted amidst waves of militant protest. —WW4 REPORT


ACCORD REACHED ON ELECTIONS

On July 5, Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies voted 80-27 to approve a constitutional amendment setting early general elections for Dec. 4 of this year. In a joint session minutes later, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved a measure setting another date–July 2, 2006–for elections for a constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution and for a referendum on regional autonomy. An impasse over the various elections was resolved with a political accord among the political parties and with new interim president Eduardo Rodriguez. The accord also allows Rodriguez to postpone until December the election of nine governors, which was originally set for next Aug. 12. On July 6 Rodriguez ratified the constitutional amendment and signed three decrees formalizing the new election dates. (AP, July 5, 7; Bolivia Press, July 8)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10

AMAZON: THREE DEAD IN LAND CLASH

On July 12, campesinos from the Bolivian Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) reportedly invaded the Los Angeles estate owned by businessperson Jorge Haensel in a remote jungle region in the northwest of La Paz department. Haensel claims that the invaders fired at a group of his employees who were gathering chestnuts. Haensel said three people were killed: two of his workers and one MST member. Haensel reported the incident to police in the city of Riberalta, and on July 13 a Bolivian government commission headed by Riberalta deputy mayor Hector Vaca left by helicopter for the isolated estate to investigate the incident. (AP, July 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Continue ReadingBOLIVIA: ELECTORAL ACCORD REACHED; VIOLENCE CONTINUES 

PERU: TRADE TREATY PROTESTS; INDIGENOUS BLOCK OIL OPERATIONS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas


HUGE PROTEST AGAINST TRADE PACT

On July 14, some 500,000 people–construction workers, teachers, students and many others–marched in seven of Peru’s regions to protest the Andean free trade treaty being negotiated between the US, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. The protests, organized by the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), were also seeking an end to privatization and other neoliberal economic policies, and the resignation of Labor Minister Juan Sheput. The CGTP is also demanding the convening of a constituent assembly to rewrite Peru’s Constitution, and a new social security law based on the principles of solidarity. (Adital – World Data Service, July 15; Campana Continental Contra el ALCA, July 15)

A day earlier, July 13, some 4,000 people marched in Lima in another protest against the Andean trade pact, this time organized by the Association of Pharmaceutical Industries of National Origin and Capital (ADIFAN) and the National Convention of Peruvian Agriculture (CONVEAGRO). The noisy march stretched for 20 blocks, ending at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Rather than rejecting the Andean trade pact as a whole, ADIFAN and CONVEAGRO are demanding that Peru drive a harder bargain in the negotiations. “The Peruvian negotiators seem to be gringos, since until now they have achieved nothing for the country. On the contrary, they have given up 50% of the national market to the US,” said CONVEAGRO president Luis Zuniga. Protesters, some of them on horseback, carried signs that said: “Competition, yes. Monopoly, no,” and “Don’t give it away. Negotiate.” Growers of sugar cane, rice, corn, potatoes and cotton fear US agricultural subsidies will make it impossible for them to compete. The negotiations have been going on for more than a year; the next round begins on July 18 in Miami. (Adital, July 15; CCCA, July 15; AP, July 14; Miami Herald, July 14)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17

AMAZON: INDIGENOUS SEIZE OIL COMPANY

On July 8, some 300 Shipiba Coniba indigenous people from the community of Canan de Cachiaco (or Cashiyacu) entered the Maquillas (or Maquias) camp of Maple Gas Corporation in Ucayali province, in the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto. Led by 80 Shipiba warriors armed with machetes, spears, and bows and arrows, they proceeded to take control of at least nine of the 27 oil wells on the company’s lot 31-B; the 150 workers at the camp were taking their lunch break and were caught off guard. “The occupation was totally peaceful, there were no material damages, since the company’s security personnel proceeded to close the fuel extraction valves to prevent leaks, and this was done in the presence of the crime prevention prosecutor, Julio Barreto,” said Ucayali deputy mayor Jose Diaz. The 80 Shipiba warriors are maintaining the occupation of the camp; the other community members returned home later on July 8.

Roberth Gimaraes, a leader of the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Jungle, in Ucayali, said the Shipiba seized the camp to protest the environmental, social and cultural damage done to their communities by Maple Gas. Gimaraes said that in recent years an epidemic of stomach infections has affected the Shipiba communities, killing an average of five people a year. The Shipiba believe the stomach infections are caused by the company’s dumping of toxic waste in the Cachiaco river. They are demanding an environmental impact study to determine the extent of the pollution. They are also demanding that Maple Gas pay rent for the use of their territory, and provide basic necessities like schools and medical examinations. They want a high-level government delegation to come and meet with them over their demands. Barreto, the local prosecutor, apparently brokered a pact between the Shipiba and Maple Gas personnel in which both sides agreed not to touch the installations until a dialogue process could be established to address the Shipiba demands. As of July 10, the Shipiba were continuing to occupy the site.

Maple Gas general manager Guillermo Ferreyros said the conflict arose because the community doesn’t receive any of the royalties that the company pays to the Peruvian state. Ferreyros said the government’s oil company, Perupetro, was going to address the problem in a meeting with the Shipiba during the first week of July, but the meeting was cancelled for economic reasons. (La Ultima, Peru, July 9; AFP, July 8; 24 Horas Libre, Peru, July 9; RPP Noticias, Peru, July 10)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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Continue ReadingPERU: TRADE TREATY PROTESTS; INDIGENOUS BLOCK OIL OPERATIONS